Past projects 6
Representation Matters!
Funded Jul 20, 2021We are so grateful that, through your generosity, we were able to experience these two books. By now, we have finished studying both of these texts. Our junior level students read Born a Crime, and our senior level students read Persepolis. Both were successful, and students clearly enjoyed them.
We learned a number of new skills through reading Persepolis. As a graphic novel, Persepolis cannot be analyzed in the same way as a prose text. Prior to analyzing Persepolis, our students embarked on a mini-project to learn about graphic novel techniques such as the different kind of frames, different modes of illustration like iconic and realistic, different ways of presenting images from multiple "camera angles" and even the idea of closure, which is the mental "filling in the gaps" that occurs between panels of a comic. The students greatly enjoyed this new knowledge, and used it to analyze Satrapi's text enthusiastically. Many of them have chosen to write a longer essay assignment on the book.
Our juniors enjoyed Born a Crime just as much. For some, the topic of Apartheid and the struggles of POC in South Africa were a new subject they knew little about. The non-fiction nature of this text allowed us to do a lot of research to fill in these gaps. Non-fiction is also an area where students do not always have a lot of experience, especially literary non-fiction. Examining the ways in which authors present narrative, literary non-fiction gave us a lot of ground to cover. The unit on Born a Crime was so successful with our juniors that we will be repeating it with our seniors in early spring. Of course, it doesn't hurt that Trevor Noah's book is as funny as it is!
Again, thank you so much for your generosity in donating to our classroom. We will forever be grateful.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Rowe
This classroom project was brought to life by Emerson Collective and 3 other donors.A Feminist Approach
Funded Aug 23, 2018I continue to be impressed and so very grateful for the generosity of the Donors Choose community. Our little library grows exponentially with each project, and my students are exposed to timeless works of literature. We have enjoyed reading our feminist novels over the last few years. Especially popular with my students has been "The Handmaid's Tale" as it is quite timely and is a current television series. We will continue to explore the literary richness each of these novels provide with subsequent grade levels, each time recalling our generous donors who made this project possible.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Rowe
This classroom project was brought to life by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and 8 other donors.We Need New Copies of "We"!
Funded Feb 2, 2017First, I can't thank you enough for your generosity. We really couldn't have made this unit work without copies of "We" -- and you really stepped up when help was needed. Our books came just in time for us to use them this spring. We have finished reading all three of our translated works, and we left "We" for the last book. Although reading was due at the beginning of April, we've spent the whole month discussing the book, and will just finish up with it tomorrow.
"We" is a dystopian novel; it is generally credited with being the inspiration for George Orwell's "1984". The two novels are remarkably similar, and in addition to discussing the merits and difficulties of translated literature, we also used "We" as a springboard to learn about the differences between capitalism, communism, and socialism. Some of the students in our class lived in countries that at one time practiced forms of communism, so those discussions were pretty lively! Something else we considered was the differences between the novel as it was originally written in Russian, and then our translated version in English. In the novel, the characters have numbers rather than names, and initially we thought that there was something weird about the fact that the females take numbers with vowel designations, and the males have consonant designations. Some of our female classmates thought that was derogatory towards women until we realized that there are more vowels in the Russian (Cyrillic) alphabet than in the English alphabet! It's little things like this that you often don't consider when reading a work originally written in another language.
So, thank you again for helping my class to continue to read and think and analyze and love literature. You have truly made a difference in these children's lives.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Rowe
Help Us Feel Not "Out of Place" by Funding Our Book Project!
Funded May 19, 2016Dear Donors,
Although we haven't yet gotten a chance to read our new books, we were absolutely thrilled that you chose to support our classroom. We plan on starting to read "Out of Place" very soon, just after we finish studying "Hamlet". It will be part of our study on the different genres of literature, and of course will cover non-fiction. After we finish reading, we will focus on poetry, and then in January each student will be recorded performing a critical analysis of a poem, and answering critical questions about "Hamlet" and "Out of Place". All of this is part of the two-year English A course that we follow as part of the IB program at our school. It is a rigorous and challenging program, and your generosity has made our continued achievement possible.
As the teacher, I chose this book not only because it was on an approved list for our curriculum, but specifically because I thought it would speak directly to my students. The author, Edward Said, is a Palestinian-Lebanese Jew who lived in both the Middle East and the United States. The book is about his struggles growing up. I felt very strongly that this book would speak directly to my students and their experiences, since most of them are immigrants. We are all particularly excited about reading this book, especially after we covered parts of Said's "Orientalism" last year.
Thank you again for your generosity, and for caring about public education.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Rowe
To Be or Not To Be ... Funded!
Funded Sep 7, 2014This week we finished our unit on Hamlet. It has been a long hard road studying this most famous of Shakespeare plays, but I can say with confidence that your generous donation of our Hamlet books really made a difference. As we progressed on our analytical journey, there were many times when the students specifically referenced something that they read in the footnotes and line citations of their Folger Shakespeare editions. This not only reminded me of you and your generosity each time it happened, but it also made me overjoyed to know that my students had this resource and that they were making proper use of it! I really don't know where we would have been without these new books. I had been using our old copies for a number of years, but they were department books, and I think some of them might have even been older than me! Suffice to say that I noticed a significant difference in comprehension when comparing this year with previous years.
I also want you to know that you have really touched my students' lives. They have had an extremely rough time in high school so far, funding-wise. Many of the programs and teachers and opportunities which existed when they entered 9th grade have now been lost to budget cuts as they slowly inch towards graduation. So many times I hear myself saying, "oh, but we don't have that anymore" or "We can't afford that anymore". It is exhausting to always have such miserable tidings to give to my students, and I am sure it can't be any less exhausting to always be hearing the same negative comments. From my perspective, having attended a wealthy suburban school myself, and taught for my first three years in a similarly well-off suburb, I see the effects of a starved education system every where I look. For me, the tragedy is knowing what resources and benefits my students are being denied. At least they are blissfully unaware of the situation.
I don't think I can accurately convey my gratitude for your most generous donation. Hopefully, the knowledge that each time I use these Hamlet books, my thoughts will turn to the generosity of one person who helped to make a difficult year just that much better, will be enough to convey how I feel.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Rowe
Help Us Understand Othello!
Funded Jan 1, 2013Thank you so much to all of our generous donors! We were so excited to receive notice that our project had been funded -- and coincidentally it came on New Year's Day! It was a wonderful New Year's surprise.
We are so very grateful for your donations to our project. Our school is a very large school in an urban district, and we are always desperate for extra supplies. Sometimes, even the most basic supplies, like paper and pencils, are in short supply. Books are at a premium! That is why we "wished" for our new "Othello" books. The old editions owned by our school were quite old, not to mention a bit moldy, and falling apart. The new Folger Editions of "Othello" are great -- not just because they are new, but because of the extras provided by the Folger Shakespeare library. The annotations to the text help the students to understand what they are reading. The definitions and explanations of the archaic words and phrases really opening up the meaning of the play.
From my perspective, it was so wonderful to have our project funded. Public education seems to be getting the short shrift lately, and knowing that there are still wonderful people such as yourselves out there really warms my heart. Thank you again for your generous donations.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Rowe