A Plea

Dear Friends, Family, and Readers,

As you know, I started teaching first grade at Brooks Elementary School in Duncan, Mississippi on Monday, August 8th, after five weeks of intensive training in Houston and one week of in-service at the school. Today I am writing to ask for your help in getting supplies for my students.

I have twenty-three students (whom I call my “star learners”) who range in reading ability from not knowing their letters all the way to reading on an early second-grade level. Latisha (all names have been changed) is one of my most advanced students. She is excited about learning and she asks to borrow books so that she can read at home, where she doesn’t have any books. I have four students who are repeating first grade. All of them are pulled out for little bits of time by the special ed teacher, but one of them is right where he should be for the beginning of first grade and I’m going to work hard to keep him in my class as much as possible. Rayquotez and Jimbo are two with actual learning disabilities. They are very far behind. They know most of the names of the letters, but none of the sounds that they make. Melvin, the fourth, is most likely neither developmentally delayed nor learning disabled. He has a serious speech impediment, and he has been allowed to fall behind and misbehave because people assume that his intelligence corresponds to his garbled language.

My students like high-fives and anything with rhythm. They like doing pages in their math workbooks. They love the book “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” and the book “Pee-Ew Bertie, Is That You?” They do not like to sit still. They do like to know that I think they are smart and doing well, but they also love to tattle. Waltisha raises her hand and pumps it in the air, squeaking to try and get my attention because she knows she’s not supposed to call out or say, “Ms. Hayes, Ms. Hayes.” When I call on her, she repeats whatever it is I just said in a superior tone, turning her head to face the class. Dominick scrunches up his face when I ask him to do anything. He thinks he is tough, but on the third day of school he wet himself. We worked hard to keep it from the class, and I think that we succeeded.

Some of my students come from living situations that are very far from ideal. Many live in single-parent households with lots of siblings, others live with grandparents or aunts, and some are probably abused. Many have little or no reading material at home and the adults in their households don’t have time to read with them in the evenings. Kantiqua falls asleep regularly in class. When I called her home they told me they tried to have her in bed on time by ten o’clock every night. She is six years old! She needs more than eight hours of sleep! Perla cries in class without provocation, but she can’t tell me what’s wrong. Kyndal keeps a picture of her deceased father in his coffin in her desk and steals looks at him whenever she is allowed to open the desk.

Most of my students come from the town of Shelby, population 2,600. The other five or six come from Duncan, Alligator, or Round Lake, tiny communities of no more than 500 people each. North Bolivar County is in the middle of the Mississippi Delta, which is one of the poorest areas in the country. Over 50% of households in Shelby are below the poverty line, and about 75% of households with school age children are below the poverty line. Median household income is $14,000 (compared to $96,000 in Topsfield).

I work at Brooks Elementary School, which is the K-3 elementary school for the North Bolivar School District. It is a very poor district. All of the students are given free breakfast and lunch. My school is also a Level-1 priority school (low-achieving), which means that the state will be sending people to sit in on classrooms and we will have lots of extra paperwork. Unfortunately, it does not mean any more money. I will receive $200 for classroom supplies for the whole year from the school district. That money needs to cover any paper, pencils, books, organizing supplies, teaching resources, and manipulatives that I want to get for my students to use. I’ve already spent more than that just to start up the classroom (I got some teaching books, a meeting rug, sentence strips, a calendar board, etc.)

I’m writing to ask for your help and for the help of your family and friends. I need things for my classroom. My biggest desire is for books for my students to read. I have a very small classroom library and the school library only has a few bookshelves of books. If you have any children’s books you don’t need, please send them to me! I also need stickers, paper, pencils, paperclips, markers, tape, etc. I need manipulatives such as beans, pattern blocks, fake money, clocks, and puzzles (things for the students to touch/feel/count). My district does not have art or music, so I would love to include artistic and musical activities in class – any paint, easels, brushes, crayons, colored pencils, big paper, colored paper, drums, tambourines, recorders, kazoos, tape players/recorders, blank tapes, children’s music tapes, or other art/music supplies you have to spare would be wonderful. I have an Amazon Wishlist you could check out, too. (Click on the link, or go to Amazon.com, go to wish lists, and search for Jessica Hayes in Clarksdale, Mississippi.) Everything on it will make my classroom a better place for my “star learners.” It includes things such as teaching books, read-aloud books, computer games (I do have four semi-working computers because of a technology grant), LeapPads and LeapPad books (kids can touch the words and the LeapPad says what they say, which is great for beginning readers without people to read to them at home), mini whiteboards (to save paper and check for understanding), and tennis balls (to put on the bottoms of my footless chairs that screech across the floors).

Any help that you could give me in educating my twenty-three talented, intelligent, beautiful, needy, affectionate, multi-leveled students would be appreciated so much. Especially books – my classroom library is small and the books I do have are falling apart. If you have upper-level books you would like to donate, I can give them to my roommate, who is teaching fifth grade English, or to other TFA teachers in other grades. If you e-mail me, I will send you my address (I don't want to post it on the web).

Thank you so much for your help!

Jessica