James Cryan, a teacher at Rishel Middle School in Denver, Colorado, scored his 15 minutes of fame recently when he and his classroom were featured on Denver’s Channel 9 News. Even better than his news broadcast fame, however, is the collection of literature that he is scoring through his project at DonorsChoose.org.
James teaches literacy in a school where a vast majority of the students are acquiring English as their second language. He found that the classroom library he inherited when he started teaching through Teach for America two years ago didn’t include literature that was meaningful to his students and their life experiences. They characterized the stories as “boring,” and “not cool.” Thus, he set about to change that situation by posting his request on DonorsChoose.org. When education reporter Nelson Garcia got wind of Mr. Cryan’s request, he decided to feature James on the evening news! You can view the DonorsChoose.org segment here.
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