What makes my students special is how they come together to help one another. I don't have to ask them to help each other because they do it automatically. They understand that working together as a group lightens the load for everyone and sharing knowledge strengthens all of us.
We are a small campus, and I teach the same students for two to three years, so they definitely become "my kids!" Being such a small campus allows the students to become friends with those that, under different circumstances, they might not have been friends with.
A few days ago, one of my 9th grade boys reminded one of the other boys in class that he used to bully him. They all laughed about it because this group of boys is now very close. They are my smallest class (5), and they treat each other, including me, like family.
My Project
I have been an English Language Arts teacher for quite a while, and over the years I have amassed a decent classroom library by bringing in my own books, buying sale and clearance books at stores, and buying as many young adult books as I can find at flea markets and our local charity store. However, it seems that the majority of my books are geared towards girls.
The majority of my boys did not come to me as enthusiastic readers, but that is beginning to change!
This year our school began requiring all students to read for AR points. While I know this is not the ideal way to make lifelong readers, and we've had our struggles with it, I have seen quite a change in the attitudes of my students towards books. I have had boys who NEVER read during their seventh and eighth grade years with me, come to me and say, "I really liked that last book I got from you. Do you have any others like it?" Another student who would tell you himself that he was a non-reader, plowed through the Miss Peregrine series faster than I did! My classroom library does not currently have enough "boy books" to satisfy their blossoming voracity for reading. Authors like Walter Dean Myers, books like the Magisterium series, and The Hardy Boys will hopefully appease them for a bit...before they get hungry and beg for more. That is my goal: to make voracious readers out of them.
Nearly all 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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