Inner City PITR Success

I wanted to share this amazing experience told to me by a teacher in Newark, NJ. She had been teaching The Skin I'm In to her sixth graders, many of whom were very well able to relate to Maleeka's tale of peer discrimination and her uphill battle for acceptance. Through the various activities they engaged in as they read, students began to show clear evidence that they were connecting what was happening in the book to their own lives by sharing their own personal experiences, many of which were eerily similar to those of Maleeka's.

Students told tales of being picked on by other kids for a variety of reasons, including because of racial or ethnic differences, but also because of their weight, the clothes they wore, being too smart, or not smart enough, or any of a whole host of other, equally significant reasons. Some even told of being the "bully" themselves, confessing their habit of picking on other kids just because they could. The result of these confessions was, of course, a first for this otherwise typical inner-city classroom--an openness developed where students felt free to be who they were, to express themselves in any way they felt comfortable. Continuing to make connections between the book and their own lives, the self-proclaimed "bullies" were now looked upon with sympathy, the reason for their bullying ways now clearly understood as being a direct result of their low self esteem.

In addition, there were the usual reports of students not wanting to put the book down when they reached the end of a "chunk" or chapter, of rampant discipline problems becoming a thing of the past as students finally get to read a book about people who are just like them, and of students becoming so engaged while reading along with the Recorded Books audiobook that they completely lose all track of time and are stunned back to reality by the bell signalling the end of the period.