This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
My Students
Sunset Park has one of the most robust immigrant communities in New York City. We are a middle school that serves about 550 students from sixth through eighth grade. We are a community school, and a majority of our students and their families live and work in the Sunset Park area. At our school, 93% of students receive free or reduced-priced lunch, and 25% of our population are students with special needs.
Many of the students in our school struggle with reading and writing, which impacts their success across all subject areas.
We are constantly looking for new strategies and resources to assist us in providing support for our students in order for them to access various texts across various content areas. One support in particular that has been extremely impactful is the ability to offer our students audio support, which has allowed many students to access and comprehend texts well beyond their reading levels.
My Project
It is easy to take for granted the ability to look at any text and be able to read and understand it. However, for many of our students, their struggle to do exactly this affects them every single day in every single subject.
When students have difficulty with reading, rigorous schoolwork becomes exponentially more challenging.
To add on to that, a lack of resources in education means that oftentimes, reading disabilities go undiagnosed. Learning Ally is a educational tool that provides over 80,000 human-read audiobooks, and the ability to highlight text, define words, change the font to make it easier to read--among many other supports that will help our students to access texts across all content areas.
Being able to provide audio support to our struggling readers has been invaluable in helping them to succeed in class and improve their literacy skills. With a school-wide Learning Ally license, we will be able to provide every single one of our students with access to audio support and ensure that all students have equal opportunities to learn and to succeed.
Nearly all students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Ms. Menchini and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
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