upgrade my classroom

As many of you know, I teach 9th and 12 grades at an under-resourced neighborhood high school in Philadelphia. My school, built in 1939, lacks books and technology, giving my students little chance to develop the academic and technological skills they need. In my second year, I teach 4 periods of 9th grade math a day, plus a senior English class another teacher and I designed to prepare our students for college. We are teaching Beowulf, which is the first text in the senior curriculum, but our students do not have their own books: they cannot read at home, write notes and definitions in the margins, or underline particularly important parts, all of which are critical for college preparedness and basic understanding of such a difficult text.

This can change - not just in the long term, but right now. I set up a donations page through the Amazon Honor System: please consider donating $5 to $20 if you can. I also set up a blog to keep people posted on the projects I'll be doing with the money: the first is to buy individual paperback copies of Beowulf for my seniors (less than $200). You can read about it at laurelsclassroom.blogspot.com, where I'll also be posting pictures.