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Ms. Harrington's English Class

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Hello to all my Friends, Family, and Everyone in Between,

I am currently a 7th grade English teacher at Woodward Career Technical High School in Cincinnati, Ohio.  In our large urban school district, we face the challenges of poverty, homelessness, and transient population. Thus, our school lacks many educational resources, primarily books in the school library and school supplies.

I am raising money to be able to purchase class sets of novels, books for our classroom library, and and basic school supplies such as pencils, notebooks, filler paper, etc. for each of my 150 students.  When I went to the public library in search of class sets, I found that they did not have characters that reflected the racial background of my predominantly black students. According to a study by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin, of the "3,200 children’s books published in 2013, just 93 were about black people" (Myers).  

Junot Diaz, author and creative writing professor at MIT, once said:

"There’s this idea that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. And what I’ve always thought isn’t that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. It’s that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn’t see myself reflected at all.” 

Please consider helping me bring books that reflect the experiences of my students to the classroom.  Below you will find a list of novels we will hopefully be reading this year.  

1. Fire in the Streets by Kekla Magoon
2. A Little Piece of Ground by Elizabeth Laird
3. Joseph’s Grace by Shelia P. Moses
4. The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano by Sonia Manzano
5. If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric Gansworth
6. Miracle’s Boys by Jaqueline Woodson

Thank you so much for taking the time to read through this, and I hope you will consider contributing to my future students and our classroom.   Your donations will have a huge impact on the success of my students, and you can expect a beautiful thank you letter with pictures of our classroom in return! :) 

Wishing you the Best, 
Ashley aka Ms. Harrington :) 

Sources:
Photo Credit: Christopher Myers
Cooperative Children’s Book Center Study:
http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/books/pcstats.asp
NYTs Article by Walter Dean Myers: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/opinion/sunday/where-are-the-people-of-color-in-childrens-books.html?_r=1

Organizer

Ashley Nicole
Organizer
Cincinnati, OH

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