Isely Traditional Magnet K-8 School in Bel Aire, Kansas on DonorsChoose

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They're not textbook excerpts. They're stories my students will actually be able to see themselves in.\r\n\r\nEach day, we'll listen to a chapter together as a class and pause to talk about what we're noticing, wondering, or connecting to our own lives. Along the way, we'll pull out vocabulary words as they come up naturally in the story instead of pre-teaching a list no one remembers, and students will practice skills like making predictions, asking questions, and picking out the main idea, tied directly to what's happening in the book that day. It's a small part of their day, but I expect it will be the part where I see the most engagement, because for once the reading won't be a screen handing back a score. It'll be a story, read out loud, together.\r\n\r\nI can't yet tell you which student found themselves surprised by how much they liked a book, because we haven't opened these pages together. But that's exactly what I'm hoping for. Reading intervention can feel like a label to a lot of these kids, a reminder that reading is something they struggle with rather than something they can enjoy. My hope is that these three books help it feel like something else instead: a group of readers figuring out a story together, one chapter at a time.","fullyFundedDate":1785258023786,"projectUrl":"project/novels-that-meet-readers-where-they-are/10386404/","projectTitle":"Novels That Meet Readers Where They Are","teacherDisplayName":"Ms. Crager","teacherPhotoUrl":"https://storage.donorschoose.net/dc_prod/images/teacher/profile/orig/tp10535548_orig.jpg?crop=1723,1723,x1300,y524&width=272&height=272&fit=bounds&auto=webp&t=1781980531848","teacherClassroomUrl":"classroom/10535548"},{"teacherId":10535548,"projectId":10346232,"letterContent":"Thanks to your generosity, my regular and honors 7th-grade English students will spend the whole school year moving through six novels chosen because they reflect views and experiences my kids don't often get to see in a textbook, woven throughout the year rather than all at once, so we can build trust with reading together. Early on, with The House on Mango Street and Ghost, we'll dig into identity: how the language we use at home is different from the language we use at school, and why that shift can feel like living in two different worlds. With Refugee, students follow three kids from three different times and places, all forced to leave everything behind, and we'll talk about what home means when you don't have one, and how history keeps repeating itself in ways the news doesn't always connect for us. I Am Malala brings that same question of courage into the real world: a girl who refused to stay silent about her right to go to school, and paid an enormous price for it. Later in the year, The Hate U Give pushes students into even bigger territory: how a single event can look completely different depending on who's telling the story, and how much can hinge on whose version of events people choose to believe.\r\n\r\nI don't want my students to get through these books; I want them to sit with the hard questions inside them: Why does a character hide part of who they are to fit in? Is silence ever the safer choice, or does it cost more in the end? What do we owe each other when someone's story is nothing like our own? None of these questions have easy answers, and that's exactly the point. My honors students will push that thinking even further, but every student, honors or not, is asked to slow down, wonder, and observe the world through someone else's eyes.\r\n\r\nNone of this happens without books actually in students' hands, so thank you for making that possible. 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About this school

Isely Traditional Magnet K-8 School is a suburban public school in Bel Aire, Kansas that is part of Wichita Public Schools. It serves 622 students in grades K - 5 with a student/teacher ratio of 16.8:1. Its teachers have had 13 projects funded on DonorsChoose.

Supporting this school will directly impact historically underfunded classrooms.

Public School

Grades K - 5

622 Students

37 Teachers

5256 N Woodlawn Blvd

Bel Aire, KS 67226 View local requests

http://www.usd259.org

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Ms. Vero, a DonorsChoose teacher for 9 years.

Kindergarten teacher at PS81 - Robert J. Christen School in Bronx, NY

Isely Traditional Magnet K-8 School Teachers on DonorsChoose

Ms. Crager

Ms. Garcia

Ms. V

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Isely Traditional Magnet K-8 School Demographics

55%

of students receive free or reduced price lunch

Source: the National Center for Education Statistics

41%

of students are Black, Latino, Native American, or Asian

Schools in districts that mainly serve students of color receive substantially less state and local support than similar districts that serve primarily White students. Learn more about this gap, why it exists, and how you can help close it.

Isely Traditional Magnet K-8 School Support on DonorsChoose Last updated Aug 18, 2026

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