Digital Literacy and ELLs

 While not directly related to my Google Alerts for Diverse Children's Literature and Diverse Characters in Children's Literature, this week's topic of "Technology, Language Learning, and Literacy" is a very relevant and important topic related to my profession as a school librarian. As a I reflect on the evolution of the school library program in my school district I still believe our district was foolish in eliminating the program in 2013 due to budget cuts, which is when technology became more integrated into the educational environment. In subsequent years we talked about "Libraries of the Future" and "21st Century Skills for Learning," all the while removing the heart of where much of those literacies were taught, practiced, and applied. 

In reading the article "Empowering English Language Learners through Digital Literacies: Research, Complexities, and Implications" by Chang Yuan, Lili Wang and Jessica Eagle, I feel that there is even more evidence for a comprehensive digital literacy program. The article identifies a framework developed by American scholars Spires and Bartlett (2012) that identifies three main categories of cognitive and social processes association with digital literacies. They are locating and consuming digital content, creating digital content, and communicating digital content. Even though this article is aimed at improving English language acquisition for non-native speakers, I believe it offers solid support for the importance of digital literacy for all students. 

In this 21st century technologically-driven global society, digital literacy has become essential for individuals to be successful in living, learning and working. Engaging our students, especially ELLs, in activities designed to utilize critical thinking, collaboration, and creating as a means to communicate helps to build these digital competencies in an authentic, meaningful, and applicable way. Present throughout our American Association of School Librarians (AASL) Framework for Learners and our newly adopted K-4 Library Curriculum are the words create, communicate, collaborate, and critically think (also known as the 4Cs for 21st Century Learning). 

Creating, communicating, and evaluating digital content are not only digital literacy tools that benefit ELLs. These concepts and skills benefit our students as a whole. 

Yuan, C., Wang, L., & Eagle, J. (2019). Empowering English language learners through digital literacies: 

Research, complexities, and implications. Media and Communication, 7(2), 128-136.

Diverse Classroom Libraries and Digital Storytelling

This week the International Literacy Association blog published piece titled "The Importance of a Diverse Classroom Library" by Jerie Blintt.  In this blog post the author asserts, "Students seeing themselves in the stories they read to foster a sense of belonging, recognition, and most of all, validation, is crucial- representation matters." However, in reflecting upon my previous posts and readings, it is evident that diverse materials are lacking in the publishing world. Given this week's look into Digital Storytelling, I remembered activities I completed as a 2nd grade teacher. Even though my students had hundreds of great books to read in our classroom library, they LOVED reading stories written by their classmates. Each week in our Work on Writing center, I placed a new personal narrative story sheet for students to write. When I began to curate them into a binder, students read the writing of their peers over and over again. Using Digital Storytelling strategies coupled with access to 1:1 iPads my students now have, students have the opportunity to build diverse classroom libraries through their own stories. Empowering our students to use their voice to share their experiences with each other can foster the sense of belonging, recognition, and validation that Jerie Blintt identifies as crucial. By integrating Digital Storytelling into our writing experiences, students language development no longer needs to hamper their narrative. Using tools such as images, media, music, and voice recording gives students the opportunity to creatively share their story. I'm a big proponent of the idea that if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. No matter how much we as teachers and librarians lament the lack of diversity in children's literature, no one is really stepping up to do anything about it. However, we as educators can use digital storytelling to empower our students to tell their own story in a way that transcends their proficiency in L2 acquisition. 

Changing the Narrative: Alternatives to "Classics"

 This week my Google Alerts set for diverse children's literature and diverse characters in children's literature brought back a multitude of results that I found particularly interesting! I spent most of my week really pondering one article titled "Authors hope 2020 turns the page in push for diverse children's books," republished by the Port Charlotte (FL) Sun on October 9, 2020. Written by Nedra Rhone of The Atlanta-Constitution Journal, the article really highlighted that despite 50 years of advocacy for representing characters, themes and stories featuring all races and cultures publishers are starting to finally put their money where their mouth is. 

The piece of the article that not only struck me as a reader, but as a teacher, was the concept of replacing traditional "classics" with new, diverse titles to teach the same topics and themes. The author mentions one of my all-time favorite books To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. This text is often used in high school English classes to examine racial tension and inequities in the south during the 1930s. Librarian and advocate Cicely Lewis (Meadowcreek High School) has "challenged teachers to find alternatives to classic novels that could teach kids the same lessons," recommending Angie Thomas' The Hate U Give as a contemporary alternative. 

As a librarian I often read stories to my students that I like or that I remember from my formative years. After reading this article and reflecting on my desire to build a more inclusive and diverse collection I realized that building the collection is only half the battle to truly transforming the narrative and perspective my school libraries provide. I am challenging myself to find diverse alternatives to the books I normally choose to read. I recognize that there might not be a book out there for every experience, but hope that by being cognizant of including alternatives I may be able to share a wide range of authors, illustrators, and characters to represent all of my students. 

https://www.yoursun.com/charlotte/features/authors-hope-2020-turns-the-page-in-push-for-diverse-childrens-books/article_c6ecaa28-c051-535c-97b9-c0bfdc605e0e.html

Where are the diverse characters???

 As the school librarian for two elementary schools serving a total of 800+ students, I wanted to focus my efforts on creating a more diverse, inclusive reading atmosphere through collection development. In light of today's social, racial, and cultural relations in our country, representing all students in literature and informational text is something that is very important to me. I once read somewhere something to the effect that students want to read about people like themselves. In 2018, the Cooperative Children's Book Center, School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison released information they compiled in regards to representation of characters in children's literature. In that infographic you can see that 50% of books depict white characters, 27% feature animals, and the remaining 23% percent represents minority characters. I found that shocking considering the times we live in. 

Over the last two years I concentrated on adding strong, female characters and informational texts about women who "broke the mold" to my collections. As a woman and mom of three girls, I definitely saw a lack of representation in that area. Now that I have (and continue to) address that need, it't time to shift my focus on ensuring the collection represents all of my students. 

Creating Google alerts didn't proved beneficial in this first week. Alerts focusing on diverse characters in children's books, diverse children's literature, and ESL blogging yielded just 9 results. While an important topic, it's not really a newsworthy topic. So I am not surprised I didn't get a whole lot of new information. So I turned to my Facebook librarian groups to see what they were talking about. As much as I love browsing Pinterest and the internet for teaching ideas, connecting with like-minded professionals through social media has created for me a well-rounded cohort of librarians from all over the world. In one such post I was reminded of Capstone's Reading is for Everyone campaign. (https://www.capstonepub.com/sites/reading_is_for_everyone/about.html)

Shannon McClintock Miller (https://vanmeterlibraryvoice.blogspot.com/2020/03/reading-is-for-everyone-for-read-across.html) features Reading is for Everyone in this blog post. 

I first began working with a Capstone rep in the summer of 2019 and after spending some more time on their Reading is for Everyone site, I can't wait to order some more books from them.  Over the last year I added some great characters like Buzz Beaker, Molly Mac, Yasmin, and Pedro to our collection, representing the African/African-American, Asian, Muslim, and Latino races. I decided to investigate some more of their characters and am exciting to explore them with my reps in the coming weeks as I prepare my orders for this year!