In-Class Opportunity
In my second year of teaching, I shifted into the position
of reading teacher. When I took on this role it was my job to develop an appropriate, equitable, and representative library. My campus provided a limited amount of texts. These texts had characters that did not look like my students and lacked all reading levels. By exposing children to books where their identities are represented, students are able to connect more fully to the texts and feel empowered by the selections. I also needed to remove texts that perpetuated stereotypes about people groups and in their place, provide a variety of perspectives. Additionally, we use Running Records to level students and the books provided only accommodated students on grade level. This neglects students below and above grade level expectations, which are in every classroom.
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Based on this knowledge, I reached out to administration via email and in conversation. I stated our need for texts reading levels A-F over email. I vocalized the need for books representing our students and cultures they are lacking exposure to in meetings. Administration was quick to respond to our need and provided a more balanced and inclusive library. This has tremendously improved our in-class resources to be more representative and for learning to be more meaningful.
Examples of texts added to our library,
Students sharing their self-selected texts from the library.
This student was excited to read about her heroes.
Documented communication with administration advocating for varying levels of texts in the classroom.
My homepage for our technology project.
My first year in the classroom, Hurricane Harvey devastated our campus. We were moved to a displacement location for an entire semester. Five feet of water inside our classroom took all supplies and technology. In order to meet our basic needs and supply the room with technology, I turned to Donors Choose. Through this resource, I was able to create projects to advocate for our needs. My projects were fully funded providing our room with over $1500 worth of technology. This has allowed my students to practice critical skills necessary to be successful in our rapidly developing and technology based society. Since then, my students have benefited from technology in research projects, differentiated classwork through websites such as MobyMax, and practiced navigating multimedia to meet their individual needs. Additionally, I was able to inform coworkers of Donors Choose and help them set up projects for their own rooms.
We reached full support of $1612 worth of technology in the classroom within two months of posting the project.
Student utilizing one of our sponsored pieces of technology at a differentiated and appropriate level of rigor.
Inclusive and Representative Library
Technology
