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.
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I want to give some of my struggling ENL students an opportunity to excel and show their brilliance to their classmates. I have already given them a small dose of this opportunity by sharing one of my favorite authors with them: Julia Alvarez. We read Alvarez's short story "Liberty" as a class and the result was incredible. A lot of Dominican American EL students were making inferences, stating beautiful opinions, and altogether leading discussions in class. Some even said the short story opened up conversations at home with their parents about their birth-country's history and culture.
On the first day of school I had several students point at the photo of Julia Alvarez on my wall and say, "She's Dominican, just like me." Since that day they have obsessed over reading a novel by her. While some of them have already begun reading her other classics (In The Time of the Butterflies, Once Upon a Quinceanera, etc.) I thought it would be supremely beneficial for my entire class to read her book Before We Were Free. If we could get a class set of books, then I could create an entire nonfiction unit that would be accessible and enjoyable for the Dominican American students in my class. And, in the process, my ENL students from countries outside of the US or the DR would get to learn about a new culture.
About my class
I want to give some of my struggling ENL students an opportunity to excel and show their brilliance to their classmates. I have already given them a small dose of this opportunity by sharing one of my favorite authors with them: Julia Alvarez. We read Alvarez's short story "Liberty" as a class and the result was incredible. A lot of Dominican American EL students were making inferences, stating beautiful opinions, and altogether leading discussions in class. Some even said the short story opened up conversations at home with their parents about their birth-country's history and culture.
On the first day of school I had several students point at the photo of Julia Alvarez on my wall and say, "She's Dominican, just like me." Since that day they have obsessed over reading a novel by her. While some of them have already begun reading her other classics (In The Time of the Butterflies, Once Upon a Quinceanera, etc.) I thought it would be supremely beneficial for my entire class to read her book Before We Were Free. If we could get a class set of books, then I could create an entire nonfiction unit that would be accessible and enjoyable for the Dominican American students in my class. And, in the process, my ENL students from countries outside of the US or the DR would get to learn about a new culture.