Show Up for Young Readers with Diverse Texts in Classroom Libraries

Recently, I got the privilege of talking to a group of educators in Kalamazoo, MI about diverse texts in classroom libraries. The district had worked at providing small libraries of 25-50 books to elementary teachers, and the goal was to move this initiative to middle schools. I am always a fan of giving books to teachers; it possibly is the best resource we can give all of our classrooms. However, the training I was asked to give was intended to be more than what to do with these books, it was more so how to grow your own library and then show up for reading with your students. Books are simply materials or objects if we don’t show students how to use them. Thus, the term “show up” surfaced in a lot of my preparatory work for this training. Tricia Ebarvia in her blog post, “How do we show up?” cites a moment of epiphany when a fellow teacher stated: “Your racial consciousness determines how you show up” -Tony Hudson, an Equity Transformational Specialist from the Pacific Education Group (PEG). In addition to our racial consciousness and discussing the inclusion of voices, how does our consciousness as a reader determine how we present ourselves to students?

The training’s theme was really focusing on the idea of the teacher as a reader. Equipped with the mindset that the teachers in the room may or may not identify as readers themselves and they may or may not have a classroom library, I began to form my goals for the training based on what they do have: a starter set of books, experiences in the classroom that have shaped them as educators and people, and a passion for children and learning evident in their decision to be in the field of education. While naysayers might say that some teachers are not able or willing to change their mindsets, it is with a strong conviction that I know teachers can do better and be better for the students in their classroom that struggle with reading. We all want to help kids, we just need different avenues of the “how.” This post outlines the three objectives covered within training on diverse texts in classroom libraries. It is a calling to assess the materials in our own classrooms, build those materials to create diverse texts #bookflood, and reminders on how we “show up” for reading every single day.