{"monthlySchoolDonationEnabled":true,"callToActionDisplayName":"El Camino Real Charter High School","outOfStateSupporters":28.6,"allowSchoolLevelGiving":true,"hasFundedProjects":true,"projectGratitudeData":[{"teacherId":8477213,"projectId":10156419,"letterContent":"My students learned how to expand their attention spans and see worlds outside their own area and era. They gained different perspectives. They learned that books, the right books, can be interesting, engaging, thought-provoking, and sometimes even funny. There is an old saying: Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers. I think there is something real in that. Reading matters because it changes the way we think and, over time, changes the way we understand ourselves and other people. When you really grapple with a book, your brain is analyzing, making connections, drawing inferences, imagining other people's experiences, and connecting new information to what you already know. The more background knowledge you build, the easier it becomes to understand the next complicated idea. Reading gives your mind something to work with.\r\n\r\nBut reading also forces us to slow down and spend time with ourselves. There is something meditative about sitting quietly with a book for an hour. You cannot constantly swipe away from an uncomfortable thought or immediately replace it with something more entertaining. Sometimes a book makes you confront an idea you would rather avoid. Sometimes it makes you recognize yourself in another person. And one of the strange comforts of reading is realizing that people hundreds or even thousands of years ago struggled with many of the same fears, ambitions, disappointments, and questions we still struggle with now. Reading becomes a kind of conversation across time. It also gives us perspective on the present. News tells us what happened today. History helps us understand why it happened, what came before it, and whether anything like it has happened before. If all we consume is the latest headline, political argument, or social media reaction, it becomes easy to believe that everything happening right now is completely unprecedented. Usually, it isn't. Long-form reading gives us a wider frame and helps us get our bearings.\r\n\r\nLong books matter for another reason: attention is a muscle. Notifications, feeds, short videos, and constant switching train us to expect another burst of stimulation every few seconds. Then we wonder why five pages of demanding reading suddenly feels hard. A long book pushes in the opposite direction. It asks you to stay with one subject for hours. It asks you to remember what happened 150 pages ago, follow an argument as it develops, and live with some confusion before everything becomes clear. That kind of sustained attention has to be cultivated. I saw this with my own students. Reading long books forced them to slow down, build stamina, and resist the instinct to give up the moment something became hard. And many of them eventually discovered something else: books did not have to feel like punishment. The right book could be fascinating, strange, funny, frustrating, or moving. It could introduce them to a person living centuries ago or thousands of miles away and somehow make that person's life feel real. That's pretty remarkable.","fullyFundedDate":1773793107306,"projectUrl":"project/read-more-fascinating-informative-world/10156419/","projectTitle":"Read More Fascinating, Informative World History Books","teacherDisplayName":"Mr. DeLarme","teacherPhotoUrl":"https://storage.donorschoose.net/dc_prod/images/teacher/profile/orig/tp8477213_orig.jpg?crop=868,868,x264,y331&width=272&height=272&fit=bounds&auto=webp&t=1696009577667","teacherClassroomUrl":"classroom/8477213"}],"pageName":"schoolpage_6987","usesDonorsChoose":true,"infoPageType":"school","demographicsInfo":{"numStudents":2896,"numTeachers":null,"percentFrplEligible":76,"percentAsian":14,"percentBlack":4,"percentWhite":32,"percentIndigenous":0,"percentLatinx":33,"showFreeAndReducedPriceLunchInfo":true,"showDemographicsInfo":true,"sourceTooltipString":"the National Center for Education Statistics","percentHawaiianImputed":0,"percentMultiracialImputed":13,"gradesServed":"9 - 12","studentTeacherRatio":null,"demographicsDataSource":"MDR School","equityFocus":true,"titleOne":false,"metroType":"URBAN","ncesMetroType":"CITY_LARGE"},"inStateSupporters":71.4,"schoolId":6987,"financialInfo":null,"twitterShareText":"Learn more about El Camino Real Charter High School on @DonorsChoose:","schoolName":"El Camino Real Charter High School","canonicalPageUrl":"schools/california/los-angeles-unified-school-district/el-camino-real-high-school/6987"}