(From a Student!) Diverse Book Project

[surabhik]

Hello everyone!
My name is Surabhi Khanna, and I am a senior in high school in California. I have had a club at school for the past two years called Coloring Books, where we read short stories written by people of color to make up for the lack of diverse literature being taught in my school. I have always been interested in diversifying the school curriculum, and recently, I have convinced a teacher to teach “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros at my school, as the book is approved in the our district's supplemental literature list. I am also working with another teacher from a private school to create a curriculum for Cisneros’ novel that he will teach to his eighth grade class in the fall. However, I want to make this even bigger, and try my best to make a difference in multiple schools. But, I need help to do that, specifically finding English teachers who will be able to teach this book. Of course, I know that the biggest issue is creating a new unit for teaching a new book, but I am fully prepared to help teachers as much as possible to come up with a curriculum to teach House on Mango Street. (Or, if there is another book by another author of color that you have in mind, I would love to chat about it and help you make a curriculum/buy the books! I just have suggested House on Mango Street, as I am already developing curriculum for it). And even if it is not possible to do this year, I would love to help you make a curriculum to teach in future years! Additionally, I am fundraising and using money from my job to purchase copies of these books to donate to school libraries, so acquiring copies is not an issue. Even if you may not be located in California, I can ship these books to you, or buy them through a website and have them shipped directly to your location. I am an extremely hardworking student, and I will do anything and everything I possibly can to help you make this a reality. If you are interested, please private message me on this site or interact with this topic, and we can exchange emails separately and discuss this further! Thank you so much for reading, and have a nice day. I hope to hear from you soon!