The students in our classroom are very diverse. The population is a mixture of American Indian, African American, Caucasian, and some Hispanic. The county is the largest and poorest, with over 90% receiving some type of aid. Our students cannot afford basic school supplies and sometimes they cannot go on field trips because they cannot afford it. Additional funding would allow me to purchase much needed school supplies for my students and possibly arrange funding for field trips that would greatly impact their academic learning. With the new Common Core State Standards, our students are already starting behind. Research and writing skills are strongly stressed and the materials they have available for research are in vast need of updating.

My students are from a rural part of Robeson County. This county has a very high unemployment rate. My students are predominately Native American. Because of the rural location of the school and the homes of the students, most of the students only have access to computers and other educational technology while at school. I try to make my classroom very technology friendly so my students can see a cool use for the reading skills that I teach. Recently we began working on researching authors and making powerpoint presentations. I found that this was a great way to tie in some of their favorite fiction novels and authors with the nonfiction reading that goes along with researching and paraphrasing information. Most of my students also have very limited access to books other than the books in the school library. I would like to expand my classroom library and possibly be able to give some books to my children so that they could have their own books at home; sometimes ownership makes things