The Tegan & Sara Foundation Giving Page

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I would like to offer my sincere thanks for your gift. Having these No Fear Shakespeare books has allowed me to expose my students to culture and language that seem to be going by the wayside.

The photos you see actually represent the second time I have done this project. When I initially received the books, my students read the plays in the weeks following their standardized testing last year. I was encouraged by their positive responses, but I felt as though the scheduling took away from the experience. This school year, I gave our Shakespeare unit a prominent place in the schedule, and students just finished the plays. Students had a choice to read either Taming of the Shrew or Twelfth Night, but many read both. They used both the original language and the modern English translation. Students focused on character development and common themes in Shakespeare's work.

As students have moved through the plays, they have collected evidence of character and plot development, imagery and figurative language, and other narrative elements. At the end of the play, students use this information to write poems centered around characters and key events from the story. Students also choose specific scenes they wish to learn and perform in small groups.

Students show such interest in these plays, and it makes our classroom an exciting place to be. The difference between reading something like this and a made-for-textbook play is indescribable. In each class, I have one or two students whose parents might have introduced Shakespeare to them at some point, but the bulk of my kids would never have occasion to even know the name. My children who come from lower-income families have benefited especially because saying they have read a play by Shakespeare is giving them confidence in their academic ability.

Thank you again, and I look forward to seeing this project continue to grow!”

With gratitude,

Ms. Rave

Thank you so much for the button maker!

The Queer-Straight Alliance celebrated National Coming Out Day with a special button-making event. Students made buttons to express their own identities, to show support for the LGBTQ community, and just for fun! We had a good turnout with lots of laughter and community building. I feel very optimistic about QSA this year, based on our positive kick-off.

Our next step will be using the button maker to make buttons to sell as a fundraiser for our club. I'm looking forward to it!”

With gratitude,

Mx. Martin

We are now into our second month of school, and I wanted to take a moment to remind you that your support of my students and our classroom has made a huge difference in the quality of their learning experience.

We are about 90% digital now, and it is amazing. Not only have we almost eliminated our paper usage, but students now never loose things! Their project files are saved online, and their notes are always accessible. Not only has the computer helped students stay organized, it has also opened up our learning potential. No longer do we have let a question or unknown term go unanswered, now students are free to search out answers and definitions that might otherwise distract them from following along.

Thank you for your support and know that it will continue to be felt for years to come!”

With gratitude,

Mr. Fox

This project has done so much for my students, including some things I hadn't anticipated!

My school district recently adopted new English curriculum that has an embedded independent reading component. While students can always go to county libraries many live in small towns or don't have easy access to them, and our school library is aimed more at the K-8 side of our K-12 site. Thanks to all of our donors our classroom library is now filled with books that come from the suggested independent reading lists from each of the 5 units in our new curriculum. We have a variety of diverse nonfiction texts: from Euclid's Window : The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace, to We Will Not Be Silent: The White Rose Student Resistance Movement That Defied Adolf Hitler, to The Radioactive Boy Scout: The Frightening True Story of a Whiz Kid and His Homemade Nuclear Reactor. We also have a variety of diverse fiction texts: He Said, She Said, to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, to Boy Meets Boy. The lessons and/or skills introduced in these new texts are life lessons and experiences. According to George R. R. Martin, "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one" (A Dance with Dragons). Our high school is very small, only 150 students, and they come from very conservative backgrounds. Providing books with a variety of time periods, races, religions, and outlooks allows students to experience lives and situations that they would otherwise be unaware of - lives that they can use to help become better, more tolerant and empathetic people.

Reading in my classroom currently looks like read alouds of short stories and excerpts from longer works that are embedded in the curriculum's lessons in addition to one dramatic play and one full length novel. Now, it can also look like independent reading outside of class that supplements what we are doing in class and literature circles. Much of what I am required to teach is just that - required. However, now that the students have access to high interest books in our classroom library, they have choices of texts that can help inspire a love of books and reading.

So far, many students who are already avid readers have been borrowing the books, but also students who are in detention for poor behavior have been borrowing books, too. I am hoping that the students who are in detention are able to develop a deeper understanding of the situation that landed them in detention and an ability to be more empathic through some of the texts in our classroom library. I also share my classroom with another teacher, Ms. Hayes. She teaches AP English and requires that her students complete a year long project - REHUGO. The students' REHUGO projects aim to collect and analyze students' cultural and context-building experiences, providing them with many opportunities to strengthen their awareness of the world around them while also improving their ability to write and think critically about many important social issues. Ms. Hayes students' have also been borrowing our classroom library books to help with their REHUGO projects.

I look forward to seeing how else my students are able to use these books. Thank you again!”

With gratitude,

Mrs. Mackey

The social issues unit is one of the most powerful reading and writing units taught in sixth grade. It combines fiction reading, non-fiction research, current events, group work, and presentation skills.

In this unit, students explore fictional books of their choosing that address such social issues as LGBTQ issues, racism, immigration, sexism, and acceptance. Many of the books (such as Iqbal, Keeping Corner, and Boys Without Names) also introduce students to unfamiliar cultures, expanding their knowledge of the world. It is gratifying to watch students question what they read ("Is this real? Did it actually happen?") and then research more to determine which aspects of the novel are based on real events/situations and which were entirely fictional.

Working in research and discussion groups, students explore "their" social issue by reading non-fiction texts, poetry, memes, and more. As their culminating project, students present their findings to the class, making others aware of the issue they studied and explaining what interested students can do to get involved.

It is rewarding to watch students put the reading skills they learned in previous units to work in this unit. It is also a great time to review essential skills related to research, author's bias, and author's craft.

Thanks to your gift, I was able to offer our sixth graders a wide variety of social issues books. They were all able to find an issue or fictional book that interested them and launched them into this unit. A handful of students chose to read additional books dealing with social issues because they found the subject matter so fascinating.

With one year of teaching this unit under my belt, I look forward to the improvements I can make when I teach this unit again next year. I am excited to have such a large selection of books to offer students, ensuring that they all find something that piques their interest.”

With gratitude,

Mrs. Bradley