Windows and Mirrors: Looking into Books, Seeing Into Ourselves
My students need transportation, theater tickets, and a trip to the Book Store.
FULLY FUNDED! Ms. Peano's classroom raised $1,466
This project is fully funded
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
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
The students we are serving through Book Club are kids who love to read books of their own choosing but have very little opportunity to do so. We lost our Reading classes where students participated in Reading Workshop, and then we lost our librarian, and now our kids cannot check out books. So the only opportunity they have to read whatever they want is Book Club.
Our students are the forgotten kids: low-income students at a neighborhood school, students who are diverse learners, ELL students, immigrants from over 30 different countries, students at risk of dropping out.
Yet, despite these diverse factors, they have one thing in common-- a love of reading.
While some are the obvious participants, like students in AP English classes, or straight A students, many others are surprises. The diverse learner, who might be only at a 4th-grade reading level, but still loves to read. A girl who is failing all of her classes, but comes every month to Book Club. A boy with very few friends, but who musters the courage to sit at a table with strangers, just because he's dying to talk to someone about the book he read.
My Project
Our goal through Book Club is to build a community of readers because reading is often a solo endeavor. We want to provide our readers with a shared experience, teach them how to talk about books, where to go and find books they would love, and what happens when you make reading a priority. We have made Book Club student-led, with two officers and a secretary, and these students determine and run the activities we participate in.
Two activities our members want to develop this year are taking a group trip to a book store, and going to see a film version of one of the books we have read.
While we have to fund from another grant for books, and the teachers here donate food and raffle prizes every month, what we don’t have is funding to take trips out into the community. Most of our kids have never been to a book store! They don’t know how to navigate it, where to look, how to browse through books. If we want them to be life-long readers, these are experiences they need! Our Book Club is unlike most in that we don’t all read the same book at the same time. Kids choose what they want to read, whether they are alone in that choice or a couple of friends join them, because we believe very strongly in the power of that choice. We see reading as a window and a mirror: to let us see into other worlds and to recognize ourselves. For most of our kids, they haven’t had much experience seeing themselves represented in what they read in school. We are an avenue to validating their identity.
More than three‑quarters of 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. Peano and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
