Using Inclusion Lit to Promote Positive Attitudes toward Disabilities. What's Happening in YA Literature? Tricia Ebarvia: How Inclusive Is Your Literacy Classroom Really? In 1981, my family moved eighteen miles from northeast Philadelphia to the suburbs. Because I had just turned five, my parents decided we needed to move into a better school district. This meant moving from a predominantly black neighborhood to a predominantly white one. I didn’t know it then, but it would be my first lesson in how segregation works. My parents emigrated from the Philippines in the 1970s.
They were part of a professional class that came to the United States in a wave of Asian immigration after the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. Like many immigrants, they came for a better life, for themselves and for their families. And so when they could afford to move to a better school district for my brother and me, they did. Throughout elementary and middle school, my brother and I were among only a handful of students of color—and, if my memory is correct, we were two of only three Asian Americans in the building, in our classes, on the playground.
Mirrors Windows and Sliding Glass Doors. SLJ Diversity Course: Keynote Lecture by KT Horning. LGBTQ Best Practices: Classroom Culture and Curriculum. Reading Diversity A Tool For Selecting Diverse Texts. Reading Diversity Lite Teaching Tolerance. Reading Diversity: Tools for Selecting Diverse Texts. Rethinking How We Choose Books in School — Teaching While White.
By Jenna Chandler-Ward Several middle school and high school English departments have approached Teaching While White for help in diversifying the racial makeup of the authors of the books they teach. All of the teachers can articulate why they should have a more diverse group of books: ”We want to provide windows and mirrors for all of our students.” “We want to build empathy.” “We want to prepare our students for a diverse world.” All of this is true, and yet, when it comes to taking old classics out of curriculum in favor of including a diversity of voices, I have seen, time and time again, the resistance to authors of color.
They cite these books as either inappropriate in terms of content or literarily uninteresting. Here is the problem. I have watched English teachers fiercely defend the notion that there is, objectively, such a thing as complex sentence structure, solidly constructed narrative, and beauty of language — and either a book has it or it does not. Classroom Library Questionnaire FINAL. Untitled. Untitled. Inclusive Literacy Infographic EBARVIA. Untitled. Twitter. #ownvoices - Twitter Search / Twitter. Lee & Low Books (@LEEandLOW) | Twitter. Twitter. Angie Thomas (@angiecthomas) / Twitter. Twitter. Matt de la Pena (@mattdelapena) Own Voices Books. Choices 2020 reading lists. #IndigenousReads by Indigenous Writers: A Children’s Reading List. Only 1% of the children’s books published in the U.S. in 2016 featured Indigenous characters, and even fewer (1/4 of the 1% = 8 books total) were written by Indigenous authors. “Most of what kids see in books today are best sellers & classics that stereotype & misrepresent Native people in history.
There’s a lot of bias in them. The books that I recommend are ones that can counter that bias in several ways. One, they’re not stereotypical. Two, most of them are set in the present day, which is important in countering what we see in a lot of children’s & young adult literature, which says that we vanished, we didn’t make it to the present day, and of course we did.” Indigenous people are very much a part of today’s society. You Hold Me Up by Monique Gray Smith, illustrated by Danielle Daniel: This vibrant picture book encourages children to show love and support for each other and to consider each other’s well-being in their everyday actions. When We Were Alone by David A. 27 Middle Grade and YA Latinx Titles for National Hispanic Heritage Month and Beyond.
25 LGBTQAI+ Titles for Pride Month—and Onward.