Our classroom library, full of stories waiting to be read. "The mind of an adult begins in the imagination of a child. Today has been a day of reflection for me, thinking back to the events of September 11 fifteen years ago. While moments from this day are etched in my mind with startling clarity, my students often characterize stories they read about 9/11 as historical fiction, as the attacks happened years before their birth. Today has me thinking about stories that need telling, and as Newbery Medal-winning author Kwame Alexander says in the quotation above, the importance of stories that serve as literary mirrors as well as windows to see and connect to the great big world. I was lucky enough to hear Kwame Alexander share this message this past summer at the International Literacy Association Annual Conference in Boston. He and educational activist Adora Svitak delivered the keynote address, which focused on the power of literature in shaping children's world views. In her talk, titled Literature as a Language of Empathy: How Literacy Can Transform our Souls and Societies, Svitak spoke about the importance of exposing children to a wide range of literature to grow empathy for those with whom we may not have much in common. Speaking about the ramifications of the lack of diversity in children's literature, she shared that as a young Chinese American reader, she learned to develop lots of empathy for white boys who lost their dogs, but never saw characters like herself in books. She went on to say, "If the stories we encounter teach us the lesson that only some people get to be represented, that only some people get to be empathized with, then we set ourselves up for a society that accepts too easily the trampling of other peoples' rights. And we accept the trampling of their rights because we can just pass it off and say, 'Well, that just happens to other people.' Other people, not because they have any less claim to empathy or humanity, but because we learned to see them as other from the gaps in bookshelves where their stories did not appear. This lesson is painfully relevant to our nation right now." My goal for the year is to share lots of different stories with my students, and in doing so, to try and cultivate a culture of empathy and kindness within our classroom that will extend into the community beyond. In this spirit, my first book talk for the year will be Towers Falling by Jewell Parker Rhodes. This is the story of Dèja, a homeless fifth grader from present day Brooklyn who does not know about the attack on the Twin Towers until she studies it in school. She learns that her father worked the security desk in the North Tower on September 11, and that the terrorist attack has shaped her family's story in ways that she is just beginning to understand. I will share a book talk each day this week to expose readers to books they may not find on their own, and I will continue to do this frequently throughout the year. Through teacher, peer, and librarian recommendations, I hope to keep good books and a diverse array of protagonists' stories in readers' hands all year long. I want students to leave fifth grade having read not only books that serve as literary mirrors (like those that tell the stories of white boys who lose their dogs), but stories that serve as windows, too. For more on the subjects of this post, check out the embedded links. For more books on September 11, read To Remember 9/11, Read a Book.
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April 2017
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