Approaching Diversity Through Literature

 Dr. Bob Seney

Professor Emeritus/Gifted Studies

Mississippi University for Women

rwseney@muw.edu

There are many ways to enlarge your child’s world.  Love of books is best of all.

Jacqueline Kennedy

We must accept that diversity in our classrooms is no longer the exception but the norm.  This leads us to several questions: How do we build empathy and understanding of our diverse world in all of its elements of diversity?  How do we help our learners walk in someone else’s shoes? How do we help our learners learn the cultures of their classmates who are not like them?   These are only three of the questions that we must address if we are to seriously consider the diversity in our schools, in our cities, in our nation, and in our world.  This is especially important for our gifted learners because of heighten sensitivities. Gifted individuals genuinely feel the inequities and injustices that often exist because of a lack of understanding of diversity.  

One approach to responding to this need is through literature.  Books provides a safe and highly appropriate vehicle for exploring diversity in all of its forms.   By using a strength of most gifted learners, reading, we can bring the world with all its diversity into the classroom through literature.  Through books, we can address the issues of diversity in all its forms.

In responding to this need, teachers have asked me “Just how do we go about addressing diversity and what are some guidelines in selecting appropriate materials and literature.”  This is my response. In my opinion, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) has taken the lead in this area. A visit to their website is most helpful [https://www.naeyc.org].  NAEYC’s Four Goals of Anti-Bias Education provide an excellent starting place:

Goal 1: Each child will demonstrate self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities.

Goal 2: Each child will express comfort and joy with human diversity; accurate language for human differences, and deep, caring human connection.

Goal 3: Each child will increasingly recognize unfairness, have language to describe unfairness, and understand that unfairness hurts.

Goal 4: Each child will demonstrate empowerment and the skills to act, with others or alone, against prejudice and /or discriminatory actions.

National Association for the Education of Young Children

These Goals provided the basis in creating my Guidelines for Selecting Appropriate Literature and Materials That Address Diversity:

1. First, ask yourself: Can all children in my classroom find themselves in my classroom book collection?  Do the books support every child’s family, race identity, cultural identity, home language, etc.?

   1. Avoid tokenizing, stereotyping and other tourist curricula errors.

   2. Use criteria in selecting any good literature:

      1. Interesting stories

      2. A delightful use of language and art

      3. Age appropriate

      4. For Gifted Readers: appropriate challenge.

   3. Points in selecting literature addressing diversity, look for:

      1. Books that reflect accurately all the children and staff in your program;

      2. Books that reflect a range of economic groups performing all types of work: working class, professionals, work in the home, and work outside of the home;

      3. Books that reflect children and adults from various racial and ethnic identity groups in your community;

      4. Books that reflect people with disabilities;

      5. Books that reflect diverse family structures;

      6. Books that reflect diversity of gender roles, racial and cultural back grounds, and special needs;

      7. Books that present people, past and present, who have made a difference in social justice and building acceptance of diversity;

      8. Books that are written by authors of the same race/cultural identity, etc. as the subject of the book.

2. Make sure you have a variety of books that depict each area of diversity. I am creating Lists of books that address diversity.  They are available by emailing me. I would be especially interested in any books that you have found helpful in your classroom.  Again, email me.

In addressing diversity, we must have some serious discussions and one important area that each teacher must address is his/her own biases to insure equitable treatment and understanding of ALL students.  We now acknowledge that diversity includes a broad arrange of factors and dimensions: race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, other ideologies, and family make-up.  Our classroom libraries must address all of these areas of diversity. We owe it to our students.

References

Alex.TheStoryGuy (April 15, 2017).  Promoting diversity & equity through children’s literature.  [Web log comment]. Retrieved from https://thestoriesguy.com.

Daniels, S. & M. Piechowski (Eds.) (2009).  Living with intensity. Scottsdale, AZ: Great Potential Press.

Derman-Sparks, L. & J. O Edwards (2010).  Anti-Bias education for young children and ourselves. Washington D.C.: NAEYC.

Edwards, S. (2018).  Ten tips for selecting multicultural books for reading instruction. Retrieved from http://www.k12reader.com/ten-tips-for-selecting-multicultural-books-for-reading-instruction/.

Suvansri, B. (2017). Diverse literature helps students discover social justice.  Retrieved from https://www.middleweb.com/36168/diverse-books-help-kids-discover.

University of Oregon Diversity Committee (2017) University of Oregon’s definition of diversity.  Retrieved from https://inclusion.uoregon.edu/mcc.