My students need relevant dystopian fiction that will inspire critical thinking!
FULLY FUNDED! Ms. M.'s classroom raised $783
This project is fully funded
My Students
Sometimes referred to in the community as "the other high school," Encinal Junior Senior High is also celebrated as one of the best kept secrets on the island. We serve a diverse group of students, and our academic programs reflect that diversity. We promote academic rigor, in-depth study, challenging coursework, and a range of study that complements a variety of student interests. Our curriculum is college preparatory and allows for the individual progression of students' aptitudes and interests during their time at EJSH. The programs are structured so that every student will fulfill graduation and college entrance requirements so they will have opportunities and choices for their own future.
It is this diversity that drew me to EJSH and it is the inclusion of important and interrelated dimensions of human identity such as race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity and expression, socio-economic status, nationality, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, ability, and age, that keeps me inspired in the profession.
These are my students. And while I have the opportunity to guide them toward a future they may not even fully imagine, they educate me on how they interpret their individual, unique worlds.
My Project
"Dystopias follow utopias the way thunder follows lightning. This year, the thunder is roaring and it's easy to forget how recently lightning struck." A utopia is a paradise, a dystopia a paradise lost. Before utopias and dystopias became imagined futures, they were imagined pasts, or imagined places. Utopians believe in progress; dystopians don't. They fight this argument out in competing visions of the future, utopians offering promises, dystopians issuing warnings.
It is critical to "chase the storm" while heeding the warnings.
The novel I have chosen for this project is more prescient than ever and if we notice the lightning in a social, political, or metaphoric storm, it is critical to pay attention to just how closely the thunder follows. Every dystopia is a history of the future. I want my students to examine the consequences of literature. It is imperative that dystopian fiction remain a fiction of questioning, of consciousness, of resistance. We must imagine a better future and bother to make one. It's not about despair, it's about moral imagination and finding a future that aligns with each individual. This novel will make a difference by examining it through this critical lens.
Half of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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