ALAMOSA– Capping the school year with a unit on homelessness, sophomore students in an English 10 class at Alamosa High School decided to witness it first-hand by volunteering with La Puente homeless shelter.

Teacher Louella Lenberg said students opened the unit by reading the book The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, a memoir about her life. The students researched homelessness and did several activities in class. They also compared and contrasted the book to the movie which came out about two years ago.

Students volunteered in the kitchen at La Puente as well as in community gardens at the elementary schools and with the PALS program on Wednesday.

The Glass Castle was on The New York Times bestseller list for more than seven years. According to Amazon, the book “is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant.

“The Walls children learned to take care of themselves,” the Amazon review continued. “They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.”

The motion picture of the same title starred Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts.