Demographics
I am a 9th-11th grade International Baccalaureate (IB) English teacher at Thomas Jefferson High School, which is located in Richmond, Virginia. Our school consists of about 700 students in which roughly 63.8% are Black, 22.4% are White, and 9.2% are Hispanic. The majority (80%) of students at our school come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. With the majority of my students being Black, I wanted to pick a text that displayed a strong Black female protagonist, one that exemplifies power and agency throughout the course of the text. Many curriculum selected texts in today’s world present characters of color mostly experiencing trauma and endless struggle. However, with the demographics of my school, I thought it would be empowering for my students to see a protagonist of color be a representation of not just adversity, but resilience.
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