Past projects 2
The Zombies Are Coming!
Funded Sep 17, 2023First of all, happy holidays, my good friends. I hope you receive back tenfold the benevolence you've shown my classes with your donations a few months ago.
This semester, I taught two Science-Fiction Literature classes, each consisting of about 40 seniors. I started the course with some "golden age" Ray Bradbury, then a very modern Black Mirror episode, then the perfect analogy film District 9. After that, we settled into the main meat of the semester, which was World War Z, thanks to you.
With your donation, we bought about 45 copies of the book. The novel is a series of vignettes where different characters tell their personal experiences in the zombie war. We followed along in the text as we listened to the magnificent audiobook that features actors like John Turturro, Mark Hamill, Alfred Molina, Martin Scorsese, and tons more. The students loved it!
The book is not just a amazing accomplishment of scope and serious "what-if"ness, but it provides a million great jumping-off points for discussions on human nature and community. During one of my classes, an administrator came in for a surprise observation. He sat in the back and listened as we discussed survival, altruism, necessity, and nature; and afterwards, he had nothing but praise and positive comments regarding how engaged the class was in the lesson.
And that's how it was all semester with these WWZ discussions. Again, thanks to you.
The kids love it. Personally, I found it exceedingly rewarding. And as an extra treat, the administration came in and loved it. It's great material like WWZ that makes me remember why I got into teaching in the first place.
Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Foley
This classroom project was brought to life by United Airlines and 9 other donors.The 10th Grade Vampire Hunters
Funded Aug 12, 2022I just wanted to take a minute to describe the impact your generous donation had on my classes this past semester. And here's your TL; DR up front – you essentially enabled my "teacher's dream project" and I could not be more grateful. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Your money went completely to funding class sets of the book Dracula. Thanks to you, I had enough to give each student in all five of my English 10 classes a copy. I had about 140 students. This project provided books for 100 of them, and our school library covered the rest.
One big focus of English 10 is "close reading of the text," and Dracula is the perfect novel for that. Bram Stoker tells the story of the inhuman Count's attack on Victorian England through the eyes of each of his human characters. They relate events through diary entries and letters. It's all first-person, and Stoker brilliantly has them describe encounters with Dracula without knowing they're describing encounters with Dracula. These moments are PERFECT for close reading.
I told the students to consider themselves vampire hunters and that they were hunting for vampires in the shadows – i.e., between the lines, using context clues, etc. We took it chapter by chapter. I'd play an audio version while the students followed along in the book. I also assigned some chapters as homework so the students would read it in their own voice as well.
It was very gratifying to introduce them to this work. During one of the early lessons, one student exclaimed, "No way! Transylvania's a real place?!" The Dracula mythos and all pre-Twilight vampire lore is unknown to this generation, at least in this particular section of Los Angeles. But in post-lesson reflections, the students reported that they were really enjoying the material.
Unfortunately, the book was too long for the semester we had, so we only went to the end of Chapter 16, where we finish the Lucy arc. I allowed students who wanted to finish the book to keep it. Anyone who didn't want to keep it could turn it in. Most kept it.
Over the course of the semester, the students completed chapter comprehension questions that required close reading for clues, they drew pictures of Dracula based on Jonathan's description, they wrote their own gothic fiction inspired by Dracula (and Poe), and they worked together to solve the puzzles of a Dracula escape room.
It was a fun semester filled with that Gothic atmosphere of mystery and suspense. Again, thanks for making it happen.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Foley