Writing To Live!

My Students

I have my students write endlessly. It is a skill that will be vital to them whatever their post-high school endeavors may be. My students know written expression is my passion and it is my sincere aim to make it theirs.

My students are inner city youths, all of whom are on the free and reduced price lunch program.

Most come from low-income households and they often come to class without even the most basic of supplies such as paper, pens, and folders. For most of them the $1-4 composition notebook is a near-impossible expense. However, despite these obstacles, the majority of my students are commendably college bound. Normally, I suffer the cost of the materials they need to make it through a typical day of school, but as teachers in my district have not received raises in nearly ten years, I am finding it hard to balance this cost with my personal finances. As many of my students share my passion for written composition and understand its essential role in their professional, academic and personal development, I want every roadblock in their way (such as the need for supplies) to be eliminated in order to make their path that much easier.

My Project

It couldn't be more simple: my students will fill these pages with their writing. They will write their daily warm up exercise (an analytical question I have them answer at the beginning of class), drafts of all their major essays, creative writing exercises (which I assign in order to spark their creative intelligence) and notes on our daily readings. Right now I am buying reams of loose paper for my students to write on, but these pages get lost in lockers & the between class shuffle. I plan to keep these notebooks in my classroom for the students to use solely for their writing in my class. That level of consistency (knowing that they will ALWAYS have what they need to do their work in my class) is something they lack and desperately need in their everyday lives. Few people scaffold and these support these children as their teachers do. I simply seek to do something so small (yet grand in the larger picture) as to ensure that they will always be able to write, succeed and live.

Right now my students struggle with self-confidence as it pertains to written expression.

I help them every day with positive reinforcement, but this is nothing without the tangible results to show them their visible growth and progress. As stated before, my students typically do not come equipped with the materials needed for us to do all the writing I want us to complete as a class. With your help my students will be able to write (consistently!) all year and grow academically & personally!