Past projects 4
A Golden Age for Dystopian Fiction
Funded Aug 22, 2018Your generosity for funding this project is thrilling! This means I can continue the journey we have already started in a Golden Age for Dystopian Fiction! I believe the reading material I have selected will help my students on the road to understanding how prescient these ideas are in the twenty-first century. Much appreciation for the spirit with which you gave to the project!”
With gratitude,
Ms. M.
This classroom project was brought to life by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and 6 other donors.Coming of Age in Contemporary Times
Funded Mar 18, 2017It is my belief that true achievement in the classroom is not just about literacy, reading with a purpose, and developing writing skills. In order to find true value in a learning environment, students must be able to forge a connection between the content and life. I have a lot of students who are able to connect literary situations to the real world, but this is only a point of departure. My question is always how do we take these experiences we are dealing with or that the characters are dealing with and grow from them? Learn from them? Become better or change our lives because of them?
To do my job well, I believe I must inspire students to challenge the life they know, to think outside of the box through inquiry, empathy, and learning. The books are only tools, mediums we use to help us to better understand ourselves and each other. That being said, having the right books, the best tools, is absolutely imperative for this type of learning to take place.
With the contemporary novel, I have a much better chance of achieving these goals. Thank you for funding "Coming of Age in Contemporary Times." We look forward to the journey through this new and very relevant novel as together we think outside the box.”
With gratitude,
Ms. M.
Wonderland(s)
Funded Oct 29, 2010I would like to begin simply by expressing how thrilling it was to find a message in my mail box announcing that my project has been funded! When I designed this particular unit to fit within the literary journey I had envisioned for the year, I was faced with the challenge of learning late that our site no longer had the copies of the novel. Not to be defeated or deterred from my teaching objectives and learning goals, I refused to give up. Now I have this organization, and my generous donors, to thank for recognizing a worthy cause and helping me make it a reality. Having promised my students the literary "Wonderland(s)" they would explore, "Alice's Adventures" being among them, and explaining the purpose of our journey, it would have been devastating to deny them of this particular experience. I feel this novel is undertaught, yet the story remains over-exposed. Among misconceptions about the real inception or meaning of the story that become "food for thought", it is filled with ideas that have occupied the minds of great artists and thinkers, readers and writers, for many decades. It also contains many of the themes that connect with the overall "moral of the story" of the course. I know my students have been looking forward to reading it, going into "wonderland" and discovering its literary magic, both critically and creatively. It will be used for years to come here at this site and I will do my best to encourage other educators here to take advantage of a full set of an new "old" title. With enthusiasm and anticipation of our upcoming adventure, I would again just like to say thank you to the generous people who understand what kids can gain from embarking on a "novel" adventure. Thank you. I look forward to sharing the experience further once we have journeyed into "Wonderland" and back!”
With gratitude,
Ms. M.
This classroom project was brought to life by Townsend Press and one other donor.Discursive Actions: Embracing the Future (im)perfect
Funded Oct 8, 2010It is with both gratitude and excitement that I embrace the opportunity to thank my donors for the generous gift to my students, or as I refer to them, my apprentices. As their mentor and guide, I am committed to taking my students into new cognitive spaces in order to explore the world(s) of possibility! Having carefully designed a course that embraces future worlds imperfect, it was disappointing to discover that our site did not have the materials to include a novel I feel is not only relative, but imperative for making the journey complete. With a group of diverse learners, I believe it is important to continue to challenge young minds to interpret literature that has a far greater significance than the story itself. My apprentices know that we read in order to build fluency and stamina, but even beyond that, we read to practice interpreting the world within which we live, connect a text to our individual selves, our diverse lives, and our place within the world. The novel is already represented on the classroom library wall, as an artifact that surrounds the epigraph for the course, which is "we are surrounded by discourse." Now, together, we will explore a "Brave New World" or embrace the future (im)perfect!
With sincerest thanks,
A humble mentor
”
With gratitude,
Ms. M.