Developing Inclusive Learners and Citizens (AASL) To aid school librarians in nurturing inclusive learning communities, AASL tasked a 2019 ALA Emerging Leaders team with developing a guide of reflection activities and resources based on the Include Shared Foundation in the National School Library Standards. The Developing Inclusive Learners and Citizens Activity Guide uses scenarios, activities, and resources to help learners and school librarians alike seek balanced perspectives, global learning, empathy, tolerance, and equity to support inclusive environments within and beyond the four walls of the school library. An infographic and applied framework further support application of these materials in professional development and instructional settings. This guide is a great example to any practitioner of how the AASL Standards can be used as a lens to address ANY school library issue!
Classroom Library Assessment: How Culturally Responsive is Your Library? Teachers, let’s talk about a popular topic across education blogs and Pinterest: the classroom library. A quick search on the Internet results in numerous tips, tricks, and ideas for different ways to configure and organize your classroom library. It’s an intensive and thoughtful process that involves thinking about genre, reading levels, interest levels, grade-level content, categories, and themes. Unfortunately, we often see classroom libraries that group diverse books into categories that isolate or limit their use. Simply having a book bin labeled “cultures from around the world” or “black history month books” does not mean your library is culturally responsive. We need to think critically about how these books reflect the diversity of our students, their backgrounds, and the communities in which we live while exposing them to new ideas and concepts.
Why Stop at Windows and Mirrors?: Children’s Book Prisms It has been twenty-nine years since Rudine Sims Bishop’s seminal essay “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors” was published. It has been twenty-nine years since Rudine Sims Bishop’s seminal essay “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors” was published. Speaking to the lack of children’s books with African American characters and themes, the essay called for books to act as windows and mirrors that would allow all children to see themselves and the experiences of others in what they read. At the time, I was mostly home with my toddler son, collecting children’s books and feeling inspired to write.
National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled Apply for the Service! NLS is a free braille and talking book library service for people with temporary or permanent low vision, blindness, or a physical disability that prevents them from reading or holding the printed page. Through a national network of cooperating libraries, NLS offers books the way you want them: in braille or audio, mailed to your door for free or instantly downloadable. NLS works to ensure that all may read by providing eligible patrons access to reading material regardless of age, economic circumstances, or technical expertise.
Celebrate Juneteenth with books for young people by Indiana authors - Indiana State LibraryIndiana State Library Juneteenth, which takes place on June 19 annually, celebrates the implementation of the Emancipation Proclamation across the United States. While all enslaved people in the Confederate States were declared to be legally free on January 1, 1863, in practice many slaves in western states were not free until years later. On June 19, 1865, enslaved African Americans in Texas were finally made free by executive decree. Juneteenth has been celebrated for over 150 years. Celebrate this Juneteenth by reading the Emancipation Proclamation available through the National Archives or by learning more about this holiday through the National Museum of African American History. Honor African Americans by reading books by African American authors.
There is no diverse book — ImagineLit If you have ever attended any session where I have presented and the topic of diversity has come up, you know I am quick to tell attendees that I do not give out diverse book lists. Here is my reason why: there are no diverse texts. It is in the transaction (Rosenblatt, 1986) between the reader and the text that a text’s diversity is realized. The way we have framed the word diversity creates a binary—diverse or non-diverse. Using the word diverse to describe texts also creates a default position, because one must ask diverse for whom or diverse from what?
The problem with that equity vs. equality graphic you’re using – Cultural Organizing [NOTE: November 1, 2016. This post has been updated based on the new things I’ve learned about these images since posting the original article.] I was doing some work for a colleague at the Family Leadership Design Collaborative, and she gave me a challenge: redesign the “equity vs. equality” graphic that’s been circulating on the web. You’ve probably come across a version of this graphic yourself. Black Joy Booklist for Children and Young Adults Written by Alia Jones, Senior Library Services Assistant, Downtown Main Library Hey Black Child Do you know who you are Who you really are Do you know you can be What you want to be If you try to be What you can be -- “Hey Black Child” by Useni Eugene Perkins In the midst of a global pandemic, Black people are experiencing fatigue, stress, grief, and anger at more loss of Black life. Coronavirus is hitting Black, Brown, and Native communities at devastating rates while Black and non-Black allies are protesting to remind the world that Black. Lives. Matter.
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America In The Color of Law (published by Liveright in May 2017), Richard Rothstein argues with exacting precision and fascinating insight how segregation in America—the incessant kind that continues to dog our major cities and has contributed to so much recent social strife—is the byproduct of explicit government policies at the local, state, and federal levels. The Color of Law was designated one of ten finalists on the National Book Awards’ long list for the best nonfiction book of 2017. Highlighted media Tips for Teachers: Developing Instructional Materials about American Indians Editors Note: This post was created as a one-page document that would fit into a single page. It is also available as a pdf. If you have trouble opening or downloading the pdf, write to us directly (see the "Contact" tab for Debbie's email address). A one-pager was hard to do! We wanted to add resources for each of the ten points.
2020 Summer Reading List 2020 Summer Reading List PDF Are you looking for a curated summer reading list that celebrates diversity, inclusivity and intersecting identities? The We Are Kid Lit Collective selects books by and about IPOC (Indigenous and People of Color), with attention to their intersecting. Chosen books are thoroughly selected, discussed, and vetted by two or more members. 2020 We Are Kid Lit Collective members: Tad Andracki, Edith Campbell, Laura M.
Recommending Diverse Voices Library workers know there’s no shortage of diversity among the books and materials on the market—but presenters at “Suggesting Own Voices to All Readers: EDI and RA Service,” a June 25 session at ALA Virtual, addressed the barriers that separate diverse books from potential readers. “Windows, mirrors, and doors are still important and will always be important, but it’s time to take the next step and recognize that books written by diverse authors, featuring diverse characters, are for anyone, for everyone, all the time,” said Robin Bradford, collection development librarian at Pierce County (Wash.) Library System, noting the growing availability of diverse materials through digital platforms. Bradford offered strategies and resources for librarians approaching collection development through an equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) lens, urging librarians to read widely across genres and consult review journals.