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An NPR podcast addressing the tough issues of race in America.

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What's CODE SWITCH? It's the fearless conversations about race that you've been waiting for. Hosted by journalists of color, our podcast tackles the subject of race with empathy and humor. We explore how race affects every part of society - from politics and pop culture to history, food and everything in between.

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Have questions? Want to provide feedback? 

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Have questions? Want to provide feedback? 

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Please reach out to me!
Delandrus Seales
Teaching and Learning Librarian
University of North Carolina at Wilmington

Email: dsealesinthelibrary@gmail.com

Twitter: @dseales86

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If you want to work in a diverse and inclusive setting, be on the lookout for companies that have affinity groups - employee resource groups for workers of shared interests, backgrounds, or demographics.

Affinity groups help foster deeper connections in the workplace to boost friendships, collaboration, and productivity.

Creating these communities is also a worthwhile investment for employers, as they can improve employee retention and help address discrimination concerns.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Want to join a company with a diverse workplace? Focus your job search on employers that have affinity groups. In a nutshell, an affinity group - also called an employee resource group (ERG) - is a group of employees with similar backgrounds, interests, or demographic factors such as gender or ethnicity. Affinity groups can take many forms, such as women's leadership groups, religious groups, LGBTQ groups, or caregiver groups.

Often, employers use affinity groups to help create a diverse and inclusive workplace. The 2020 Monster State of the Candidate survey found that half (52%) of job candidates say diversity, equality, and inclusion in the workplace is "very important" to them. Millennials (57%) are more likely to say diversity, equity, and inclusion is "very important," compared to Gen X (47%) and baby boomers (49%).

Many companies support these employee resource groups because of how much they contribute to the overall company culture. According to a 2017 study by Old Dominion University, 66 of the Fortune 100 firms mentioned affinity groups on their websites. Xerox is known for pioneering the first in 1970.

Check out some of the main benefits of having affinity groups at work.

They create synergy

By definition, affinity groups enable employees to come together and build connections based on shared characteristics or interests. This bolsters communication and collaboration, which makes workers more effective and increases their productivity.

They improve employee retention

Studies show that affinity groups can improve retention efforts, reducing turnover costs. Indeed, the average replacement cost of a worker is about $15,000, according to the Work Institute's 2019 Retention Report. On a larger scale, a 100-person company that provides an average salary of $50,000 could have turnover and replacement costs of approximately $660,000 to $2.6 million per year depending on their retention rate, Gallup reports. Having happy, engaged employees means fewer turnovers.

They make new employees feel welcome

During Monster's LGBTQ Pride and Work panel, Brianna Boles, diversity and inclusion program manager at Adobe, told viewers, "As you're in the interview process, asking if a company has ERGs or communities for underrepresented groups is a great indicator of inclusion."

Many companies have found affinity groups can improve their onboarding or training processes and make it easier for new employees to assimilate into the company's culture. That can be a huge boon, considering that a recent Monster survey found that three in four Americans (75%) have had a job where they didn't feel they were a good fit for the company, and half (51%) have felt this way in two or more jobs.

A study by Shelton Goode, the director of diversity and inclusion for Oshkosh Corp., found that affinity groups help new employees get comfortable during the onboarding process. Moreover, "studies show that the first 60 to 90 days of employment are a critical time for any new hire, and they can be particularly challenging for members of traditionally underrepresented groups," he wrote.

They help employers address discrimination concerns

From a legal standpoint, affinity groups can help employers identify gaps and avoid discrimination issues. That's crucial, given that US companies must comply with the regulations of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which prohibit employers from discriminating against existing or potential employees based on protected characteristics, including race, color, national origin, ethnicity, religion, age, sex, or medial history.

In the Monster Pride panel, Kay Martinez, associate director of the office of diversity, equity, and inclusion - as well as a faculty member - for Massachusetts General Hospital's (MGH) Institute of Health Professions, explained that Xerox introduced ERGs back around the time of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. "That's when we first saw mass demonstrations led by Black students demanding that they want Black studies, ethnic studies, and offices that were dedicated to multicultural affairs," Martinez said. "It all came from that era where people demanded change."

They promote friendships

Affinity groups can go a long way with helping employees bond with co-workers. That pays off in a couple big ways. According to a 2014 Workhuman survey, 89% of workers say work relationships matter to their overall quality of life. And research from Olivet Nazarene University shows that work friendships make employees more productive.

Start an affinity group at your office

Looking to form an affinity group at your company? Start by contacting human resources and let them know of your intentions - you may need to submit a formal pitch. After HR gives the green light, create a clear definition of what will unite your affinity group and a mission statement that identifies the group's core values. Then start recruiting colleagues that would make great additions to the group.

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5 reasons why every workplace should have employee affinity groups, and how to start one

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If you want to work in a diverse and inclusive setting, be on the lookout for companies that have affinity groups - employee resource groups for workers of shared interests, backgrounds, or demographics. Affinity groups help foster deeper connections in the workplace to boost friendships, collaboration, and productivity.

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Use this fun, interactive game to help students learn about history, including the role of race.

Read about the game here:  https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/41500/can-an-immersive-video-game-teach-the-nuances-of-american-history

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Play Mission Us

1848 the antebellum era

Flight to Freedom

Teach mission us

Mission US includes extensive teaching materials for each mission. The educator guides feature:

What people are saying about Mission US

About mission us

Mission US is an award-winning educational media project that immerses young people in transformational moments from U.S. history.

Developed for use by middle school students in the classroom and beyond, Mission US is a deeply-researched, award-winning educational media project with proven positive impact on history learning. To date, more than three million registered users across the country have played and learned from Mission US.

Mission US is committed to teaching complicated and sensitive topics in American history. We recommend that teachers/parents preview game content to make sure it is appropriate for their students/children.

Go to about

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Play Mission Us 1848 the antebellum era Teach mission us Mission US includes extensive teaching materials for each mission. The educator guides feature: What people are saying about Mission US About mission us Mission US is an award-winning educational media project that immerses young people in transformational moments from U.S.

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A wealth of primary source materials from the National Archives.

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DocsTeach is a product of the National Archives education division. Our mission is to engage, educate, and inspire all learners to discover and explore the records of the American people preserved by the National Archives. The National Archives and Records Administration is the nation's record keeper.

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This resource from the Southern Poverty Law Center is my go-to resource for DEI materials.

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From film kits and lesson plans to the building blocks of a customized Learning Plan—texts, student tasks and teaching strategies—our resources will help you bring relevance, rigor and social emotional learning into your classroom—all for FREE.

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From Teaching Tolerance - this collection of three articles offers insight on how white educators can better promote racial DEI in the classroom and beyond.

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In the wake of Black Lives Matter protests, educators and schools across the nation are planning anti-racist work. How will you ensure your school isn't just going through the motions?

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Too often, educators of color are burdened with leading and supporting anti-racist work in schools and districts-perhaps even more so during COVID-19 and this year's widespread calls for such work. These resources can help white educators and administrators take action now, carry their fair share of this work and ensure they're in it for the long haul.

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Books by African American authors & illustrators read by prominent African Americans.

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Bookmarks: Celebrating Black Voices | Netflix Jr

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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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This TED talk by author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reminds us why it is important for our students to hear many perspectives.

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Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

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Anti-Racism Activists & Outlets to Follow

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Anti-Racism Activists & Outlets to Follow

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This website for The People's School of DC provides a regularly updated list of anti-racism activists and outlets that you can add to your resources and follow to stay up-to-date.

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A great resource for identifying books on a range of DEI issues.

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Multicultural and Social Justice Books - Social Justice Books

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Curated Booklists Carefully selected multicultural and social justice books for children, young adults, and educators on 90+ topics. Reviews of Children's Literature Critical reviews of children's and young adult books from a variety of vetted sources, consolidated here for easy access. Articles & News Articles about selecting children's literature and news about Kid Lit.

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With core values of intellectual freedom and equity of access (American Library Association, 2007), librarians play an important role in building and sustaining an equity culture in schools.  While many people immediately think of book selection as the primary way librarians promote equity by providing windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors for readers through multicultural materials (Bishop, 2015), the librarian’s role can be both more far-reaching and more impactful.  Curating resources for fellow educators gives the librarian an opportunity to engage other educators in equity work, to support the vital work that teachers do toward including diverse learners, and, in turn, to empower students.  While there are many arenas in which to support DEI, this curated guide focuses on DEI within the context of race and specifically of Black/white relations in America.  With the current issues facing our country - from continued deaths of Black people at the hands of the police to protests and demands for equity, inclusion, antiracist practices, and systemic change - racial discrimination, racism, anti-racism, and race-based civil rights are on many educators' minds.  The goal of this guide is to provide resources for those who wish to engage in thoughtful, courageous instruction and conversation about race in the United States.  If you are wondering why these conversations matter, I encourage you to check out the thoughts of fellow educators in Maughan's (2020) article for Publisher's Weekly, "Black Lives Matter: Crucial Discussions in the Classroom."

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Use these posters for your online classroom to make it welcoming and inclusive.

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Need inspiration? Check out some of these ideas!

Let students drive their learning with these targeted activity ideas. Each one is perfect for students reading self-selected books. Stand back and watch their engagement skyrocket!

Follett Learning is on Pinterest. Check out more ideas and activities.

follow us

Broaden your approach to selecting books.

There are many considerations to keep in mind when building a classroom library, adding to a school library, selecting books to use during instruction or when recommending books to students. Check out these blogs from educators who provide tips for selecting engaging books, keeping them organized and getting them in the hands of students.

Elementary Classroom Libraries

This three-part blog series from Nicole Stroup, Lake County Regional Office of Education's ELA Facilitator, shares techniques you can use to stay organized while you manage and share your books, and how to keep your book selection relevant to ensure that your students keep reading!
Start reading here.

Middle/High School Classroom Libraries

When it comes to student choice in reading, a classroom library can make all the difference. Find out why Betsy Potash from Spark Creativity recommends that secondary teachers organize and use a classroom library in this two-part blog series.
Start reading here.

Create a Virtual Library

Looking to engage all students in a love of reading? Shannon McClintock Miller, district teacher librarian at Van Meter Community School and Future Ready Librarian spokesperson, shares two virtual library ideas you can use at school and with your students virtually.
Start reading here.

Support reading goals with these webinars.

Take a look at our literacy-focused webinars featuring timely tips from educators around the world.

For a complete list of Follett webinars, click here.

Check them out

Brighten up your space with our free downloads.

Posters for your walls (or for your Bitmoji classrooms), bookmarks and bin/shelf cards will keep your work space looking fresh for spreading a love of reading!

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#AllBooksForAllKids | Resources for Reading Inspiration

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Let students drive their learning with these targeted activity ideas. Each one is perfect for students reading self-selected books. Stand back and watch their engagement skyrocket! follow us There are many considerations to keep in mind when building a classroom library, adding to a school library, selecting books to use during instruction or when recommending books to students.

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Another interactive game option, this offering from the Democratic Knowledge Project allows students to explore the Declaration of Independence within context as well as its contemporary relevance.  Read more about the game here:  https://www.democraticknowledgeproject.org/resources/remote-and-hybrid-learning-materials

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Another great resource for primary source materials. The link is for the guide to using DPLA for educational purposes.

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DPLA brings the wealth of U.S. libraries, archives, and museums to your classroom. If it's your first time using our site, this guide will help you discover the many great resources DPLA offers educators and students.

Primary Source Sets

Working with our Education Advisory Committee, we've put together Primary Source Sets that explore topics in history, literature, and culture, such as the Great Migration and the War of 1812. In the Primary Source Sets, primary sources are supplemented by teaching guides that help students develop critical thinking skills. Explore ideas for using the Primary Source Sets in classrooms.

What else?

In addition to Primary Source Sets, use our Online Exhibitions to investigate important stories about the United States through sources and accompanying narratives. For a broad look at highlights in our collection, browse by topic.

Build research skills in DPLA's collection of millions of items from libraries, archives and museums, using the powerful search feature. From here, you can discover photographs, maps, speeches, and texts from all periods of American history. Create of items discovered in DPLA to come back to later without having to repeat your search.

If you are a K-12 educator in a Title I or low-income community, check out Open eBooks. Open eBooks inspires a love of reading by offering readers popular and award-winning eBooks for free, with no holds or late fees. DPLA is proud to support this ConnectED initiative.

More information

Want to learn more? Read about DPLA's work with professional educators on to get free classroom posters, informational postcards, and other giveaways, watch videos of past education DPLA Pro. Email education@dp.la workshops, become a Community Rep to help us reach new communities of educators and students, or follow us on social media.
Subscribe to our Education email list

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DPLA brings the wealth of U.S. libraries, archives, and museums to your classroom. If it's your first time using our site, this guide will help you discover the many great resources DPLA offers educators and students.

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Explore lesson plans that utilize a collection of runaway ads to teach the experiences of enslaved people.

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AMA Declares Racism a Public Health Threat

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AMA Declares Racism a Public Health Threat

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CHICAGO - New policy adopted by physicians at the American Medical Association's (AMA) Special Meeting of its House of Delegates (HOD) recognizes racism as a public health threat and commits to actively work on dismantling racist policies and practices across all of health care.

In June 2020, the AMA Board of Trustees acknowledged the health consequences of violent police interactions and denounced racism as an urgent threat to public health, pledging action to confront systemic racism, racial injustice and police brutality.

The new policy approved by the AMA, representing physicians and medical students from every state and medical specialty, opposes all forms of racism as a threat to public health and calls on AMA to take prescribed steps to combat racism, including: (1) acknowledging the harm caused by racism and unconscious bias within medical research and health care; (2) identifying tactics to counter racism and mitigate its health effects; (3) encouraging medical education curricula to promote a greater understanding of the topic; (4) supporting external policy development and funding for researching racism's health risks and damages; and (5) working to prevent influences of racism and bias in health technology innovation.

"The AMA recognizes that racism negatively impacts and exacerbates health inequities among historically marginalized communities. Without systemic and structural-level change, health inequities will continue to exist, and the overall health of the nation will suffer," said AMA Board Member Willarda V. Edwards, M.D., M.B.A. "As physicians and leaders in medicine, we are committed to optimal health for all, and are working to ensure all people and communities reach their full health potential. Declaring racism as an urgent public health threat is a step in the right direction toward advancing equity in medicine and public health, while creating pathways for truth, healing, and reconciliation."

Though previous AMA policies and principles have emphasized the need to eliminate health disparities and called on physicians to prevent violence of all kinds, the new policy explicitly acknowledges racism's role in perpetuating health inequities and inciting harm against historically marginalized communities and society as a whole.

Specifically, the new policy recognizes racism in its systemic, cultural, interpersonal, and other forms as a serious threat to public health, to the advancement of health equity, and a barrier to appropriate medical care. It makes clear that a proactive approach to prevent, or identify and eliminate, racism is crucial-particularly considering that studies show historically marginalized populations in the U.S. have shorter lifespans, greater physical and mental illness burden, earlier onset and aggressive progression of disease, higher maternal and infant mortality, and less access to health care.

The policy describes the various forms of racism as follows:

Systemic racism: structural and legalized system that results in differential access to goods and services, including health care services.

Cultural racism: negative and harmful racial stereotypes portrayed in culturally shared media and experiences.

Interpersonal racism: implicit and explicit racial prejudice, including explicitly expressed racist beliefs and implicitly held racist attitudes and actions based upon or resulting from these prejudices.

In addition, the new policy requests AMA to identify a set of best practices for health care institutions, physician practices, and academic medical centers to address and mitigate the effects of racism on patients, providers, international medical graduates, and populations. It also guides the AMA's position on developing and implementing medical education programs that generate a deeper understanding of the causes, influences and effects of all forms of racism-and how to prevent and improve the health effects of racism.

Further, the policy asks that AMA support the creation of external policy to combat racism and its effects and encourage federal agencies and other organizations to expand research funding into the epidemiology of risks and damages related to racism. Additionally, the policy asserts that the AMA will work to prevent, and protect against the influences of racism and bias in innovative health technologies.

The AMA has been leading an aggressive effort to embed equity in thoughts, actions, and processes so as not to perpetuate inequities and instead help people live healthier lives. In 2018, the AMA adopted policy to define health equity and outline a strategic framework toward achieving optimal health for all. To help navigate these challenges, in 2019 the AMA hired its first chief health equity officer to establish the AMA's Center for Health Equity to elevate and sustain efforts to address systemic level changes that can improve health.

Fully understanding that there is tremendous work still to be done to ensure that everyone has the opportunity, conditions, resources, and power to achieve optimal health, the AMA is committed to collaborating with stakeholders to confront the issue of racism within our society. The AMA continues to urge other leading health organizations to also take up the mantle of intolerance for racism as it pushes upstream to dismantle racism across all of health care - driving the future of medicine toward anti-racism.

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New AMA policy recognizes racism as a public health threat

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CHICAGO - New policy adopted by physicians at the American Medical Association's (AMA) Special Meeting of its House of Delegates (HOD) recognizes racism as a public health threat and commits to actively work on dismantling racist policies and practices across all of health care.

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An engaging interview series from Just Us Books that focuses on Black writers.

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Just Us Books is a leading, independent publishing company that specializes in Black-interest and multicultural books for young people. AFRO-BETS, Marimba Bo...

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A 14-part documentary podcast on race - and specifically whiteness - in America.

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Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels new, but in truth it's an old story.

Why? Where did the notion of "whiteness" come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for?

Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017. The series editor is Loretta Williams.

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Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels ne

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Founded by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the iCivics program offers a short, accessible training program for preparing to teach tough topics.

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Images that do not come directly from the linked website or have an embedded citation link were taken by me using my home collection of DEI books on race!

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Beacon Press, an independent publisher of nonfiction including a rich catalog of titles on African American studies, has a useful blog that covers issues of race and ethnicity.

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Beacon Broadside: A Project of Beacon Press

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Beacon Broadside: A Project of Beacon Press

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Ideas, opinions, and personal essays from respected writers, thinkers, and activists. A project of Beacon Press, an independent publisher of progressive ideas since 1854.

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Reynolds, J. (2020). Stamped: Racism, antiracism, and you. Little, Brown and Company.

An NEA Read Across America choice, this book is great for school-wide or classroom use.

NEA resources

Educators’ Guide

NCTE materials on Stamped

Booklist interview with Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

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Black Lives Matter: Crucial Discussions in the Classroom

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Black Lives Matter: Crucial Discussions in the Classroom

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Maughan, S. (2020, August 14). Black lives matter: Crucial discussions in the classroom.  Publishers Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/84109-black-lives-matter-crucial-discussions-in-the-classroom.html

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Following the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers on May 25, people all over the world have taken to the streets for Black Lives Matter protests demanding racial justice and an end to state-sanctioned violence against Black people. Many young people have participated in such protests or marches in recent months, and many others have seen them on TV or social media. PW spoke with teachers across the country about whether and how they plan to discuss racism and the protests with their students, and asked them to share any resources they have found illuminating or helpful in their preparation.

In the classroom or library:

One of the first things my library did during my first year was to reevaluate our collection and policies so that we are adding more authentic voices and diverse books. That is always my top priority every year. The next is getting those books circulated among students and faculty-getting them added into the curriculum and not just sitting on display on my shelves. This year our efforts are showing fruit, in that we have so many up-to-date resources people are clamoring for right now.

As far as teaching [about racism], it's not difficult for me to broach, as it is a constant in my life and career. But I do realize that my students and fellow faculty might come from a different perspective, and sometimes it ebbs and flows depending on the climate. When addressing this topic, I usually start [my students] on a journey of self-reflection, then empathy, and finally planned action or change. I also promote positive mirrors for my students of color. It can be damaging to African American students to only see themselves in moments of struggle and inequality.

Some of my students, especially students of color, have no choice but to learn from an early age what these things [racism, Black Lives Matter, civil rights struggles] are. I think an effective way to teach this as a curriculum is an immersion in the topic. Be clear about definitions, such as racism versus prejudice or privilege versus affirmative action. This is more than a lesson; this is a societal wound that keeps reopening for many people. Students must be able to unpack and process what they learn. Then they must live it. Sometimes, it has to be a cycle and not just a one-off lesson. Discussion is always key.

For example, I worked very closely with a teacher last year whose class read Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes. We focused her lessons on creating a background on the featured historical characters in the book. We had the students follow a racial injustice timeline. We had them read A Wreath for Emmett Till by Marilyn Nelson. They also reviewed age-appropriate articles on Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice. In another lesson, I challenged my eighth-grade students to review and select potential replacements for To Kill a Mockingbird, based on themes within the book, by considering more than 100 selected modern titles. The teacher gave them journal prompts and they reviewed three books they selected. They were a part of the process-identifying the problem, self-reflecting, and then creating an actionable plan.
Helpful resources:
I think every librarian and educator should take Project Ready, a collaborative and free diversity and equity professional development curriculum from UNC and IMLS. While it's geared to librarians, there's so much information that any educator should use.

I'm reimagining my library skills curriculum using Teaching Tolerance resources and the Democratic Knowledge Project's "10 Questions for Young Changemakers" as a foundation for research prompts. The 10 questions teach students how to create action plans and to be advocates for social change.

There are a lot of anti-racism book lists out there, but books like Stamped (both the original and the remix) and How to Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, This Book Is Anti-Racist by Tiffany Jewel, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum, and So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo can help you start.

I follow a lot of anti-racism educators on Twitter and Instagram: @BARWE215 (Building Anti-Racist White Educators, Philadelphia), @TeachandTransform (ABAR-Anti-Bias and Anti-Racist educator Liz Kleinrock), @labfourseven (founded by Sharon Michaels, aiming to make antiracism the norm in all K-12 schools], @theconciouskid [parenting and education through a critical race lens), @NMAAHC [National Museum of African American History and Culture]. For diverse book titles, I follow @weneeddiversebooks and @leeandlow (Lee & Low Books).

And of course, something I poured a lot of energy into with my dynamic Emerging Leader Group from 2019 is AASL's Developing Inclusive Learners and Citizens Activity Guide.It's been a blueprint for so many of my lessons.
Student reaction:
My students are learning. They will go through their cycles of unpacking behaviors and thoughts and hopefully be able to be leaders in creating change so that this conversation can be progressive and not regressive. I try my best to engage them in a thoughtful but potent way. They ask questions and I do not shame them about where they are in their journey. I just ask them to reflect using the tools around them. They will go through this for the rest of their lives. I do the same with most adults; I just decide to walk along with them where they start.

Paige Somoza
Consulting Teacher
Boise (Idaho) School District

I have been educating myself about all of these topics within the last couple of years, and especially this summer. I have strived to teach classes with a multiperspective view and have worked on addressing my own implicit biases. I read White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo this summer and have joined a book club with a diverse group of women where we read books about these issues. Our book for August is How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. I feel as though I have to truly educate myself in order to talk about these issues with students.

I have been lucky enough to participate in the PBS Virtual Professional Learning Series with other PBS Digital Innovators. This spring we had the opportunity to talk about cultural responsiveness with the creative producer of Molly of Denali, Princess Johnson. In past years, I have not dived deeply into these complicated issues because they are difficult to discuss. However, through this conversation I came to the realization that, although these issues are uncomfortable, they are essential conversations that we need to have to move forward as a country.

To start having this conversation with students, I think that one of the most important things we can do is cultivate a culture of community at the beginning of the school year. All students need to feel safe in order to address these historic issues. Team-building activities and class time spent getting to know one another will build empathy skills that students will need as the school year progresses. We also need our students to be aware of their implicit biases before we even start these conversations. Harvard's Project Implicit is a great way for teachers and students to become aware of their biases. It is also important to provide a multiperspective view of historical events. Primary and secondary sources should be diverse and also represent those who have been disenfranchised.

Corey Hall
Curriculum Specialist
STEM Education Works
In the classroom or library:
I will not be in the library this school year, as my position was downsized. However, I plan to continue blogging and Instagramming about books I read that address these topics [race, racism, civil rights, police brutality]. I hope to continue the conversation with my former students and followers.

My approach has always been to integrate important topics into what I'm teaching. Because of my position as a middle school librarian, I didn't have "classes." I had time during book exchange, or I traveled to classes, or I set up mobile carts in the cafeteria. I highlighted a variety of books from different authors of color as well as nonfiction books that highlight important events in history. Often I would pair books, such as Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes and Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case by Chris Crow.
Helpful resources:
Teaching Tolerance has resources that address all kinds of issues related to equity and diversity. Books include The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly, and Black Brother, Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes. Also, the Opposing Viewpoints database, Mother Jones magazine, and ProPublica are helpful and effective resources I've used with students.
Student reaction:
I tended to focus on LGBTQ+ issues because I was a faculty advisor for the GSA. I asked members for book recommendations as I was ordering. At least on that front, the kids felt supported and like they were heard.
In the classroom or library:
I work with elementary students, and I will be infusing social justice issues into my teaching this fall. I will certainly be sharing books that are diverse and encourage multiple perspectives. Teaching Tolerance has social justice standards that I will be looking into.
Helpful resources:
Over the summer, I participated in a professional development session led by an administrator to discuss The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore. New Kid by Jerry Craft, the Newbery winner, is a great graphic novel to discuss microaggressions.

My professional organization, New Jersey Association of School Librarians, has an EDI [Equity, Diversity, Inclusion] resource page that is quite useful. The Brown Bookshelf's website is a great resource, too. BrainPop has some new resources appropriate for elementary students, as well. And Booksource offers an inclusive library checklist.
In the classroom or library:
Last May my school was an international school in Singapore. There was only one student in the school who was African American and two who were African. There were only a handful of Caucasian American students. So, while it is an incredibly important issue, I wasn't sure how to create an awareness in my students about something that was so far removed from them. Instead, I used the [Black Lives Matter] movement to tie back to a previous unit on slam poetry. We had explored the use of performance poetry to bring about awareness for social justice. One of the poems, "Letter to Your Flag" [by Royalty, aka Ronald Vinson] generated discussions about Colin Kaepernick and police brutality. Many of the students had continued to think about the impact that poem had on them. As a result, they saw the connection between the poem and the events that were unfolding in May.

Moving forward, my next school is an American school [in Dubai], and I expect there to be more students with experience of the situation. I am in talks with my teaching partner about how we can best address these prevailing issues in our English classes.

I don't know that I am in a position to "teach" students about race, racism, and civil rights, as much as I have a responsibility to bring about awareness. The difference being that it can be difficult to teach about things not experienced. I am fully aware of the white privilege that has been afforded to me, but I have only recently moved to a country where my race was not the majority.
Helpful resources:
I hope to have students explore these topics through picture books, poetry, news articles, and advertisements. I plan to use the book Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi. I would like to have students explore the various Black authors mentioned in the book, and to incorporate media (videos, audio recordings, etc.) to further impress upon them the need for open dialogue and attention to the matter. It would also work well as a lesson on "change" in society-the need for it versus the resistance. Perhaps an analysis of why people are so emotionally involved on both sides could allow for a deeper understanding.

I also put together several Wakelet resources (via Wakelet.com, a platform that allows users to curate and organize multimedia content to save and share).

I think that many teachers have begun the work on a personal level. I have taken this summer to educate myself more deeply and broadly about inequity and racism and am applying that to how I teach and interact with others. I have also been talking with coworkers about revisiting our curriculum to be sure that an authentic and diverse collection of voices make up the literature and nonfiction selections that we use in the classroom. There is definitely more to be done when we return, and it will not happen overnight, but I know that safety, equity, and success is something that I want for all of my students.

Jhenelle Robinson
Campus Librarian
Lehman Educational Campus
Bronx, N.Y.
Member of AASL Emerging Leaders Team A
In the classroom or library:
One of the schools I service had a series of three workshops for our students. They were optional to attend but highly encouraged for the students and staff to participate in. During these workshops we decided to break it into different time frames. We tried to give a brief overview and history of Black people in the Americas during and post slavery, what it has been like in contemporary times, and pretty much what happened in the recent uprisings regarding race relations in America. The workshops usually ran for an hour, leaving options toward the end for students to comment or ask questions. I worked collaboratively with my fellow campus librarian and with the guidance counseling team and some [members of the] administration. We made sure that the materials that we covered were age-appropriate for high schoolers but didn't sugarcoat the vital information that has been, for lack of a better word, whitewashed throughout history. It was properly sourced with a multitude of resources, and we are very proud of the end result. We've gotten great responses from our students, fellow faculty members, and the administration.

We plan to continue to have the conversation. This is not just a one-off or a trendy topic. Our principal has made it a new tenet and a new mission for our school community that race relations and Black Lives Matter will be addressed with our students, considering the fact that we serve predominantly Black, Caribbean, and Latino communities that are disproportionately affected by police brutality.

We determined that it is just as important that we encourage dialogue among our students; we encourage openness, we encourage knowledge. But from my understanding, and from what I've observed, our students are very astute, very informed, and very sensitive, because, again, the images that they see of the people who are the victims of police brutality look like them-they look like their parents, like their cousins, like members of their faith communities. So this is very relevant and necessary to address with our students, especially with much sensitivity.
Helpful resources:
My co-librarian and I have been approached by our administration to collaborate with our humanities, English, and history departments to develop and execute an anti-racism curriculum. We've been creating it throughout the summer and into the beginning of the school year so that we can launch it with our incoming freshmen.

As we worked on it, there were so many books that we referred to. Definitely Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi. It's been a really powerful tool that we hope to incorporate into our curriculum. Also, there are a few YA titles that we would like to include, especially in ELA [English language arts], including The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas.

I've also incorporated the AASL Developing Inclusive Learners and Citizens toolkit that I developed with my fellow ALA Emerging Leaders on Team A. It was met with a lot of enthusiasm from our administration. They were impressed and happy to know that, through helping to create that publication, I've had previous experience dealing with diversity and equity issues in a school setting.

I'm pursuing a master's degree in educational policy with a concentration in diversity and equity. These two factors [my master's studies and Emerging Leaders work] have definitely been helpful in creating the language and the materials that I've contributed towards this ongoing project. We have created Prezis [presentation tools], videos, and libguides in order to assist our students in navigating so much material. Especially in this age of misinformation and disinformation, it's been very important.

I have personally reached out to Bianca [Spurlock] of our [Emerging Leaders] group. She and I have grown close in solidarity. Not only as school librarians, but Black school librarians. I think it's a unique experience that I believe a lot of people are empathetic to, but they just can never understand how it is to navigate spaces, especially librarianship, that are predominantly white.

I think that many teachers have begun the work on a personal level. I have taken this summer to educate myself more deeply and broadly about inequity and racism and am applying that to how I teach and interact with others. I have also been talking with coworkers about revisiting our curriculum to be sure that an authentic and diverse collection of voices make up the literature and nonfiction selections that we use in the classroom. There is definitely more to be done when we return, and it will not happen overnight, but I know that safety, equity, and success is something that I want for all of my students.
In the classroom:
I've been thinking a lot about these topics, but I don't have a ton of set plans for how to approach them. The first thing I know I will do is to have students write about their thoughts and experiences with these matters. I like to see where their heads and hearts are before we get too far into any topic. One thing I know I will find-based on past experiences with March for Our Lives-is that today's high school students are much more engaged in political, social, and cultural debates than I ever was at their age. They care about these topics, and I am fully confident that many of my students will have participated in some of these demonstrations. I also know that I will find voices on every side of this issue, so discussions can be fraught, but I also believe that a classroom can be one of the best places to discuss important and sometimes divisive subjects like these.
Helpful resources:
In English classes, we often broach the subject of race through reading that we do-both fiction and nonfiction. Many of these readings are included in anthologies. We have also taught novels and short stories that allow us to talk about race and racism. We read some Toni Morrison (the short story "Recitatif" always provokes a lot of discussion) and Zora Neale Hurston, poetry by Langston Hughes ("Harlem" is particularly apt right now), and others. One visual text we've used is the TED talk "The Danger of a Single Story" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; it's a compelling talk.
In the classroom:
We're entering year three of what we call the Synnovation Lab. The purpose of the program is to increase project-based learning and personalization in a school setting. We operate on a mastery-based system instead of an accumulated point total or test scores, which most research will tell you is not a great indicator of success. Our phrase is that we want to equip and empower students for life. We're not focusing just on the content, but on the type of person they are and what skills they have.

I'll be teaching American history this year, and one of the shifts I was going to make anyway was to go from a timeline approach to history to doing a thematic approach. Looking at the themes of American history, our course starts at Reconstruction and comes up to the modern day. Thematically I wanted to find some questions that were authentic but that still mattered today. Those questions have changed over the summer. One key question is: how do we empathize and understand other people's stories? I think a secondary question is how to have your voice heard. My goal is to make the unit coincide and end with the election. Voting is one way, protest is another way-what are the different ways in which you can amplify your voice?

Some alumni put together a march through our district, and it was very peaceful and they had a great turnout even though it rained the whole time. I think that it's great for our students to see. The question of why your voice matters also comes up in how people feel about voting in our community. Do I put a sign in my yard or don't I? Do I show up to the protest or don't I? Do I express my opinions on Facebook or don't I? Those are all really important questions that I hope our students unravel.

And I'm sure educators have told you that anytime you talk about race or gender, it's really hard to get a class discussion going. Nobody wants to say the wrong thing. Either they're afraid of offending or sounding defensive. My goal is to break them down into more manageable groups just to have those conversations. It's super difficult, but if we don't teach them how to talk about it, how to engage in those conversations, it's not going to get better.
Helpful resources:
I've got several books on my reading list this month: An African American and Latinx History of the United States by Paul Ortiz, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi, and Fault Lines in the Constitution by Cynthia Levinson and Sanford Levinson.

And one book that I like in education is 9 Billion Schools: Why the World Needs Personalized, Lifelong Learning for All by Lauren Della Bella and Dick Thomas. It's not just about making sure 14-year-olds can learn, but asking "How can we help 34-year-olds learn?" Our students are not going to remember the facts, and that's why I think that a thematic approach, focusing on how to create good citizens and voters and great 26-year-olds, will matter. And I hope I can bring just enough context to let them see the struggle, that the world you experience today did not come free, and that we're going to need to apply this in the future.

Equity Efforts in the Field

Administrators and faculty in the Moon Area School District, which educates nearly 3,900 K-12 students and is located about 15 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, had already been working toward making their campus communities more inclusive when the protests following the killing of George Floyd heightened their commitment to that mission.

"The discussion on diversity has been happening at our school for some time," says Barry Balaski, superintendent of the Moon Area School District. "But what we realized is that most of this was coming from the student perspective and didn't have enough support from the adults. Last year, I reached out to several outside groups that I thought might be able to give us some assistance since we didn't have a diverse population of employees. Once I moved to the superintendent's job, high school assistant principal Brendan Hathaway took over."

Hathaway recalls that, back in January, he and a faculty member "started a conversation with our students of color, and what they told us is that they want to be better represented. They want their culture, their race, their ethnicity to feel more included in what we do here. So we started to look at ways we could better support our students." Early efforts involved reaching out to Robert Morris University, which is nearby. "We contacted some of their clubs and organizations, for instance the National Council of Negro Women, the Collegiate 100, to see if there were any opportunities for collaboration."

RMU faculty and staff were enthusiastic about teaming up, and things were off to a good start, according to Hathaway. "But when we saw what happened in the larger society this summer, it highlighted the need for us to do something for our students on an even larger scale," he says. Hathaway contacted Michael Hauser, former Moon Area High School principal and a current school board member; through their discussions, Hathaway notes, "We saw an opportunity to make more of an impact districtwide." This work will be spearheaded by a new diversity and inclusion steering committee of diverse stakeholders-parents, former students, and consultants. Key players on the consulting front include Michael Quigley, assistant professor of organizational leadership, educational equity, culturally competent leadership, and nonprofit leadership at RMU, and Dan Taylor, executive president of the African American Chamber of Commerce for Western Pennsylvania. "With all of these stakeholders on board, we've started discussing what we can do better as a school district to improve communication between stakeholders and to give all students here a more rewarding experience."

Having the steering committee, Hathaway says, ensures that "instead of just administrators making decisions, we bring in students, parents, and community members to look at all facets of what we do as a district. So, right now, everything's on the table."

Balaski believes that is right in line with the intended mission of the committee. "If we do not place diversity in the forefront of educating students, then we have only sought to understand the problems we face instead of making true change," he says. "We also want to make an effort to look at our hiring practices in order to have a staff that is more representative of our student body."

Though there is still some uncertainty about what the new school year will look like, Hathaway says that "one of our goals is to meet before the start of school to make sure that, no matter how we come back to school, the steering committee has a plan in place to continue its work. It's an important initiative that we're not going to put on the back burner just because of the unknowns."

Return to the main feature.

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Black Lives Matter: Crucial Discussions in the Classroom

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Following the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers on May 25, people all over the world have taken to the streets for Black Lives Matter protests demanding racial justice and an end to state-sanctioned violence against Black people.

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This is a great poster for any time of year focusing how students can be critical thinkers and inclusive learners.  You can use the digital copy in a virtual classroom or print for use in person.

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Both When a Bully is President and The Gender Wheel provide kids with context for the development of the United States and oppressive systems and how those systems continue to impact us today.

The cover of The Gender Wheel and When a Bully is President are intentionally similar. LGBTQI2S+ oppression is intrinsically tied to racial and ethnic oppression. When we begin to understand the development of our country, we can better understand where many of the cultural standards and stereotypes come from and stop perpetuating them.

View a full reading of When a Bully is President:

(listen to Maya as she reads the book and shares some final and in-process art)

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Election Resources - A POWERFULL Path to Raising Changemakers! - Reflection Press

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Below is a 9 step path to assist grown-ups in resourcing children. And at the bottom of the page find helpful resources to disrupt systemic oppression, invest in true self and community, and strengthen resilience and agency. PROVIDE Real Context Share stories with kids about the real development of the United States and the impact [...]

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"You really shouldn't be having tests on a major holiday. We can communicate this up to the teachers and the administration," math teacher and affinity group leader Jeannie Rumsey told the students. "We can find another time for you to make that up, but this is a major holiday for you and you should be able to celebrate it." After organizing and communicating with their administration, the group succeeded in adding the major Muslim holy days to the following year's school calendar. The dates were given the same treatment as the Christian and Jewish holidays: no tests.

This example of collective action is one of the purposes of affinity groups in schools: They allow students who share an identity-usually a marginalized identity-to gather, talk in a safe space about issues related to that identity, and transfer that discussion into action that makes for a more equitable experience at school.

Dylan Posos, a student at John F. Kennedy High School in San Antonio, Texas, attests to the power of affinity groups to create safer learning environments. Dylan joined Kennedy's LGBT club in November 2014 after being disturbed by anti-LGBT bullying happening at school. He had not yet come out as transgender and was nervous about being judged. With the LGBT club, though, he found he could just be himself.

"The club motivated me to email my teachers. I came out with all my teachers, and now all my teachers call me Dylan," he says. "I'm more comfortable in school instead of being uncomfortable, not paying attention. It's like a weight off my back. The club gave that to me. It makes learning easier, really. It just gives me more confidence."

Having confidence in their identities is not always a given for students. Schools, like other institutions, are spaces in which those outside the dominant culture can feel disregarded, whether the disregard is intentional or not. Trying to negotiate and learn in such spaces makes the process of going to school stressful. Students of color, for example, may be dealing with what education professor Howard Stevenson calls racial stress: anxiety or fear that stems from racial encounters with individuals who are unaware or uncaring about the experiences of people of color. This kind of stress can contribute to feelings of loneliness and being "unseen" at school.

Darnell Fine, a seventh-grade English teacher and middle school diversity coordinator, speaks to the predispositions of many schools to overlook the needs of students outside the dominant group. "I think [school] can be a place that relegates students, especially students of color, especially students of marginalized groups, to silence," he explained. "It strips them of their voice. The students aren't voiceless, but due to the parameters of schools and how schools can marginalize students, they are at times not a place ... where students can express themselves."

Students need to be able to be themselves at school-and that's where affinity groups come in. A group of students who share an identity are going to relate to each other in ways they can't with peers who can't or don't understand their experience. It's about safety and, in some cases, about fundamental issues of injustice.

"The reason why affinity groups exist in the first place isn't because students want to segregate themselves from the rest of the population," Fine points out, "but because the population is excluding them to begin with." Gathering in safe spaces around shared identity allows students to engage in conversations about how they can subvert the structures that push them to the margins. In turn, these conversations "push the school to be more social-activist-oriented and less assimilationist-oriented," says Fine.

First Things First

Before a school can become more social-activist-oriented through affinity groups, someone has to get the ball rolling. Mike Ackerman, a counselor and affinity groups coordinator at Nashoba Brooks School in Concord, Massachusetts, suggests starting by assembling a task force to get the initiative off the ground; this group should absolutely include students. Early collaboration can also involve soliciting the experience of other schools that have gone through the process of launching affinity groups, Rumsey noted.

In the idea-generation stage, an important step is to assess the attitudes and needs of the school. Fine recommends an anonymous diversity or multicultural survey of students, parents and school staff. Learning about concerns within the school community provides a springboard. "Let's say students of color don't feel comfortable going to their teachers," Fine illustrates. "You need to create a safe space for those students to voice those concerns and to start to organize."

Getting backing from the school's administration is also key, says Rumsey. "If your administration isn't in support of [forming affinity groups], it's not going to be successful. And, for that matter, the group's impact on your students will be severely limited," she says.

"I needed to have my principal and my admin on board with this because the conversations that we were having [in the affinity group] were very hard conversations. They were conversations that threatened the power structure," Fine says. "I knew my principal and the dean of students had my back. I wasn't tip-toeing around the conversation. I was allowing kids to voice their concerns and then propose initiatives to effect change in the school."

Launching a Successful Affinity Group

Once the higher-ups are on board, the task force can begin determining (based on the needs assessment) what groups are most necessary and finding facilitators. Another survey can be useful here, this time to find out how the adults in the school identify and what groups they'd be interested in leading. Rumsey and her team were careful to look for facilitators whose identities fit with the groups in question. Otherwise, the authenticity of the group's work could be in jeopardy. Fine puts it this way: "I can be an all-out advocate for my female students. It still doesn't erase the male privilege that I'm bringing into that affinity group."

But sometimes students need a group for which there is no appropriate adult leader. In that case, ask the students what they want to do. At Rumsey's school, Muslim students showed strong interest in having an affinity group for a couple of years, but no adults in the school identified as Muslim. She asked the students if they wanted to look for someone from the wider community or if they wanted her to lead it; they were comfortable with her and chose her.

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Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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Articles, photos, podcasts, & YouTube videos detailing the experiences of Black men in the United States.

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The ADL has books, lesson plans, and a wealth of other resources for those who want to embed DEI into their instruction.

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What We Do

We work in partnership with schools, organizations and communities to design and deliver anti-bias education, both online and in person. When we learn, as individuals, how to challenge bias, discrimination and hate - together, we have the capacity to foster equity and inclusion.

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We provide anti-bias education through professional learning, educational programs, resources and strategies to build and sustain equitable and inclusive environments.

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Confronting the Weaponization of Whiteness in Classrooms

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Confronting the Weaponization of Whiteness in Classrooms

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Another must-read article from Teaching Tolerance, especially for white educators who want to engage in racial DEI work.

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It's easy to recognize and then call out blatant anti-Black racism caught on video. We can observe for ourselves racial slurs, exaggerated fear and the privilege of whiteness forcefully taking up space. In recent weeks, there hasn't been a shortage of these spectacles. We've seen white women and white men manufacture distress to justify calling the police on Black people doing benign things such as working out at a gym, sitting on a park bench or relaxing at a hotel pool.

Perhaps the most disturbing recent incident that led to a broader discussion online about racism happened in May. While the video lit the internet abuzz, the conversation halted the next day, when protests related to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police grabbed the nation's attention.

In the infamous video, a white New York City woman called 911 on a Black man in a secluded section of Central Park. The man had insisted that she put a leash on her dog.

Understanding how minor disputes have led to the death of Black people, the Black man began recording the interaction. In the video, the woman's tone went from calm to frightened in a matter of seconds.

"I'm going to tell them there's an African American man threatening my life," she told him.

She then made sure to mention twice to the 911 dispatcher that an African American man threatened her and her dog before heightening to a more panicky tone.

"I'm being threatened by a man in the Ramble; please send the cops immediately!"

Many people who viewed the viral video were stunned by the woman's overreaction and lobbied support for the Black man. Viewers quickly commented that this behavior is reminiscent of the Jim Crow-era rhetoric white women used when they made unsubstantiated accusations against Black men, often leading to lynchings. It is a clear example of the weaponization of whiteness.

But weaponizing whiteness happens in classrooms every day, and it's not perpetrated only by educators who are openly racist or explicitly biased against students of color. As we've witnessed in viral videos, individuals who consider themselves progressive or non-racist also exhibit this behavior. White supremacist or anti-Black attitudes don't belong to one ideology, one political party or a particular geographical location. Since both anti-Blackness and white supremacy are baked into America's foundation, they often play out in our daily lives.

The weaponization of whiteness typically happens this way: There is a sense of entitlement, anger and need for retaliation, then feigned fear and, finally, white fragility.

Black students aren't exempt from this experience. White educators must acknowledge this pattern of behaviors so that they won't inflict harm on Black students.

Unpacking the Patterns

A notable observation we can make when a white person calls the police on a Black person is that they display a sense of entitlement. The caller feels they belong in that space-and the Black person does not-and believes they have the authority to police that person.

This behavior is replicated in classrooms when teachers or administrators refuse to allow the questioning of authority. Research has shown that teachers tend to police Black students' responses to their authority more closely, perceiving Black students as exhibiting more " challenging behavior"-such as "willful defiance," "insubordination" and "disrespect"-than others. Black boys in particular are seen as four and five years older than they are, according to an American Psychological Association study. This adultification allows police and even educators to justify dehumanizing them. Similarly, a Georgetown Law study confirmed that Black girls are less protected and punished more severely in school than white girls.

Outside of schools, if a Black person challenges white entitlement, that entitlement sometimes turns into anger and retaliation. Similar responses happen in schools. We've described numerous times in our Hate at School reports when teachers react violently against Black students who challenge their authority. Whether they pull their hair or call the police, it always leads to more harm for the student, including trauma.

When all else fails, an educator might feign fear. White educators understand how racial profiling and their perceived fear will get a quick response from law enforcement. Countless times, educators call school resource officers into a classroom to manage student behavior-knowing that there is a possibility the situation could escalate quickly.

A white female principal in Houston understood this very well when she told three staff members about a Black student with special needs who runs from class often. "We won't chase him," she reportedly said. "We will call the police and tell them he has a gun so they can come faster."

She continues to work as a principal at that school. It's unclear if she faced any disciplinary action or received training to address the implications of what she considered was a joke.

The most offensive incidents in school often make it to the news. That's when gaslighting happens or white fragility shows up. Teachers will either assert they had a right to react the way they did or claim the child was acting violently. The teacher becomes the victim. Sometimes they cry.

In a Philadelphia education blog, some Black teachers recounted how white female teachers in particular use tears to gain sympathy or further assert their power.

One teacher explains: "When white women cry, there is a villain somewhere in the white imagination. History has viewed white women as prized possessions to be protected, so their tears have represented danger, terror, and death for Black people. Men going to war with armor is the same as white women waging war through tears."

A Repeating History

Black people may not be surprised by the centuries-old tactic of weaponizing whiteness, but that doesn't make it less traumatizing. White people may assume that someone who hasn't committed a crime shouldn't worry when the police are called on them, but that assumption ignores history and an insidious system that hands out justice disproportionately.

Police interactions that lead to loss of life for Black people-regardless of whether a crime happened-are well documented. We know that the weaponization of whiteness has historically led to the deaths of people like Emmett Till and residents of Rosewood, Florida.

And during a pandemic, shuffling Black people into police custody -when Black people are disproportionately dying from COVID-19-is a sure way to inflict harm.

Black Lives in School Haven't Mattered

When white educators weaponize their whiteness to affirm their authority, they could change the trajectory of a Black child's life. Data shows that Black students are disproportionately disciplined and pushed into the school-to-prison pipeline. An Education Week analysis found that Black students in 43 states and the District of Columbia were more likely than other students to be arrested while at school.

Black students are heavily policed in schools, from their hair and dress to their language and behavior. Early in life, they experience surveillance in the same way adult Black people do: They are followed, profiled, searched and assumed to be menaces. There are metal detectors and sometimes excessive force when police do get involved.

These scenarios are obvious instances of the criminalization of young Black students. It should go without saying that teachers and other school personnel should not call the police on students for minor issues. As we've said here before, the presence of police on school campuses often creates more conflict. Police should never take the lead in a situation that doesn't pose a physical threat to people's well-being.

As we witness an uprising against abuse of power, it's not acceptable to claim that educators, when calling the police on students, don't mean to cause harm. The intent doesn't matter. Educators are knowingly ignoring students' well-being, especially Black students', when they call the police on them or when they counter any and every challenge to their authority.

This constant barrage of harm creates both physical and mental health issues for Black students. They're trying to survive in systems that weren't designed for them to succeed. But educators must pledge to first do no harm. Black minds do matter.

Educators must recognize and stop these patterns. Dismantling a culture of punitive justice and over-policing at schools requires an all-hands-on-deck approach. It means doing some internal work first -confronting biases and actively working against them. And this work shouldn't end there. It's critical that educators reach out to other educators in a school community to urge them to do the same. As a collective, educators can realize their power to challenge the status quo. They can push school board members, superintendents and other school leaders to help shift school culture to an environment free from weaponized whiteness, police intimidation and trauma.

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Confronting the Weaponization of Whiteness in Classrooms

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Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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PBS has a number of helpful videos.  Check out this collection on civil rights.

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In 1954, the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education declared segregated schools unconstitutional and sparked a decade of groundbreaking civil rights activism and legislation.

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A free, online curriculum for educators who want to incorporate DEI into their teacher to support BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color) youth.

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Project READY: Reimagining Equity & Access for Diverse Youth – A free online professional development curriculum

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This site hosts a series of free, online professional development modules for school and public youth services librarians, library administrators, and others interested in improving their knowledge about race and racism, racial equity, and culturally sustaining pedagogy. The primary focus of the Project READY curriculum is on improving relationships with, services to, and resources for youth of color and Native youth.

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For those, like me, who like to read about reading, this a great blog exploring issues of race as a white reader.

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A note about the following: I wrote this post several months ago. It was originally scheduled to publish Thursday March 12; we decided not to post it then because the night before, COVID-19 news swept the nation and all attention was focused there.

I know that some of our readers, like me, have time and mental space to read this right now; some do not. Our email and DMs are open; please get in touch if there is any support we can provide, and take care.

On January 31, we published a Links Roundup post. While we published it under the group account, I (Allie) organized and posted it, so I'm primarily responsible for the mistakes therein-namely, that in promoting Lee and Low's writeup of the 2019 Diversity Baseline Survey, I failed to name and credit Dr. Laura M. Jiménez, as well as Betsy Beckert, as co-authors of the survey. My mistake was part of a pattern in this specific instance ( the Guardian also failed to credit Dr. Jiménez and Ms. Beckert for their work on this survey), but it is also part of a larger pattern of White erasure of BIPOC people and work. So with a healthy dose of humility that comes with recognizing myself as a big part of the problem, and with my (and our) sincere apologies to Dr. Jiménez and Ms. Beckert, that pattern of erasure is the subject of this post.

With full credit to the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, we here at Reading While White define racism as "Race-based prejudice coupled with access to systemic, structural power." It is impossible to exist in the world without having internalized race-based prejudice, and Whiteness necessarily confers a privileged relationship to systemic and structural power upon White people. Therefore, under this definition, all White people are racist. And all White people working on anti-racist activism necessarily bring their racism into their anti-racist work.

It is an inescapable truth that I will bring my own Whiteness and my own racism into anti-racist spaces, and that I will often reproduce racism in those spaces. I can always work to do better, but part of doing better is accepting and sitting with the inherent contradiction of my being in these spaces at all, trying to do anti-racist work while not denying the fact that I am racist.

In a study on how White activists contribute to severe burnout among BIPOC activists, Paul C. Gorski and Noura Erakat identified patterns of White activists "undermining or invalidating the racial justice work of activists of color" and "taking credit for participants' racial justice work and ideas" as major contributors to BIPOC burnout (among others). According to Gorski and Erakat, "white activists derived benefits from their involvement in racial justice activism at the expense of activists of color who, in turn, were silenced, undermined, disrespected, and eventually burned out."

Specifically, in Gorski's and Erakat's study, BIPOC activists reported that White activists:

"appropriate antiracist organizations by usurping power from activists of color"

"Need... the spotlight, [which] led some to exploit activists of color either to acquire benefits-leadership positions or speaking invitations, for example-or to win validation from activists of color."

"take credit for ideas they previously dismissed from [BIPOC activists]"

"accept benefits, such as credit and recognition, for ideas and work produced by activists of color." (One interviewee offered, as an example, White Academics "who just want to get their name published with someone who is recognized for doing racial justice.")

"take the work developed by marginalized people and 'put their name on it.' [One interviewee] explained, 'I have white racial justice workers who ... even record me or photograph something I post and use it as if it's theirs, without giving me credit ... as they coopt it and reappropriate it in a way that is dangerous.'"

BIPOC activists in Gorski's and Erakat's study described these White-rooted, within-community conditions as more intense and potent than external causes of burnout: "The racism that propelled participants into racial justice movements was reproduced within those movements. For many participants, this was a particularly disappointing and stress-inducing condition because they had entered movements hoping for a reprieve from the racism with which they coped outside their movements...." It stands to reason that White activists (including us at RWW) have done as much to undermine the anti-racist movement as any external force, and we (White people, including us at RWW) inevitably continue to do so.
There are different levels of White erasure of BIPOC work, from just ignoring it to actively appropriating it. Failing to acknowledge or credit BIPOC people for their work and ideas also erases their very existence and presence in activist spaces, a particularly noxious form of racism.

Big names in the White Anti-racist movement necessarily play a role in this problem. Tim Wise has been rightly criticised for how he dominates, profits from, and moves in general through anti-racist spaces; Leslie Mac, creator of the Ferguson Response Network and much more, wrote: "From Tim Wise to Dixon White - our pain is used for profit. And repeating concepts created by Black folks thru a white lens will always sell." While I myself have learned deeply from, and am grateful for, the work of White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo, I recognize that she also benefits from White privilege within the anti-racist movement; the BIPOC people with whom she's collaborated don't have nearly the same level of national name-recognition, at least among White people (I saw Dr. DiAngelo present at a conference with Darlene Flynn in 2017; both were excellent, and I've been bothered ever since that Robin DiAngelo is a household name among White activists and Flynn is not).

We here at Reading While White fall into this category as well. Although we do not have the same level of mainstream attention nationally as Wise or DiAngelo, we do have a disproportionate degree of clout within the fields of librarianship and children's literature, given that some of our BIPOC colleagues have done this work for more than twenty years (and we turn five this Fall). Ironically, given how I subsequently erased her work, Dr. Laura Jiménez pointed this out to me when I interviewed her three years ago:

The one thing that frustrates me the most--and I'm glad that Reading While White is doing what it does--is that if I say something about a book, if Debbie or Edi says something, we're all told that we're not giving the author a chance. That they tried. We are not believed. If you look at the traffic RWW get vs the traffic I get or Edi gets, even though we've been doing this for longer, you get more, and the only difference is that you're White. To be honest, part of me resents that. And, I am glad that there are people willing to amplify our voices. If I write something, and you pick it up, that means so many more people will be willing to hear it. And that is paramount to my work. You get a lot of crap, the same criticism, but at the end of the day, you are heard and you are believed. Without White voices, our message can't be heard. We are not believed. It's good that your team realizes it.

I am glad that Dr. Jiménez was honest here, although she was much more generous with us than we deserve, i.e., we do NOT get the same crap; what we get is much smaller, and benign by comparison. I imagine there are many BIPOC people within the children's literature field who feel similarly-or more strongly-and for good, valid reasons aren't inclined to tell us that they feel that way (see: Gorski's and Erakat's study about burnout above).

You've probably heard that Black people-especially women-need to work "twice as hard for half as much" (mainstream White America can thank Scandal for bringing that maxim into our consciousness). Think about what this means for us as White people: We work half as hard, for twice as much.

How does this show up in children's literature? For one, the bar to be published is infinitely higher for BIPOC creators; and even if you are published, the level of attention and spotlight from the vast majority of bookstores and libraries is disproportionately higher for White creators. While perusing my local Barnes & Noble the other night, I was angered by the number of mediocre books by White people, mostly men, prominently on display in the children's section. There were several that I'd hazard would never have been published, let alone given the best display space, had a Black woman submitted the same text. This itself is a form of erasure-our insistence upon highlighting the same White men, over and over, causes and allows them to take up space that should belong to BIPOC creators, and by extension, BIPOC readers.

SCBWI Minnesota recently quite literally erased-that is, deleted-the work of Dr. Sarah Park Dahlen when she pointed out that the image they'd set as their banner was a stereotypical, racist image (link included with permission). They also erased the voices of many people who'd commented in agreement with Dr. Dahlen. Deletion of harmful posts is a common form of White erasure; in one fell swoop, the original poster can erase, rather than take ownership of, their mistakes, and can also erase the voices of any BIPOC critiquing racism. In this case, SCBWI Minnesota also decided not to clarify who was responsible for the deletions (link included with permission), thereby erasing their responsibility for that act of erasure and diffusing the blame for this act of racism. Such deletions gaslight the targets of racism (which compounds the initial racism). As Dr. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas noted in a thread about patterns of White erasure she noticed last year, "oppression justifies its violence and power by arguing that the oppressed's receipts are invalid" (quote included with permission).

(A point of clarification here: SCBWI Minnesota later posted screenshots of the deleted content. Another point of clarification: Screenshots that are not transcribed are not accessible to those who use screen readers.)

Erasure also shows up in children's literature when White creators steal ideas from creators of color and present them as their own. This ranges from the constant entitlement White authors feel to tell BIPOC stories to outright theft and plagiarism. (If you haven't read Jacqueline Woodson's Who Can Tell My Story in a while, pause and re-read it now, and also make time for a re-read of Debbie Reese's An oft-posed question: "Who can tell your stories?"-and actually, also read Maya Gonzalez' My Story, Your Story, Their Story, Who Gets To Tell It before you read any more of my work). You may also have read David Bowles' recent, expert pieces on the "harmful, appropriating, inaccurate, trauma-porn melodrama" that is Jeanine Cummins' American Dirt, or Maya Gonzalez' careful documentation of how White authors Brook Pessin-Whedbee and Kelly Storck, as well as their publishers (Jessica Kingsley Publishers and Instant Help Books/imprint of New Harbinger Publications, Inc.) plagiarized her work. Recently, Tangerine Jones wrote about how authors Katherine Alford and Kathy Gunst, plus their publisher Simon and Schuster, coopted and profit from her work-and the White aggression Alford and Gunst brought against her. White plundering of Native stories and cultural content for profit also echoes the history of colonial invasion. As Professor Rebecca Tsosie says:

Indigenous peoples have property interests, even if they don't fall within the narrow definitions of Western law. This was a problem in the sixteenth century when the Doctrine of Discovery was applied as an international doctrine to validate the interests of European sovereigns in claiming property in the lands that were described as the "New World." They said that indigenous peoples don't really have property rights, they just kind of roam around on the land, and so it's okay for Europeans to go and appropriate the land and say that they have title. Now that's what we don't want to do with intellectual property rights in the modern era... [P]eople can go and basically steal indigenous songs and stories, and then they can copyright them... the harm's not merely economic, but it can be a cultural form of harm that could be very devastating.

(Many thanks to Dr. Debbie Reese for answering my questions on this subject, and for sending me that link.) All of the above are examples of the different forms that White appropriation and erasure of BIPOC work can take in the world of literature.

[CONTENT WARNING FOR THIS PARAGRAPH - discusses police killings of Black people]

But perhaps the most dangerous, destructive aspect of this erasure is the flipside. If White people leap to take credit and rewards for BIPOC work and ideas-and if we make those White names household staples, while erasing the names and existence of robbed BIPOC people-we also do the reverse, when it comes to blaming BIPOC people for their own murders while simultaneously erasing the White-owned guilt for those murders. I'm talking to White readers, now. You likely can name a slew of Black people murdered by police: Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Tamir Rice. Philando Castile. Alton Sterling. How many of their killers can you name, off the top of your head? They are: Darren Wilson. Daniel Pantaleo. Timothy Loehmann. Jeronimo Yanez. Howie Lake. Blane Salamoni. Yes, I had to look up most of those. No, they aren't all White, but their lack of mainstream name recognition still protects a White-dominant police force. None were held legally responsible for killing the above human beings. Why were their victims put on trial, their private lives plundered and exposed, by a White-dominant media and public desperate to find a reason to blame them for their own murders? Why have we (White people) done our best to malign their names and their legacies, exonerate their killers', and erase those of women and nonbinary BIPCOC victims? In the interest of Saying Her Name: Meagan Hockaday. Tanisha Anderson. Mya Hall. Alexia Christian. There are too many more. We should know them.

All of the credit for anti-racist gains, none of the blame for racism... this is still the dominant narrative in every sector of the White community, from open bigots with sheets and torches to the wokest of the woke.

At the White Privilege Conference in 2017, Darlene Flynn and Robin DiAngelo said that "getting educated just makes White folks better racists." BIPOC activists have raised concerns about White anti-racist activism for a long time; I recently re-read the famous excerpt from The Autiobiography of Malcolm X in which he advises "sincere" White people to "...find all other white people they can who feel as they do-and let them form their own all-white groups, to work trying to convert other white people who are thinking and acting so racist." This passage, among many other things, helped inform our thinking when we first launched Reading While White. I'd remembered the above words perfectly, but had conveniently managed to forget the following:

I have these very deep feelings that white people who want to join black organizations are really just taking the escapist way to salve their consciences. By visibly hovering near us, they are 'proving' that they are 'with us' ... generally whites' very presence subtly renders the black organization automatically less effective... I know that every time that whites join a black organization, you watch, pretty soon... a black may be up front with a title, but the whites, because of their money, are the real controllers.

What can we White people do, to be and do better? It's possible to get stuck in guilt, when we reflect on how we can aid and abet racism despite our best intentions. It's also tempting, while reflecting on this, to outright disengage from anti-racist efforts; and at times, we White people do need to step back, since our very presence can (as Malcolm X reminds us) automatically render BIPOC-led efforts less effective. And we should definitely remove ourselves when we're told that we're actively harming BIPOC activists.

White activists won't, however, help matters by completely and permanently disengaging from the movement. We also won't help by self-flagellating-especially publicly, which puts a lot of pressure on the injured people to provide forgiveness and absolution. There is no perfect science to knowing when to step up and step back, but we have a responsibility to keep trying to show up when it's helpful to the movement, and to step back when it's not.

The study I cited above from Gorski and Erakat suggests that White activists can improve by "policing one another around concerns related to credit- and spotlight-grabbing behaviors (such as coopting the ideas of activists of color) so activists of color do not need to expend energy doing so." We must hold each other accountable to this, and we must fight the kneejerk defensiveness that so often comes when anyone-fellow White people included-try to hold us accountable. Inviting others to give us direct feedback (and sharing how they can do that easily) is a good first step here, and in that spirit, please always feel free to email us, readingwhilewhite@gmail.com. We must remember, also, that asking fellow White people to hold us accountable should not be an excuse to ignore or dismiss BIPOC people when they do choose to expend energy to hold us accountable, feedback to which we are not entitled but for which we should be grateful.

We can also correct ourselves and each other when we start to subtly usurp and take control of BIPOC-led organizations, as Malcolm X warns is our default. Making finances, funding, and decision-making processes in organizations transparent, and making transparency the norm, can help; we also must listen and act when BIPOC people voice concerns about White leadership or processes. Patterns of BIPOC leaving organizations are almost always a signal that something is rotten in the White culture of that organization, and when we notice such patterns, we must self-examine and ask for help and education from our White friends and community. And above all, when we're made aware that we're impeding anti-racist efforts, we must remove ourselves, and commit to change and accountability, before we continue to inflict harm on BIPOC activists and weaken the movement overall.

Gorski and Erakat also advise White activists to "prioritize movement goals over their needs for recognition and validation." Putting this into practice is easier said than done. Many White people are drawn to anti-racist work entirely for ego- or profit-based reasons; maybe a few are drawn to the work for entirely pure reasons and don't care about recognition at all. But most of us fall somewhere in between (I include myself in that group). I need to learn, and practice, checking my ego (and letting others check my ego). We White people need to help each other actually do that work of prioritizing movement goals over egos-and this involves having very clear goals, as well as people we trust to hold us accountable.
(A quick N.B.: This language-"prioritize movement goals over your need for recognition and validation"-should never be used as an excuse to give men credit for the work of women and nonbinary people, to give cisgender or heterosexual people credit for LGBTQIA+ work, to give nondisabled people credit for disabled work, or to justify oppression of any other intersecting identity.)

We must also work on doing the flipside of all this. In addition to giving full credit to BIPOC people for BIPOC ideas and work, we need to work to take responsibility for White-owned and White-originated mistakes, harm, and damage. This means making apologies that don't ring hollow, taking action to correct the damage we've done, and working to prevent similar mistakes in the future. This means we openly and eagerly educate fellow White people about our own mistakes, rather than covering them up from each other in an effort to be the best White person in the group.

Dr. Jiménez told us, three years ago, that one of the most useful things we can do at Reading While White is to pass the mic. We have to do a better job of passing that mic, and talk internally often about how we can do better (we're always open to criticism and suggestions on this subject, as well). Our White readers can also play a role in this, by making sure that you hear what our BIPOC colleagues have to say when we do pass the mic. Read our kindred spirits, and read them before you read us. We make it a point to link to BIPOC articles, essays, and blog posts as often as we can-click through those and read them. If it means you have to stop reading us so you can read them, please read them. Like them more than you like us on social media. Amplify them more than you amplify us. And when they call upon you to take action, listen to them. Don't wait for us to say "don't promote books with anthropomorphic monkeys"-believe Edi Campbell when she says it herself.

I'm sorry to Dr. Jiménez-I shouldn't have erased your work. All of us at RWW are grateful that Dr. Jiménez encouraged us to acknowledge and examine that act; it's given us a chance to reflect and learn. And in the spirit of this work, we hope that these reflections are useful to you, too.

-Allie Jane Bruce

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A note about the following: I wrote this post several months ago. It was originally scheduled to publish Thursday March 12; we decided not to post it then because the night before, COVID-19 news swept the nation and all attention was focused there.

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Hudson, W., & Willis Hudson, C. (Eds.). (2020). The talk. Crown Books for Young Readers.

An anthology of writings by various authors about having "the talk" about race.

Reading sample from Penguin Random House

Suggestions from the editors about how to use the book

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We have a powerful potential in our youth, and we must have the courage to change old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends.

-- Mary McLeod Bethune (n.d.)

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From Anjola Coker
https://anjolacoker.com/

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Racial Affinity Groups offer a structure of inquiry and can address many needs. They support us in exploring what has been forbidden, forgotten, and unhealed. For example, in Racial Affinity Groups, white people can discover together their group identity. They can cultivate racial solidarity and compassion and support each other in sitting with the discomfort, confusion, and numbness that often accompany white racial awakening. They can also discern white privilege and its impact without the aid of or dependence on People of Color (POC). White people who have formed Racial Affinity Groups report that they recognized their collective commonality and shared history, as well as the impact that their privilege has had on other races and on each Racial Affinity Group member.

While many POC may not need an affinity group to help them relate to their racial group membership, they may need to explore the diversity that exists among POC and across POC without having the distraction of having to educate white people on whiteness and its harm. A habitual focus on white people can distract POC from knowing themselves as a diverse body. Exploring this tender territory in a Racial Affinity Group can be a wholesome alternative to expecting white people at large, who often are not aware of being racial beings, to relieve the intense distress experienced by POC.

In a Racial Affinity Group, whether for POC or for whites, we have the opportunity to share our experiences and histories, examine our impulses, reinterpret meaning, and see clearly our role in racial harming and healing. Such groups support us in being more vulnerable and in grieving the ignorance, shame, and disgrace that often accommodate racial inquiry.

A Racial Affinity Group brings us into clear intention and is a critical step in developing, from the inside out, racial intimacy, literacy, and skillfulness. To separate into same-race groups, in this sense, is not intended to divide us but rather to leverage the fact that, in relative reality, we are racially divided. In a Racial Affinity Group, we use separation to more deeply understand this conditioning.

Racial Affinity Groups are fundamental to transforming habits of harm and to healing racism. Regardless of how you identify racially, no one is exempt from the need to intimately examine racial conditioning.

Excerpted and adapted from Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Ou t (King, 2018).

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Anti-Racist Classroom - Racial Affinity Groups

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Racial Affinity Groups offer a structure of inquiry and can address many needs. They support us in exploring what has been forbidden, forgotten, and unhealed. For example, in Racial Affinity Groups, white people can discover together their group identity.

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AASL Developing Inclusive Learners and Citizens toolkit 

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AASL Developing Inclusive Learners and Citizens toolkit 

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Designed for librarians and libraries, this toolkit offers resources for creating an inclusive library space and inclusive programming.

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Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen is a classic look at how American history books get it wrong.

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A new edition of the national bestseller and American Book Award winner, with a new preface by the author

Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should read this book. It is both a refreshing antidote to what has passed for history in our educational system and a one-volume education in itself. -Howard Zinn

Since its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has become one of the most important - and successful - history books of our time. Having sold nearly two million copies, the book also won an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship and was heralded on the front page of the New York Times in the summer of 2006.

For this new edition, Loewen has added a new preface that shows how inadequate history courses in high school help produce adult Americans who think Donald Trump can solve their problems, and calls out academic historians for abandoning the concept of truth in a misguided effort to be "objective."

What started out as a survey of the twelve leading American history textbooks has ended up being what the San Francisco Chronicle calls "an extremely convincing plea for truth in education." In Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen brings history alive in all its complexity and ambiguity. Beginning with pre-Columbian history and ranging over characters and events as diverse as Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, the My Lai massacre, 9/11, and the Iraq War, Loewen offers an eye-opening critique of existing textbooks, and a wonderful retelling of American history as it should - and could - be taught to American students.

Introduction

Read the introduction to Lies My Teacher Told Me in an article in the Washington Post, It's back in the age of 'alternative facts': 'Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong '.

Table of Contents

Chapter 3 | The Truth about the First Thanksgiving

ISBN: 978-1620973929 | Published by the New Press

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Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong - Zinn Education Project

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Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should read this book. It is both a refreshing antidote to what has passed for history in our educational system and a one-volume education in itself. -Howard Zinn Since its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has become one of the most important - and successful - history books of our time.

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This great YouTube series has a number of helpful videos on DEI issues of race:
Race in America:                https://youtu.be/CVxAlmAPHec
How MLK Day Became a Holiday:    https://youtu.be/1WCbq4xYLIs
The Rosa Parks Myth:              https://youtu.be/O9fl5KRlnjU
Europeans Enslaving Africans:          https://youtu.be/opUDFaqNgXc
Racial Passing:              https://youtu.be/fvw7Q2eTR5I
Racist Origins of US Law:              https://youtu.be/FFebp7GZeHY
African American vs. Black:              https://youtu.be/8ysHIQQweoE

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history "us history" education pbs "public broadcasting" "danielle bainbridge" "world history" origin origins everything fun "kornhaber brown" ideas "idea ch...

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PBS Origins is the home of history shows from PBS Digital Studios. Subscribe to dive into inclusive, intersectional history content that helps us understand one another more deeply. Our shows: Origin of Everything: Origin of Everything is a show about under-told history and culture hosted by history nerd Danielle Bainbridge, Ph.D.

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A podcast from the Southern Poverty Law Center that looks specifically at race and hate, the first two episodes within the context of a Vermont high school.

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In Part II of "Not Okay," we return to Randolph, Vermont, as activists nationwide protest the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Sean Reed, Rayshard Brooks, Ahmaud Arbery and countless others by police and vigilantes. Randolph Union alumna Brittney Malik describes organizing the "We Demand Change" march through Randolph alongside fellow Randolph students and alumni. Another student, Zi Booska, reflects on a sinister warning from a fellow student's parent, demanding he cease the student campaign to fly the Black Lives Matter flag and change the school's Galloping Ghost mascot. The Galloping Ghost, depicted on a massive mural in the school's gym, is a hooded figure on a white horse. Reminiscent of a KKK member, the mascot mirrors imagery featured in the racist, pro-Confederate film The Birth of a Nation. Amidst escalating tensions, Randolph's principal, Elijah Hawkes, is conflicted: "I potentially have a fire here that can devolve into violence; do I really want to be throwing rocket fuel on it at this point in time?" What will happen when a battle erupts to remove the Galloping Ghost? Can educators protect students of color from ongoing racist threats?

Warning: The following account contains graphic descriptions that may trigger some listeners. Discretion is advised.

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In Part II of "Not Okay," we return to Randolph, Vermont, as activists nationwide protest the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Sean Reed, Rayshard Brooks, Ahmaud Arbery and countless others by police and vigilantes. Randolph Union alumna Brittney Malik describes organizing the "We Demand Change" march through Randolph alongside fellow Randolph students and alumni.

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Confronting Hard History: Using Primary Sources to Teach Slavery, Civil Rights & Black Lives Matter 

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Confronting Hard History: Using Primary Sources to Teach Slavery, Civil Rights & Black Lives Matter 

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Taught by Hassan Kwame Jeffries, associate professor of history at Ohio State, this webinar is targeted at academic libraries but has really useful information on how to use primary sources.

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Confronting Hard History: Using Primary Sources to Teach Slavery, Civil Rights & Black Lives Matter

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AMP Kids Anti-Racism Resources for All Ages

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AMP Kids Anti-Racism Resources for All Ages

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Andrews McMeel Publishing provides this regularly updated list of anti-racism resources. It's a great list to follow!

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Anti-racism is a lifelong commitment, and not something that begins or ends with a social media post. In service of this commitment, we'll be sharing actionable anti-racism resources for all ages throughout the year in our newsletter (which will then be added to this ongoing post).

To our Black readers, librarians, educators, parents, and caregivers: The following resources address anti-racism as a broad mission, but we recognize that in America today, Black children specifically face a disproportionate amount of stress and institutional trauma. All of the following resources feature Black authors, parents, and leaders, but the links that speak specifically to Black children will be designated with two asterisks (**). Resources without asterisks may still be applicable, but are not framed for a specific audience.

To our non-Black audience: Join us in continuing to educate ourselves and others; listening to and uplifting Black voices and organizations who are already doing the work; and starting honest conversations about racial justice with the kids in your life. As mentioned above, resources marked with two asterisks (**) speak specifically to Black children, and we encourage you to check them out as well. It is not enough to actively deconstruct biases in our own lives. We must uplift the voices and triumphs of the Black community, as well as other marginalized groups who have persisted in the face of systemic oppression.

Together, we will raise the next generation on the fundamentals of anti-racism, and fight for a more equitable future for them to inherit.

Resources (updated every two weeks, in no particular order)

Highlight Event:

**KidLit4Black Lives Rally: "We have work to do," said kidlit author Paula Chase-Hyman at the KidLit4Black Lives Rally. If you missed the event, check out a recap from SLJ, and/or stream the recording now. The first half speaks directly to young people, while the second half focuses on "grown-up talk" (i.e., what we should already be doing as mentors, educators, caregivers, etc.).

Conversation Starters:

**Kojo for Kids - (National Ambassador for Young People's Literature) Jason Reynolds talks about racism and the protests: [Reynolds to Benjamin, an 8-year-old caller]: "You're scared of being a black person. What should you do? Well, Benjamin, that's a good question. I think, first of all, I'm going to tell you something that maybe I shouldn't say, because it's going to feel like a cheap answer. But the first thing I'm going to tell you, Benjamin, is that first of all it's okay for you to be afraid. But also know that being a black person comes with a lot of amazing things, right. And so what we never talk about is, you hear the bad stuff, so you hear about the police, you hear about what's happening in the street right now. But the history of black people in America is one that is full of victory, one that is full of pride, one that is full of strength and courage. We've always been courageous."

Washington Post - What white parents get wrong about raising antiracist kids - and how to get it right: "As a white parent, I feel a deep responsibility to provide my children with the tools and awareness to help rebuild our society into something better. I know I'm not alone, but I also know many white parents don't know how or where to start. Research suggests that we need to confront our unfounded assumptions about how and why racism develops, and then we need to engage with our children regularly about race, racism and anti-racism. This is something that parents of color do regularly, because they have to; white parents need to do it, too."

**NPR - Talking Race with Young Children: Jeanette Betancourt, senior vice president for Social Impact at Sesame Workshop, and author Beverly Daniel Tatum.

Children's Community School - Social Justice Resources: "They're not too young to talk about Race."

UNICEF - Talking to Your Kids About Racism: "It can be hard to talk to your children about racism. Being silent cannot be an option. "

Parent Tool Kit - How to Talk to Kids about Race and Racism: "There's no question: talking about race can be sensitive, and yes, even a bit messy."

NYTimes - Talking to Kids About Racism, Early and Often: "These books can help start the conversation."

Good Housekeeping - Parents Need to Have Honest Conversations With Kids About Race and Racism, Starting Very Early: "Babies as young as three months start to process ideas about race. We owe it to our kids to talk about it."

Parent Map - How to Talk to Kids About Race: "Experts offer 8 approaches to broaching the topic."

National Geographic - Talking to kids about race: "Recent protests are sparking questions from children. Not shying away from those conversations is the first step in raising an anti-racist child."

Washington Post - Color-blindness isn't a virtue. Let's stop teaching our kids that it is: "We shouldn't want children to imagine a world with no differences. We should want children to value difference."

INSIDER - Ibram X. Kendi says reading anti-racism books to children is a good start, but parents could be doing more: "Kendi told Insider that being anti-racist requires a constant process of unlearning, and raising anti-racist children requires parents to consistently engage in conversations with themselves and their children about racism."

TEDx - Let's get to the root of racial injustice: "In this inspiring and powerful talk, Megan Francis traces the root causes of our current racial climate to their core causes, debunking common misconceptions and calling out 'fix-all' cures to a complex social problem."

Education and Action:

Hechinger Report - Four ways that educators can help young black students thrive: "Affirming, protecting and cultivating the humanity of black children."

SAFE@SCHOOL - Lesson Plans and Tool Kits: There are a variety of ways to educate for anti-racism and celebrate diversity in the classroom. SAFE@SCHOOL has curated strategies, reading lists, and adaptable guides.

Center for American Progress - Truth and Reconciliation: Addressing Systemic Racism in the United States: "This issue brief discusses the history of slavery in the United States, how its roots have spread to the present day, and what needs to be done to right 400 years of undervaluing Black Americans' work and lives."

act.tv - Systemic Racism Explained (video): "Systemic racism affects every area of life in the US. From incarceration rates to predatory loans, and trying to solve these problems requires changes in major parts of our system. Here's a closer look at what systemic racism is, and how we can solve it."

Black Lives Matter at School - Announcing the 2020 Curriculum Resource Guide: "Free, downloadable lessons to challenge racism, oppression and build happy and healthy classrooms." Available for every grade level.

Edutopia - Using Data to Advance Racial Equity: "Schools that strive for equity can collect, interpret, and use data about students in purposeful and self-reflective ways ... The Black Lives Matter protests aren't just about police brutality. The movement asks all institutions, including schools, to take a hard look at themselves and identify policies that contribute to systemic racism-and then to reform them."

Teaching Now, and Education Week blog - 15 Classroom Resources for Discussing Racism, Policing, and Protest: "'Teachers cannot be silent during this time,' said Patrick Harris, a 6th and 7th grade English and social studies teacher at the Detroit Achievement Academy. 'Teachers have to take a stand. Students are absorbing this, [and] they're going to ask themselves later on in life or even now, "What was my teacher doing during this time?"'"

The Atlantic - What Anti-racist Teachers Do Differently: "Anti-racist teachers take black students seriously. They create a curriculum with black students in mind, and they carefully read students' work to understand what they are expressing. This might sound fairly standard, but making black students feel valued goes beyond general 'good teaching.' It requires educators to view the success of black students as central to the success of their own teaching."

School Library Journal - Curricular Correction: Using Resources to Teach Black History and Culture - "Addressing systemic racism in U.S. education will require a multifaceted approach, and revising the curriculum is a crucial part of it. Now may be the time ... While officially changing a curriculum is a lengthy process, many lesson plans and resources are available for teachers who want to get started. Black Lives Matter (BLM) at School, a national coalition working toward racial justice in education, and the 1619 Project Curriculum are two of the more extensive collections of materials, offering classroom resources from kindergarten through college."

Publishers Weekly - Black Lives Matter: Crucial Discussions in the Classroom - "Following the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers on May 25, people all over the world have taken to the streets for Black Lives Matter protests demanding racial justice and an end to state-sanctioned violence against Black people. Many young people have participated in such protests or marches in recent months, and many others have seen them on TV or social media. PW spoke with teachers across the country about whether and how they plan to discuss racism and the protests with their students, and asked them to share any resources they have found illuminating or helpful in their preparation."

School Library Journal - Teaching Compassion-Not Empathy-and Critical Reading | Opinion - "Empathy is a laudable character trait most educators teach. Well, I don't. I've developed a strong belief about empathy: it's a feeling-one rooted in assumptions, because it does not require interaction. Walking a mile in another person's shoes doesn't have much impact if you don't have to walk alongside anyone, and you get to trade in said shoes for your own at the end of the journey. Empathy can easily become a form of erasure. Now, I teach children to embody compassion."

Celebrating Black Excellence:

**Sesame Street - "I Love My Hair" song

**The Conscious Kid - Children's Books Celebrating Black Boys: "The Conscious Kid Library curated this list of 25 children's books celebrating Black boys, in partnership with Moms of Black Boys United. These books center, reflect, and affirm Black boys, and were written and illustrated by Black authors and artists."

**Brightly - 8 Nonfiction Kids' Books That Celebrate Black Excellence

A Mighty Girl - Broadening the Story: 60 Picture Books Starring Black Mighty Girls. "Greater diversity in books not only gives children of color an opportunity to see themselves in stories but also helps broaden the perspective of all children by fostering children's sense of empathy and connection with characters who might look different from themselves."

POPSUGAR - Diversify Your Kid's Bookshelf with These 20 Children's Books by Black Authors: "Providing children with diverse stories written by Black authors can have a long-lasting impact on their understanding of the world and the importance of celebrating the differences between one another."

**School Library Journal - Excellent Black Lives Matter Picture Books: A round-up of on-sale picture book biographies by and about Black people to revisit and share with young readers today.

Resource Round-Ups:

Brightly - Anti-Racist Resources for Kids: "At Brightly, we're committed to helping you raise kids that are not only 'not racist,' but who are actively 'anti-racist.'"

SLJ - Antiracist Resources and Reads (for all ages): School Library Journal's Betsy Bird has assembled an all-age list of antiracist resources and reads, including book recommendations for every age level, podcasts, articles, videos, and organizations to follow.

To Listen:

**NPR - "Code Switch" podcast episode: "A Decade of Watching Black People Die"

**Book Riot - "Kidlit These Days" podcast discussed the representation of transgender children of color, including recommended reading and special guest Kai Cheng Thom. Listen here or on the podcast app of your choice.

Kidlit These Days, a Book Riot Podcast- OwnVoices, Heard and Valued: "Nicole and Matthew discuss the creation and use of the #OwnVoices hashtag, representation of diversity in kidlit, and the value of storytelling through lived experience."

And finally, a quote from National Ambassador of Young People's Literature, Jason Reynolds from his keynote address at the Bronx Book Festival: "Books create a safe space-a confessional for you where you can grapple and celebrate in private, but safe spaces don't matter if you don't act and create safe worlds."

Black Lives Matter. Black Stories Matter.

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Anti-racism is a lifelong commitment, and not something that begins or ends with a social media post. In service of this commitment, we'll be sharing actionable anti-racism resources for all ages throughout the year in our newsletter (which will then be added to this ongoing post).

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Jewell, T. (2020). This book is antiracist. Frances Lincoln Children's Books.

This book can serve as a lesson planning guide.

Teaching Tolerance resource

Educator Guide

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American Library Association. (2007, April 19). Key action areas. http://www.ala.org/aboutala/missionpriorities/keyactionareas

Bethune, M. M. (n.d.).  Dr. Bethune’s last will and testament.  https://www.cookman.edu/about_bcu/history/lastwill_testament.html

Bishop, R. S. (2015, January 3). Multicultural literacy: Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Reading Rockets. https://scenicregional.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Mirrors-Windows-and-Sliding-Glass-Doors.pdf

Maughan, S. (2020, August 14). Black lives matter: Crucial discussions in the classroom.  Publishers Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/84109-black-lives-matter-crucial-discussions-in-the-classroom.html

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An ongoing initiative from The New York Times that explores the history and legacy of slavery in America.

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American slavery began 400 years ago this month. This is referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the country’s true origin.

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This helpful info sheet provides a guide to responding to racist comments in the classroom.

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With curated playlists by topic, this is an invaluable resource for lesson planning on the intersection of DEI issues and the media.

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CMP offers a range of curated playlists that can be used for individual lessons or extended over an entire unit. Each playlist suggests media that can be shown in the classroom or viewed at home in a sequence recommended by CMP. Playlists cover each of the main identity categories (e.g. gender, race & ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, age, disability) on the site as well as other focused topics that may be germane to school curriculum (e.g. immigration, bullying & self-esteem).

After exploring each playlist, produce your own media. Address issues or themes that come up in the playlist. Make a commentary about a piece of media or social media. Tell a story about your neighborhood or community. Take a look at our DIY section for ideas!

Playlists will be added as we receive feedback & suggestions from educators.

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CMP offers a range of curated playlists that can be used for individual lessons or extended over an entire unit. Each playlist suggests media that can be shown in the classroom or viewed at home in a sequence recommended by ... Continue reading →

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Investigate your own biases with Harvard's Project Implicit.

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Log in or register to find out your implicit associations about race, gender, sexual orientation, and other topics!

Or, continue as a guest by selecting from our available language/nation demonstration sites:

GO!

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Log in or register to find out your implicit associations about race, gender, sexual orientation, and other topics! Or, continue as a guest by selecting from our available language/nation demonstration sites: GO!

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Browne, M. L., Acevedo, E., & Gatwood, O. (2020). Woke: A young poet's call to justice. Roaring Brook Press.

An engaging collection of poetry.

NEA's Read Across America resources

Read-aloud with Mahogany L. Browne

Responsive Reads lesson plan

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Although EJI does not provide direct lesson plans, their reports include a wealth of written and audiovisual materials to support teaching on tough racial topics like lynching, slavery, and Reconstruction.

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EJI’s reports document our history of racial injustice and its legacy.

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Another great resource from Hassan Kwame Jeffries and the Southern Poverty Law Center, this detailed guide discusses how to teach slavery in a manner that gets the facts right and supports students.

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Schools are not adequately teaching the history of American slavery, educators are not sufficiently prepared to teach it, textbooks do not have enough material about it, and – as a result – students lack a basic knowledge of the important role it played in shaping the United States and the impact it…

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Sharing Stories: Antiracism and Universal Design for Learning

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Sharing Stories: Antiracism and Universal Design for Learning

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A fantastic training about culturally relevant pedagogy and how it benefits all learners.

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Sharing Stories: Antiracism and Universal Design for Learning with Andratesha Fritzgerald

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Oluo, I. (2019). So you want to talk about race. Seal Press.

A guide to how to have conversations about tough topics like police brutality, cultural appropriate, and microaggressions.

LitCharts study guide

Reading Guide from the Boulder Public Library

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Kendi, I. X. (2019). How to be an antiracist. One World.

Kendi, I. X. (2016). Stamped from the beginning: The definitive history of racist ideas in America. Bold Type Books.

Explore Dr. Kendi's ideas and books

Book club kit for How to Be an Antiracist

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The "Why Not" Workshop: Let's Talk About Race

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The "Why Not" Workshop: Let's Talk About Race

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A helpful intro training by Scholastic concerning DEI discussions around race.

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Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship

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Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship

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Latham, I., Waters, C., Qualls, S. (Illus.), & Alko, S. (Illus.). (2018). Can I touch your hair? Poems of race, mistakes, and friendship. Carolrhoda Books.

Perfect for upper elementary, I really enjoyed this conversation in poems.

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Can I Touch Your Hair?: Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship

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58 Total Resources 2 Awards View Text Complexity Discover Like Books

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Not Light, But Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Conversations in the Classroom

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Not Light, But Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Conversations in the Classroom

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Kay, M. R. (2018). Not light, but fire: How to lead meaningful conversations in the classroom. Stenhouse Publishers.

A guide for teachers on how to lead conversations on race, specifically in high school classrooms.

So many great resources on Matthew Kay's website

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A great, short video

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Hudson, W., & Willis Hudson, C. (2018). We rise, we resist, we raise our voices. Crown Books for Young Readers.

This collection of prose and poetry provides a wealth of readings to incorporate into ELA, social studies, and more.

A discussion with the editors by Just Us Books

Educators Guide

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Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy

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Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy

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Muhammed, G. (2020). Cultivating genius: An equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy. Scholastic.

Cult of Pedagogy provides an excellent resource for using this new title for educator training.

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Sponsored by Pear Deck and ISTE U

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

For years teachers have been looking for ways to improve the academic performance of all students, especially students of color and those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. While some of these efforts have been successful, many more have had lackluster results.

In the past, we've explored different approaches teachers can take to do a better job of reaching all students: interviews with Dena Simmons, Zaretta Hammond, Pedro Noguera, and Hedreich Nichols, to name a few. In these conversations, we looked at more effective ways of relating to students, strategies for working toward equity outside the classroom, and instructional methods that are more culturally responsive.

This post continues that work with a fresh response to the question of how to better serve diverse students. It's a framework that deals directly with the curriculum side of things, the standards, the actual content we teach in our classrooms. The framework is called Historically Responsive Literacy, and it was developed by Dr. Gholdy Muhammad, a professor, a former middle school educator, and the author of the book Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy, where she makes the case for this framework.

In short, Muhammad believes we're not reaching many of our students, especially Black students, because our curricula and standards are lacking. The emphasis in our current standards is mainly on skills-skills that can be measured easily on standardized tests-and not a whole lot else. Some teachers go beyond the tested material, pushing students to think critically, exploring social emotional competencies, and designing opportunities for inquiry-based learning; unfortunately, the standards themselves don't require those things.

But there was a time in history when a more complete, more human form of "curriculum" did exist, and it energized and inspired its students-all of them Black men and women-to read, write, speak, and publish with the kind of passion and dedication we would want all of our students to have about learning. This curriculum evolved within the Black literary societies of the 19th century. These groups met regularly to read, write about, and discuss a wide range of texts and ideas. Their goals were far loftier than basic skill development or scores on a test, and engagement-to borrow a term we use in modern education-was at an all-time high.

These societies were the inspiration for Muhammad's Historically Responsive Literacy framework, a four-layered pedagogical model that places skills on an equal plane with three other learning pursuits: identity, intellect, and criticality.

The framework was designed with Black students in mind, but it will benefit all students. Muhammad explains it this way: "If we start with Blackness (which we have not traditionally done in schooling) or the group of people who have uniquely survived the harshest oppressions in this country, then we begin to understand ways to get literacy education right for all" (p. 22).

In our interview, she unpacks all four layers of her framework and helps us understand what it looks like to implement them in the classroom. What follows is a summary of our conversation.

First, Two Clarifications

Is Historically Responsive Literacy Just for "Literacy" Teachers?

No. In the book, Muhammad explains that in the past, "literacy was synonymous with education, so although I name 'literacy,' these four pursuits can be used and layered with math, science, ELA, social studies, or physical education/health" (p. 57).

In other words, this is not just a framework for ELA teachers, and in the book, Muhammad explores how to implement HRL in many different subject areas.

Is HRL different from Culturally Responsive Teaching?

Think of HRL as living under the broader umbrella of Culturally Responsive Teaching, which includes relationship-building, instructional strategies, and curriculum. "My work is taking a more historic look back and putting a practical model to the theory," Muhammad says.

The Four Layers of Historically Responsive Literacy

Historically Responsive Literacy is built on four layers, four "learning pursuits" that Muhammad believes should receive equal priority

1. Identity

For students to be fully engaged in school they must first find it relevant, and that starts with identity.

"Identity is who you say you are, who others say you are... (and) who you desire to be," Muhammad says. "I feel like children are trying to make sense of all three areas, and the curriculum and the pedagogy should be an opportunity for students to know themselves."

Muhammad believes this is especially important for children of color because "when we look at representation in children's literature, in society oftentimes, and historically, they are invisible or represented in negative ways. So the classroom needs to be a space for students to affirm and celebrate and validate who they are, so that they know they are enough, so they know they are brilliant and excellent and beautiful. Because society doesn't tell us that all the time."

Along with self-knowledge, the learning pursuit of identity should also include knowledge of others who are different from ourselves. "When students learn about the lives of other people," Muhammad says, "they are less prone to hate, to treat them in harmful or hurtful ways."

What it looks like in the classroom: Start by asking yourself, "How does my teaching and learning help students to learn about themselves and about others?"

From there, plan instruction and write learning goals to satisfy that question. Muhammad gives an example from science. "Some teachers have written it (in language like) Students will understand their environmental identity and their roles and responsibilities regarding the planet. Then in the lesson or unit there are opportunities for students to deeply reflect about how they recycle or (whether) they take care of the earth and the planet and the environment."

Finally, be sure to assess for it. "Kids know that if my teacher values it that she or he or they are going to test it," Muhammad says. "You can assess it in discussion, in a quiz, or a summative kind of test at the end: What are five things you can do to take care of the planet? Or Name five roles that humans play on climate change. So it could be a qualitative or a quantitative assessment, but if you value it enough, you can assess it."

2. Skills

So much of our current curricula and standards already focus on skills, so this part of the framework is nothing new; what's important is to not throw it out when the other three layers are added.

Muhammad explains that this abandonment of skills is a common problem when new approaches to schooling are introduced. "That's a way of thinking that we have to dismantle," she says. "Sometimes we think that when we add identity or when we add voice and freedom of expression, that somehow we don't focus on skills at all. But that's just simply not true. You can have it all. You can have voice and fun and engagement and skills."

What it looks like in the classroom: Teaching skills is more or less what you'd expect typical school content to be, what our current standards are already prescribing. "In math it can be learning equations. In ELA it can be citing textual evidence. In social studies, it can be questioning the source. In physical education it can be learning to play basketball."

So the skills themselves may be taught in whatever way works best for your students. The difference now is that in terms of class time and assessment, their weight will be equal to that of the other three layers.

3. Intellect

Along with identifying the skills students need to acquire, Muhammad urges us to ask What do we want our students to become smarter about?

Because our recent standards have been so skills-driven, knowledge has fallen by the wayside in a lot of schools, and that can strip away the joy that comes from simply learning new things about the world. But the Black Literary Societies of the 19th century valued knowledge as a vital part of a person's development. "So I'm pushing this idea of intellectualism," Muhammad says, "of treating young people as if they are scholars and intellectuals and thinkers."

She sees the loss of intellectualism even in how we prepare and treat teachers. "It's like we're sucking the power out of them by telling them to read a script in a curriculum. We need to go back to teacher as intellectual, teacher as scholar, reserving the field for the brightest among us who are knowledge-seekers."

And Muhammad's definition of intellectualism goes beyond simply gathering facts. "Intellectualism is when you do something with that knowledge, where you apply it somehow, in your discussion, in your activism, in your actions."

What it looks like in the classroom: When developing lessons and units, ask yourself, "How does my teaching and learning help to teach students new knowledge and concepts? New histories, new people, places, and things?"

Muhammad cautions teachers not to confuse skills for knowledge. "You shouldn't say they became smarter about equations or citing textual evidence," she says. "That's not intellect. Those are skills."

4. Criticality

"Criticality is helping students to read, write and think in active ways," Muhammad explains, "as opposed to passive-when you ask a question and there's one correct answer, and you just take it in. We don't want them to be passive consumers of knowledge. We want them to question what they hear on the news."

"We see the word critical and sometimes our minds can go to critical thinking," she continues. "But it's more than just deep and analytical thinking. Criticality is deep and analytical thinking to understand power, equity, anti-racism and other anti-oppressions. This is where we help students to be woke."

This fourth layer is essential "because oppression exists in the world. Period. We want students to leave our schools not contributing to more oppression or wrongdoing and hurt in their relationships and with strangers. We also don't want them to be silent. If they see oppression, we want them to actively respond to it."

What it looks like in the classroom: "With criticality," Muhammad says, "the teacher is asking, How does my teaching and learning help students to understand power, equity, anti-racism and anti-oppression? So (students are) reading, writing, thinking in active ways to understand power, inequality, equity, oppression. They're investigating different standpoints, especially the marginalized point of view, and reading between the lines. In other words, reading for what's not being said and for what's not there.

The brilliance of the framework is revealed when Muhammad explains that the four layers are not separate, but progressive, each one building on the layers that came before it, starting with identity: "They see themselves, they validate themselves, they're learning about other people, which creates a safe space to learn the skills. If you learn the skills, you can learn the intellect. You cannot learn the intellectualism without first having those skills to do so. If you have the intellectualism and that knowledge, you can critique the knowledge. Because of all the layers that came before it, you now have the capacity to disrupt and to dismantle. If you're just woke without the identity and the skills and the intellect, you're not going to be able to make change in ways that you could with those things."

Tough, but Possible

Making this kind of shift-especially if our standards still don't reflect these four layers-will not be an easy task to take on. This concern has been expressed when Muhammad presents her framework to teachers. But despite its challenges, she feels this type of curriculum is exactly what any parent would want for their child.

"It's not a matter or a question of if it's tough," she says. "The question is, is it possible? Everything is tough. And if you had your own child, if you're a parent, parents are going to equally value the beautiful ways that their child loves themselves: identity, the skills they have, the intellect they have, and the social consciousness they have. I don't see parents saying No, let's just talk about my child's reading skills. They talk about their emotional intelligence, they talk about the whole child."

"And that's what we're trying to get to," she says. "This is humanizing work."

Come back for more.
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Historically Responsive Literacy: A More Complete Education for All Students

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Based on the work of 19th century Black literary societies, this fresh approach to curriculum focuses on identity, skills, intellect, and criticality.

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Educator Connection LIVE! Navigating Challenging Conversations on Race

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Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race

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Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race

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Tatum, B. D. (2017). Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria? And other conversations about race. Revised and updated. Basic Books.

This 20th anniversary edition of the classic text is a must-read for educators who want to engage in DEI work around the topic of race.

Discussion Guide from the author

Presentation by Dr. Tatum

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For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education

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For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education

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Emdin, C., (2016). For white folks who teach in the hood... and the rest of y'all too: Reality pedagogy and urban education. Beacon Press.

A critical read about how to make your pedagogy truly multicultural!

Christopher Emdin's book talk

#HipHopEd

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Courageous Conversations about Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools

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Courageous Conversations about Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools

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Singleton, G. E. (2015). Courageous conversations about race: A field guide for achieving equity in schools (2nd ed.). Corwin.

A key resource for understanding why racial equity matters in schools.

Tons of supporting resources on the website

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Another fantastic resource from Teaching Tolerance.

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How to Teach American History in a Divided Country

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How to Teach American History in a Divided Country

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"You can’t understand the present without seeing the connections between this history and the socioeconomic and racial imbalances it created."

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Kristina Rizga: How are the Civil War and Reconstruction taught at Mississippi schools?

Chuck Yarborough: They are not taught for the most part, unfortunately. In theory, students are supposed to have been taught the Civil War and Reconstruction before arriving here, but the vast majority of them have not been taught Reconstruction. A few more learned something about the Civil War, but not a lot. They have been taught pretty well the horrors of slavery, but they have not been taught the complexities of those systems: how it developed and its continued effects to this day. So when they arrive in my classroom, I start with the end of the Civil War-1865-and then I teach Reconstruction for the first several weeks of the class.

I teach with the simple assessment of my professors in college, which I think is spot on: Slavery was the cause of the Civil War. And we begin this discussion by reading the Mississippi Ordinance of Secession, which makes it clear that the Civil War happened because white southerners desired to defend slavery as an institution for their own benefit.

I suspect that my generation-people in their 40s or 50s-were taught something different. They were taught that there were all these other constitutional issues and it was really about states' rights. That's a kinder and gentler reason for people to have fought each other. And if you believe that, then you believe that southern Confederates were just like the Founding Fathers of the United States who were fighting a political struggle.

You can't understand American history without understanding the steps forward, racially and socioeconomically, that Reconstruction presented initially, and then the steps backward that were taken with the violent reestablishment of white supremacy. You can't understand the present without seeing the connections between this history and the socioeconomic and racial imbalances it created. But Reconstruction is not on the state test. Therefore, the schools that are teaching the state tests are not teaching Reconstruction at all, and in today's society, that's particularly problematic.

Rizga: What kind of learning experiences have helped you bring out the best work in your students?

Yarborough: I think classroom work has to empower students academically and socially. School is so much more than academic content. Education is also about a sense of community, collaboration, empathy, and confidence. At some point, I'm a life coach-and this means that I have to show students that they matter and that their work matters. All of this helps them develop a sense of place and belonging. When that happens, they produce their best work.

With the research in the local archives and performance projects that we do in the community, we try to make history come alive. The reason this approach works for so many students, I believe, is that they see how the work they do matters to a bigger community: how it resonates, challenges the community to reach a new level of understanding, and sets a model for leading in a community.

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How to Teach American History in a Divided Country

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Kristina Rizga: How are the Civil War and Reconstruction taught at Mississippi schools? Chuck Yarborough: They are not taught for the most part, unfortunately. In theory, students are supposed to have been taught the Civil War and Reconstruction before arriving here, but the vast majority of them have not been taught Reconstruction.

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A handy guide for how to speak up at school when you encounter biased language or situations.

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The full guide from Teaching Tolerance

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Anti-Racism: Teachers Must Do the Heavy Lifting

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Anti-Racism: Teachers Must Do the Heavy Lifting

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Learning for Justice (Formerly Teaching Tolerance)

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Last summer, I watched with pride as students got involved in local activism. I also had a few questions.

"How can I support my students right now?" I asked myself. "How can I make sure our Black students feel safe at school? Where can I find resources to talk about these events with them next year?"

I teach African American literature to juniors and seniors. Though my classes are among the most diverse on campus, my school and district as a whole remain largely segregated. Black students only make up around 2% of our suburban student population.

In the absence of Black teachers at my school, I know it is my job to prioritize the experiences of my Black students. I often benefit from privilege because I am white-presenting, but my identity as an Iranian woman allows me to share my own vulnerable experiences of prejudice.

I learn as much as I can from my students' stories and questions, and I try to use that knowledge to advocate for them. So, as protests in support of Black lives spread across the country, I-like many educators-looked to my school and district leadership for guidance.

We received nothing. All-staff emails from school leaders had no mention of Black Lives Matter, injustice, solidarity, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, Tony McDade or Elijah McClain-none of the people or topics my students were already talking about as they worked together to understand implicit bias, modern school segregation, voter suppression, environmental racism and police brutality.

After days of silence, our students finally received a message from school and district leaders.

The email acknowledged that racism and police brutality are uncomfortable for people to discuss. It explained that some are afraid to say something that may be insulting or sound insensitive.

After reading the letter from the principal, one student emailed her response:

"During high school, there have been several times when the topic of slavery and the civil rights era arose, and students would turn their heads and stare at me, the only Black girl in that classroom, and force me to give my take on it and share my experiences. But where was the administration sending me an email, letting me know that if I don't want to talk about it, I don't have to?"

Stories like hers are far too common. According to a 2020 Teach Plus study, efforts to discuss race and racism in school often put teachers and students of color in a position of "navigating interactions that are centered around the experiences of white people."

Just as the message from leadership focused on the discomfort of discussing race rather than racism's direct impact on our students of color, educators across the country are starting a journey toward anti-racism but neglecting to address the racism already present in our schools.

We know that schools are places that can reinscribe trauma, including racialized trauma. We know that harm is inflicted on BIPOC students in school, through classroom culture, through policy and through the curriculum. If we listen, our students will reveal that racism. We need to listen.

Teachers and school district leaders must understand the gravity of our responsibility at this pivotal moment in our nation's history. We cannot allow anti-racism work to be pushed aside.

Every educator who is committed to anti-racism work should become familiar with achievement, discipline, attendance and school climate data in order to learn how schools and districts disproportionately harm students of color.

The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights disaggregates data by subgroup, and shedding light on disproportionate statistics for certain subgroups of students is an essential component of equitable and empowering advocacy. Educators of all races should be using our voice and privilege to question unjust policies and practices in our schools.

Teacher leaders should position anti-racism at the forefront of our student outcomes and encourage our districts to invest in long-term anti-racism, implicit bias, curriculum and professional development programs through Black-owned consulting firms. But as we advocate for systemic change, there is still crucial work to be done on ourselves and in our classrooms.

We need to encourage direct, honest discussions about the role of white supremacy in our schools. Educators need to examine our biases and privileges. We need to revisit our curriculum, our assessment and grading practices, and our discipline policies. And we need to hold ourselves, our colleagues and our school and district administrations accountable.

As we approach the one-year anniversary of last summer's protests-and as police brutality continues to take the lives of young people of color-we educators must take responsibility for anti-racist education.

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Anti-racism: Educators Must Do the Heavy Lifting

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Last summer, I watched with pride as students got involved in local activism. I also had a few questions. "How can I support my students right now?" I asked myself. "How can I make sure our Black students feel safe at school? Where can I find resources to talk about these events with them next year?"

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This is a article that provides an overview of DEI audits for libraries.

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Academic libraries have long understood the importance of assessing their work. For example, they can look at the impact of their information literacy programs on student success or determine whether their textbook lending program is cost-effective for the library and for students.

Assessment work is multifaceted and needs both leadership and expertise to be successful. When assessments include matters of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), you have an even more complex situation.

Traditional library assessment practices often exclude DEI elements, or many academic libraries may be unsure about DEI assessments. Yet it's crucial to consider: If institutions are already engaging in DEI work, what is the extent of the engagement? Where might they be missing the mark? What should their next steps be?

This is where two forms of assessment-the whole-library DEI audit and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Self-Assessment Audit (DEISAA)-may fill a void. In 2017, with insight and support from organization development expert Nikhat Ghouse, I created DEISAA to support DEI evaluation for an academic health sciences library. The library was interested in determining the status and progress of its DEI efforts, ranging from recruitment and retention of historically excluded populations to integration of DEI into library messaging and statements.

DEISAA is not a climate assessment that focuses on employees' individual experiences of DEI within the workplace; it's an attempt to offer a more holistic view of a library's DEI efforts. Ghouse and I modeled it after the Social Inclusion Audit, a toolkit developed by the Canadian Urban Libraries Council that assesses libraries for 12 social inclusion outcomes. We expanded and organized DEISAA into six sections suggested by the Star Model, an organizational design framework on which a company bases its design choices.

Through a free pilot program for individual libraries, DEISAA has evolved to include eight sections-structures, strategy, processes, rewards, people, external DEI, accessibility for users, and accessibility for employees-with more than 60 items for libraries to consider. We have seen through piloting and continued use that some audit items simply don't apply to every academic library, often because of larger institutional contexts outside the libraries' control. Libraries may adapt DEISAA by removing items or indicating when an item doesn't apply.

Why should a library embark on such a rigorous DEI audit? The value of completing it is threefold: The library gets a baseline for a wide variety of DEI efforts in which it is engaged or wishes to engage in the future; a baseline for future assessment, allowing it to measure progress and growth; and improved organizational communication, as successfully completing the audit requires library-wide engagement and includes all voices. In many ways, our audit shows academic libraries the vast possibilities of DEI work. While this can be daunting, it showcases how important and ingrained DEI work should be within libraries.

Our DEISAA is a dynamic instrument, growing and changing with each use. It will never be perfect. But with DEI work, perfection should not be the goal; increased effort, improvement, and positive change are more achievable outcomes.

Think of the DEISAA as a starting point, helping libraries to better understand their DEI efforts and providing them with information needed to make evidence-based decisions and move forward. With continued use, libraries should see fewer DEI items that aren't being addressed and increased engagement overall.

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The Value of a DEI Audit | American Libraries Magazine

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Academic libraries have long understood the importance of assessing their work. For example, they can look at the impact of their information literacy programs on student success or determine whether their textbook lending program is cost-effective for the library and for students. Assessment work is multifaceted and needs both leadership and expertise to be successful.

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Join us for an enlightening hour with bestselling author Kwame Christian as he chats about his new book How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race: Practical Tools for Necessary Change in the Workplace and Beyond .

How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race helps readers gain the confidence to not only talk about race, but actually make a difference when you do. Negotiation expert Kwame Christian's motto is: "The best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations." If we want a more equitable workplace, and a more equitable world, we have to talk to each other about race. But, for so many of us, that's easier said than done. Many people avoid conversations about race because of fear: fear of discomfort, damaging important relationships, being misunderstood, "cancelled," or ostracized. How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race equips you with the skills you need to make these crucial conversations easier and more productive. Whether you're looking to create change for yourself and other BIPOC, or a white ally seeking to support your coworkers or clients, you'll learn how to:

Overcome your internal barriers to talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Work around others' barriers to productive discussion.

Be strategic about the outcome you want, and guide the conversation accordingly.

Use "Compassionate Curiosity" to connect and persuade.

Avoid common mistakes.

Communicate more effectively over email, when you can't talk face to face.

If you've ever struggled to turn that passion into persuasion, or been too afraid to speak up at work (or outside of it), this talk is for you. The first step toward lasting social change is productive discussion. With Kwame Christian guiding you, you'll never shy away from those important conversations again--instead approaching them with courage and conviction.

About The Author: Kwame Christian is a best-selling author, lawyer, professor, and the Managing Director of the American Negotiation Institute. He has conducted countless specialized trainings worldwide and is a highly sought after keynote speaker. His best-selling book, Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life has helped countless individuals overcome the fear, anxiety and emotion associated with difficult conversations using the Compassionate Curiosity™ Framework. He's also host of the Negotiate Anything Podcast. With over four million downloads and listeners in more than 180 countries, it is the most popular negotiation podcast in the world.

In addition, Kwame is a business lawyer at Carlile, Patchen & Murphy LLP and serves as a professor for The Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law in its top-ranked dispute resolution program and Otterbein University's MBA program. Kwame's proudest achievement is his family. He's married to Dr. Whitney Christian and they have two lovely sons, Kai and Dominic.

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LSC | Watch | Columbus Metropolitan Library Programs

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Join us for an enlightening hour with bestselling author Kwame Christian as he chats about his new book How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race: Practical Tools for Necessary Change in the Workplace and Beyond . How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race helps readers gain the confidence to not only talk about race, but actually make a difference when you do.

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Serving Unhoused Members of Your Community 

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Serving Unhoused Members of Your Community 

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* Kimberli Buckley, Senior Community Library Manager, Contra Costa County Library
* Abby O'Neill, Library Services Manager, Contra Costa County Library
* Gia Paolini, Senior Community Library Manager, Contra Costa County Library
* Derek Wolfgram, Library Director, Redwood City Library

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Future of Libraries 2022 Conference: Expanding Your Toolbox for a Changing World (4 of 7)

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On Overlap and Otherness: A Comparison of Three Vocabularies’ Approaches to LGBTQ+ Identity

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On Overlap and Otherness: A Comparison of Three Vocabularies’ Approaches to LGBTQ+ Identity

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Prioritizing the People: Developing a Method for Evaluating a Collection’s Description of Diverse Populations

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Prioritizing the People: Developing a Method for Evaluating a Collection’s Description of Diverse Populations

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1 Tina Gross, Arlene G. Taylor, and Daniel N. Joudrey, "Still a Lot to Lose: The Role of Controlled Vocabulary in Keyword Searching," Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 53, no. 1 (2015): 1-39.

2 Daniel N. Joudrey and Arlene G. Taylor, The Organization of Information, 4th ed. (Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited, 2018), 439.

3 Hope A. Olson, "Mapping Beyond Dewey's Boundaries: Constructing Classificatory Space for Marginalized Knowledge Domains," Library Trends 47, no. 2 (1998): 239.

4 See Heidi Blackburn and Jason Heppler, "Hidden Voices: A Case Study Analysis of Subject Headings for Book Titles on Women in Science," Science & Technology Libraries (2022): 1-19; Kristin H. Gerhard, Mila C. Su, and Charlotte C. Rubens, "An Empirical Examination of Subject Headings for Women's Studies Core Materials," College & Research Libraries 59, no. 2 (1998): 129-37; Hope A. Olson, "How We Construct Subjects: A Feminist Analysis," Library Trends 56, no. 2 (2007): 509-41.

5 See Doris Hargrett Clack, "Subject Access to African American Studies Resources in Online Catalogs: Issues and Answers," Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 19, no. 2 (1995): 49-66; Sara A. Howard and Steven A. Knowlton, "Browsing through Bias: The Library of Congress Classification and Subject Headings for African American Studies and LGBTQIA Studies," Library Trends 67, no. 1 (2018): 74-88.

6 See Christine Bone and Brett Lougheed, "Library of Congress Subject Headings Related to Indigenous Peoples: Changing LCSH for Use in a Canadian Archival Context," Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 56, no. 1 (2018), 83-95; Heather M. Campbell, Christopher S. Dieckman, Wesley Teal, and Harriet E. Wintermute, "Improving Subject Headings for Iowa Indigenous Peoples," Library Resources & Technical Services 66, no. 1 (2022): 48-59; Sharon Farnel, Denise Koufogiannakis, Sheila Laroque, Ian Bigelow, Anne Carr-Wiggin, Debbie Feisst, and Kayla Lar-Son, "Rethinking Representation: Indigenous Peoples and Contexts at the University of Alberta Libraries," The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion 2, no. 3 (2018): 9-25; Heather Moulaison Sandy and Jenny Bossaller, "Providing Cognitively Just Subject Access to Indigenous Knowledge through Knowledge Organizations Systems," Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 55, no. 3 (2017): 129-152.

7 See Ben Christensen, "Minoritization vs. Universalization: Lesbianism and Male Homosexuality in LCSH and LCC," Knowledge Organization 35, no. 4 (2008): 229-38; Matt Johnson, "Transgender Subject Access: History and Current Practice," Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 48, no. 8 (2010): 661-83; K.R. Roberto, "Inflexible Bodies: Metadata for Transgender Identities*," Journal of Information Ethics 20, no. 2 (2011): 56-64; Brian M. Watson, ""There was Sex but no Sexuality*:" Critical Cataloging and the Classification of Asexuality in LCSH," Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 58, no. 6: 547-65.

8 Sanford Berman, Prejudices and Antipathies: A Tract on the LC Subject Heads Concerning People, (Scarecrow Press, 1971), xiv.

9 Cambridge University Decolonising Through Critical Librarianship Group, "Cataloguing, Classification and Critical Librarianship at Cambridge University," Narrative Expansions: Interpreting Decolonisation in Academic Libraries, 2022, pp. 169.

10 Hope A. Olson, "Difference, Culture and Change: The Untapped Potential of LCSH," Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 29, no. 1-2 (2000): 60-2.

11 Kristen J. Nyitray & Dana Reijerkerk, "Searching for Paumanok: A Study of Library of Congress Authorities and Classifications for Indigenous Long Island, New York," Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 59, no. 5 (2021): 409-41.

12 Paromita Biswas, "Rooted in the Past: Use of 'East Indians' in Library of Congress Subject Headings," Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 56, no. 1 (2018): 1-18.

13 Marisa Elena Duarte and Miranda Belarde-Lewis, "Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies," Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 53, no. 5-6 (2015): 677-702.

14 Amelia Koford, "How Disability Studies Scholars Interact with Subject Headings," Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 52, no. 4 (2014): 397.

15 George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind, (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 60-1.

16 "LC Subject Headings (LCSH): Librarians," Library of Congress, http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85076491 (accessed 10 February 2022).

17 Melissa Adler, Jeffrey T. Huber, and A. Tyler Nix, "Stigmatizing Disability: Library Classifications and the Marking and Marginalization of Books about People with Disabilities," Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy 87, no. 2 (2017): 119.

18 Amelia Koford, "How Disability Studies Scholars Interact with Subject Headings," Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 52, no. 4 (2014): 388-411.

19 "LC Subject Headings (LCSH): Indians of North America," Library of Congress, http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85065184 (accessed 10 February 2022).

20 "LC Subject Headings (LCSH): East Indians," Library of Congress, http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85040566 (accessed 10 February 2022).

21 "LC Subject Headings (LCSH): Noncitizen detention centers," Library of Congress, http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh97006426 (accessed 10 February 2022).

22 "LC Subject Headings (LCSH): Indian cooking," Library of Congress, http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85031834 (accessed 10 February 2022).

23 At the time of writing, the examples provided by the "Subject of Works" box on the id.loc.gov page for "Indian cooking" feature a mix of works obviously related to the cuisine of or inspired by the country of India as well as cuisine associated with the Indigenous peoples of North America.

24 "Homosaurus: An International LGBTQ + Linked Data Vocabulary," Digital Transgender Archive, https://homosaurus.org/ (accessed 10 February 2022).

25 "African American Subject Funnel Project," Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/aba/pcc/saco/aframerfun.html (accessed 10 February 2022).

26 Kristen J. Nyitray & Dana Reijerkerk, "Searching for Paumanok: A Study of Library of Congress Authorities and Classifications for Indigenous Long Island, New York," Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 59, no. 5 (2021): 412.

27 Junli Diao, "Conceptualizations of Catalogers' Judgment through Content Analysis: A Preliminary Investigation," Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 56, no. 4 (2018): 314.

28 Sheila S. Intner, "Thoughts on Cataloger's Judgment," Technicalities 34, no. 1 (2014: 1-6.

29 Jennifer Y. Kim and Loriann Roberson, "I'm biased and so are you What should organizations do? A review of organizational implicit-bias training programs," Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, December 20, 2021.

30 Robbyn-Nicole Livingston and Malkia Crowder, "Implicit Bias: What Is It and How Does It Affect Us?," Perspectives 45, no. 1 (2021): 43.

31 Cataloging Ethics Steering Committee, "Cataloging Code of Ethics," (2021) http://hdl.handle.net/11213/16716 (accessed 10 February 2022).

32 Ibid.

33 "Cataloging Ethics Bibliography," Cataloging Ethics Steering Committee, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bHtghhSL54PFlekIwnmHpF9O_2KR_GMq5GWIBgNLKDg/edit (accessed 10 February 2022).

34 "Problem LCSH," Cataloging Lab, https://cataloginglab.org/problem-lcsh/ (accessed 10 February 2022).

35 "Classification Web: Library of Congress Classification, Subject and Name Headings," Classification Web, https://classweb.org (accessed 10 February 2022).

36 Ed Summers, "pyMARC Documentation: Release 4.0.0," (2020): https://pymarc.readthedocs.io/_/downloads/en/stable/pdf/

37 "The Python Standard Library," Python, https://docs.python.org/3/library/ (accessed 10 February 2022).

38 Ed Summers, "pyMARC Documentation: Release 4.0.0," (2020): https://pymarc.readthedocs.io/_/downloads/en/stable/pdf/

39 Ibid.

40 "What is R?," R Project, https://www.r-project.org/about.html (accessed 10 February 2022).

41 Monika Glowacka-Musial, "Data Visualization with R for Digital Collections," Library Technology Reports 57: no. 1 (2021), 1-55.

42 "Tidyverse," Tidyverse, https://www.tidyverse.org/ (accessed 10 February 2022).

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library of congress subject headings (lcsh)

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Prioritizing the People: Developing a Method for Evaluating a Collection's Description of Diverse Populations

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1 Tina Gross, Arlene G. Taylor, and Daniel N. Joudrey, "Still a Lot to Lose: The Role of Controlled Vocabulary in Keyword Searching," Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 53, no. 1 (2015): 1-39. 2 Daniel N. Joudrey and Arlene G. Taylor, The Organization of Information, 4th ed. (Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited, 2018), 439.

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Various DEI Journal Articles & Presentation

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Various DEI Journal Articles & Presentation

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The following  post is one in a regular series on issues of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility, compiled by Jay Weitz.

Library and museum empathy

With funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Empathy Project is offering " Institutional and Social Empathy in COVID-19: Open Training Modules for Library and Museum Workers." The free self-paced sessions are intended for all museum and library workers to increase awareness of barriers to service for historically marginalized users who may have both expressed and unexpressed needs. Among the topics covered are: "Compassion fatigue, Cultural humility, Implicit bias, Intent vs impact, Microaggressions, Power and privilege."

Media representation

Jimmeka Anderson, founder of the nonprofit I AM not the MEdia contributes " Learning to Read Representation: Critical media literacy needs to be taught, not left to chance" to the November/December 2022 issue of American Libraries (Volume 53, Numbers 11/12, Pages 34-37). Anderson writes, "But just as black-and-white TV gave way to color in the late 1960s, and how we long thought the civil rights movement drove racism underground in the United States during that same time period, a critical lens reveals there has been only the illusion of inclusion, both on the screen and in real life." Our media intentionally construct what we experience, and these "content worlds" both inspire and limit our imaginations, depending upon how they have been built. Asking such questions as "Who made this world?" "Who is present? Who is missing?" and "Who benefits from this world?" may lead to insights about our relations to these content worlds and increased media literacy.

DEI audits

Kawanna Bright, an assistant professor of library science at East Carolina University (OCLC Symbol: ERE) in Greenville, North Carolina, describes diversity, equity, and inclusion audits and their usefulness in " The Value of a DEI Audit: What an Assessment Can Show You-and Why You Should Care" in the November/December 2022 issue of American Libraries (Volume 53, Numbers 11/12, Page 40). Bright differentiates two types of assessments, the whole-library DEI audit and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Self-Assessment Audit or DEISAA. Such self-evaluations can establish a baseline for the future, allow an institution to chart its progress, and foster communication within the organization.

Conversations about race

On November 15, 2022, Columbus Metropolitan Library (OCLC Symbol: OCO) in Ohio presented Kwame Christian talking about his recent book "How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race: Practical Tools for Necessary Change in the Workplace and Beyond." Being able to talk with each other about race, no matter how difficult those discussions may be, is a necessary condition for a more equitable workplace and society. Christian tries to teach how to overcome both internal and external barriers to productive conversations by using his "Compassionate Curiosity Framework."

Libraries in a changing world

In October 2022, the Pacific Library Partnership presented the 2022 edition of its annual " The Future of Libraries" conferences, " Expanding Your Toolbox for a Changing World." Among the presentations and panels are Frieda Afary of the Los Angeles Public Library (OCLC Symbol: LPU) on " Confronting Disinformation and Book Bans by Cultivating Critical Thinking and Empathy," Wonda Powell on " From Critical Thinking to Critical Race Theory: Unearthing History," and " Serving Unhoused Members of Your Community." Most sessions from the PLP's conferences going back to 2014 are freely available on its TFOL Archive.

CCQ special issue on "Empowering Representations"

Cataloging and Classification Quarterly Volume 60, Issue 6-7, 2022, is a special issue devoted to " Empowering Representations: Rethinking Surrogates from the Margins," guest edited by Lynne C. Howarth of the University of Toronto (OCLC Symbol: UTF) and Katharine Leigh of Johns Hopkins University (OCLC Symbol: JHE). Among numerous other articles are: " On Overlap and Otherness: A Comparison of Three Vocabularies' Approaches to LGBTQ+ Identity," by Brian Dobreski, Karen Snow, and Heather Moulaison-Sandy (Pages 490-513); " Evaluating Metadata Quality in LGBTQ+ Digital Community Archives," by Alexandrea Kord (Pages 514-535); " Prioritizing the People: Developing a Method for Evaluating a Collection's Description of Diverse Populations," by Brian Clark and Catherine Smith (Pages 560-582); " Controlled Vocabulary as Communication: The Process of Negotiating Meaning in an Indigenous Knowledge Organization System," by Margaret C. Joyce and Keahiahi S. Long (Pages 583-598); " Misrepresentation in the Surrogate: Author Critiques of "Indians of North America" Subject Headings," by Julia Bullard, Brian Watson, and Caitlin Purdome (Pages 599-619); " Body-Oriented Cataloging as a Method of Inclusive Gender Representation," by Travis Wagner (Pages 620-645); and " Advancing the Relationship between Critical Cataloging and Critical Race Theory," by Karen Snow and Anthony W. Dunbar (Pages 646-674).

Doctorow defends libraries

Multi-hyphenate writer Cory Doctorow passionately defends our favorite institution in " They Want to Kill Libraries: The Last Place in America Where You Are a Person, Not a Customer." "Behind the anti-library movement is a demand for extraordinarily invasive government control over parenting. Rather than leaving it up to parents whether they want their kids to read books about racism and queer sexuality, anti-library militias want the government to to make sure that parents don't even know these books exist, and, should they discover their existence, they want to make it as expensive and inconvenient as possible for parents to share them with their kids," Doctorow writes.

School librarians of the year

The Oregon Library Association (OLA) Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Antiracism Committee presents the ninth episode of its podcast, Overdue: Weeding Out Oppression in Libraries. The episode entitled " School Librarians Creating a Culture of Reading and Inclusion while Navigating Challenges" features School Library Journal 2022 School Librarian of the Year, K.C. Boyd of Jefferson Middle School Academy in Washington, D.C., and the two finalists, Pia Alliende of Redmond School District in Oregon, and Andy Spinks of Campbell High School in Smyrna, Georgia, talking about book challenges and other impediments to what Boyd refers to as delivering excellence, "to provide the very best service, and most importantly ... to help children identify books that are meaningful to them in their lives." Constance Palaia, Library Manager at Fruitdale Elementary School in Grants Pass, Oregon, and Ericka Brunson-Rochette, Community Librarian at the Deschutes Public Library (OCLC Symbol: DCH) in Oregon, conducted the interview on October 23, 2022.

Queer archival history

In a four-part series of interviews, doctoral candidate Rachel M. Friars in the Department of English Language and Literature at Queen's University (OCLC Symbol: CNSTL) in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, talks with " The Authority File" podcast from " Choice," the publishing arm of the Association of College and Research Libraries, on "The Impact of Primary Sources on Lesbian Literature and History." In the first podcast, " Introductions and Approaching the Materials," Friars stresses the current relevance of archival materials in the realm of queer studies, stating "we've always been here, we've never been anywhere else, and, in some ways, there's nothing modern about queer communities." In the second episode, " Anne Lister and 'Slowing Down' in the Archives," Friars discusses the nineteenth century lesbian diarist, the idiosyncrasies of her journaling methods, and how primary sources force the researcher to be more deliberate and intentional. In episode three, " Applying Primary Source Literacy Skills," Friars spells out the demands of archival resources and how they must be regarded within their temporal and cultural contexts, both in general and specifically for queer archives. In " The Evolution and Significance of Queer Archives," the final podcast of the series, Friars describes the process by which Lister's diaries were saved and made accessible, as well as the vital importance of such preservation and archiving to connect queer history with current struggles.

Sensory sensitivity

Chelsey Roos, a children's librarian at Santa Clara County Library (OCLC Symbol: JRY) in California, shares four " Simple Ways to Be More Inclusive of Autistic Families" in the ALSC Blog of the Association for Library Service to Children. Any family with sensory needs or library users with social anxieties will appreciate such thoughtful changes as the avoidance of strong scents, the advance distribution of discussion questions, the creation of visual schedules, and the use of color-coded communication badges.

Targeted universalism

" Targeted Universalism" describes an equity framework designed simultaneously to move varied groups toward specific goals and to communicate those goals and processes inclusively and cooperatively. Developed by the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society (now the Othering and Belonging Institute) of the University of California, Berkeley (OCLC Symbol: CUY), targeted universalism is the subject of " One Goal, Many Approaches" by Linda W. Braun in the November/December 2022 issue of American Libraries (Volume 53, Numbers 11/12, Page 42). Using this approach, Braun says, "users will come to realize that there is not a loss in services and that equity-based adjustments do not result in any one group receiving less. Instead, they will see that everyone gets what they need in a way that best suits the individual or community."

Helping unhoused library patrons

With the official beginning of the Northern Hemisphere winter on December 21, WebJunction spotlights " Resources for Helping Unhoused Patrons." Libraries serve as central lifelines to people facing housing insecurity. WebJunction gathers news, tools, courses, webinars, podcasts, documentaries, services, and other sources of information and advice to assist libraries in offering meaningful service to people experiencing homelessness. Coincidentally, recordings of the November 14, 2022, ALA Social Responsibilities Round Table " Homelessness Summit," are now available freely to all. In addition to the opening and closing keynote speeches, there are sessions on " Partnerships Between Libraries and Social Workers;" " Community Partnerships and Public Health;"" Education, Visibility, and Sensitivity;" and " Communities: Rural Homelessness, Food Insecurity, and Lived Experience."

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Advancing IDEAs: Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, 2022 December 13 - Hanging Together

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The following  post is one in a regular series on issues of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility, compiled by Jay Weitz. With funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Empathy Project is offering " Institutional and Social Empathy in COVID-19: Open Training Modules for Library and Museum Workers."

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Diversity Auditing 101: How to Evaluate Your Collection

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Diversity Auditing 101: How to Evaluate Your Collection

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by Karen Jensen
Oct 22, 2018 | Filed in Diversity

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The need for diverse and inclusive collections is clear. Karen Jensen, YA librarian and "Teen Librarian Toolbox" blogger, explains everything you need to know to get started on conducting your own diversity audit.

A diversity audit takes inventory and determines what's in a collection and what areas need to be better developed. It yields concrete data. This type of audit helps put the science in library science. In doing a diversity audit of my collection, my goal was to learn what percentage reflected something other than the experiences of straight, white, and non-disabled males, and to fill the gaps. I wanted to verify that I was doing a good job of transcending my worldview and internalized biases. I was not.

As a 45-year-old white woman, I am the dominant demographic in librarianship, though definitely not in the world at large. For a long time, I took for granted that I was building inclusive collections that would best serve my teens. Conducting a diversity audit made me look honestly at my collection development and forced me to step outside my comfort zone to accomplish the work I always claimed to be doing.

Initial research

Establishing a procedure for a diversity audit was challenging. There were not a lot of research or examples online. I found information for conducting a classroom diversity audit, and I discovered a resource about a Montessori classroom doing a toy diversity audit, which helped me establish basic practices.

Before beginning an audit, you need baseline data. I examined sources such as the U.S. Census to get a better idea of the world's population, and I used We Need Diverse Books, Lee and Low's Diversity Baseline Survey, and the Cooperative Children's Book Center data on children's publishing to understand the publishing landscape. The truth is, the state of diversity in publishing is not good, so those tasked with collection development need to work extra hard to ensure inclusive collections.

The process

With my research, I developed a system. My collection contained 2,000 items at the time. I printed a shelf list and imported the list into an Excel spreadsheet. I researched each author and made a notation as to whether the title involved characters who were something other than male, white, nondisabled, and heteronormative.

The initial research took months. I scoured the Internet for information about authors and titles. I examined a variety of published diversity lists (which I turned into a "Diverse Reads" readers' advisory notebook).

After annotating each title, I determined percentages. To do that, take the total counted for a part of collection and divide it by the total number of books in the collection. For example, if there are 200 titles with LGBTQIA+ representation, divide 200 by the total number of books in the collection (let's say that's 2,000 books). In that scenario, 10 percent of the collection includes LGBTQIA+ representation. That number can be compares with U.S. Census data to decide if its satisfactory. Research from a 2016 survey by the J. Walter Thompson Innovation Group found that 52 percent of Generation Z (people between the ages of 13 and 20) identified as something other than straight, meaning that more than half identify in some way as LGBTQIA+.

When there are areas with low percentages, use that data to target ordering to diversify your collection. For example, I served a very large and vocal LGBTQ group of teens, so I always assumed I was doing a good job of purchasing LGBTQ titles. What I found, however, was that less than three percent of my collection was LGBTQ-friendly. With that information, I sought lists of award-winning titles and yearly "best of" for the last couple of years.

When a complete audit is impractical

With a large collection, auditing the entire collection may be near impossible. Instead, create random samples from each section, and audit those. If a random sample is done correctly, it provides valuable information. Remember that one of the goals is to help those involved in collection development determine their own internal bias and pinpoint areas they may need to be more consciously aware of when selecting materials.

Another type of diversity audit can be done with subject headings. This works for some areas better than others, however. For example, most LGBTQIA+ literature has a subject heading indicating that it falls into this category. However, not all books will have a subject heading that indicates, for instance, a character is black or Latinx. We can work to expand and add subject headings, but that means asking our catalogers to add those subject headings or notes. Kirkus now includes a mention in their reviews about the ethnicity of the characters, and these notes could easily be ordered into our catalogs, but this will take some intentionality and additional coordination.

There is also what I call a "reverse diversity audit." Take a list of titles on a traditionally marginalized people or group and determine how many of those titles on the list are in your collection. For example, look at how many titles from the yearly Stonewall and Rainbow lists are in your collection. This method isn't as concrete as a true diversity audit, but it still offers useful data.

If you're doing a reverse diversity audit, I recommend creating an annual cycle to keep you on track, like the weeding calendars that many librarians maintain. In January, you may check for Native American representation; in February, look at Asian representation; in March, focus on LGBTQIA+ representation; and so on. That way, each month you take a targeted area and make sure it is well represented in your collection. This doesn't mean you aren't ordering titles throughout the year for each area of representation; it just means that you are going in once a year and holding yourself accountable.

Collection maintenance-and a few caveats

After that initial diversity audit in 2016, I began doing mini-audits on each book order to continue to develop an inclusive collection. I print each book order and make notes in the margins. I then use the same basic formula to determine the breakdown of my book order before submitting. I also input that data into my spreadsheet to keep an up-to-date look at the diversity of the overall collection.

Because we know representation matters, what we look for is always expanding. In addition to examining ethnicity, religion, sexuality, and disability, I expanded my criteria to include topics such as body acceptance, socioeconomic status, and mental health. Don't be overwhelmed. There are a lot of other librarians, authors, publishers, and readers out there doing this work as well, so use them as resources. We Need Diverse Books is a go-to resource, but a Google search can also yield recommended booklists on a wide variety of topics as well.

Remember-not all representation is good representation. A book may have a black main character but might be a problematic slavery narrative that reinforces stereotypes. Or it may be a book with Jewish representation but is another Holocaust book in a collection with many. There is nothing wrong with books about slavery or the Holocaust, but all titles cannot center on the same scenarios. Jewish children and teens need representation that doesn't remind them that they were, and are, so reviled by some that they were literally marked for genocide. And black children and teens need to see themselves in books that aren't focused on slavery and don't include stereotypes. We're looking for more than representation-we need healthy representation that affirms our teens' experiences and helps people outside that group to question and challenge harmful stereotypes.

For more resources and information on conducting a diversity audit on your library collection, check out this series of posts on the "Teen Librarian Toolbox" blog.

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Diversity Auditing 101: How to Evaluate Your Collection

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The need for diverse and inclusive collections is clear. Karen Jensen, YA librarian and

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How to Audit Your Classroom Library for Diversity

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How to Audit Your Classroom Library for Diversity

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A bingo card can tell teachers a lot about the people and genres that are represented in their class library—and the ones that are missing.

By Kathryn Fishman-Weaver

December 3, 2019

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A bingo card can tell teachers a lot about the people and genres that are represented in their class library-and the ones that are missing.

Aron Vellekoop León / Ikon Images

We know that representation matters, that in order for our classrooms to be spaces where everyone is affirmed and included, young people must see themselves and their lived experiences in our curricula. Do our classroom libraries reflect this knowledge? Bookshelves offer a powerful litmus test of the experiences and identities we honor and include in our classrooms.

Books as Windows and Mirrors

"She's from Pakistan, just like me."

"He has dark skin like mine."

"I'm adopted, too."

"Look, that main character uses a wheelchair like mine."

What happens to students' self-efficacy and self-concept when they see their lives positively reflected in the curriculum? Even very young children recognize the importance and delight in finding themselves in a book:

Books become transformative when they shift our perspectives, alter our worldviews, and deepen our relationships with others. Let's implement practices that make reading from many different experiences, worldviews, and cultures part of the social fabric of our schools.

To build on this idea, I created a simple bingo card that educators complete with book titles. I hoped it would challenge teacher groups to think more critically about representation and diversity in their classroom libraries and foster new conversations about reading. It did that and more.

The Bookshelf Equity Audit

A key objective of this exercise is to foster school conversations about the books we read and teach. I have used this activity in professional development workshops. I think it also has the potential to be used as a faculty or school-wide reading challenge.

Rules of the exercise: Everyone needs their own bingo card (there's a downloadable pdf below). While you may be tempted to start with the books you teach, resist that and start instead with the books you read. Like friendship, literature is a powerful entry point for exposure to diverse experiences. What and whom we read matters.

Round 1: Using a black pen, fill out the bingo card with books you have recently read, putting one title in each box. You can start with classic bingo, looking for five in a row, but consider eventually challenging yourself to complete the whole card. Filling it out will likely be more difficult than you expected.

Round 2: Using blue ink, continue filling out the bingo card with books you have recently taught. This means you could have two titles in each box: one for a book you have recently read and another for a book you have recently taught. It's very rare that someone can fill out the bingo card so completely.

Teachers often have one or two books in their curricula that fit several of the categories on the card, but each title can appear only once.

Round 3: Once we start listing titles, we can see more clearly what we're missing. Get up and talk to your peers about books. Write down new recommendations for the empty squares on your card in red ink, and make sure to read them.

The bingo exercise reveals some gaps in our reading and teaching, but it also shows us that collectively we have the resources and knowledge to start addressing these gaps. What if a copy of the book that might change your teaching practice is already waiting for you in the classroom down the hall?

Teachers have frequently told me that this activity taught them to pay attention to the lived experiences of the authors they read and teach. Considering background information and author positionality is a valuable close reading strategy that supports us in our work of showing students that their stories matter.

Many teachers have found that until they took a true audit of what they were reading and teaching, they tended to overestimate the number of books by and about people of color on their shelves.

As expected, the exercise reveals our reading preferences, as well as the fact that many of us don't read as much as we would like. While it's OK to have preferences, it's important to be aware of the gaps in our understanding and to actively try to address them. This requires reading outside of our cultural or genre comfort zone, which is why the third round is essential-it requires us to talk about books, to seek suggestions from our peers, to ask young children and folks two generations older than us for book recommendations. It affirms that reading can be a social journey, and I've found these conversations to be incredibly helpful.

The bingo card is a call to pay attention to who we are reading, who we are teaching, who is represented, who is missing, and why.

As we read more broadly and talk about books more intentionally, we're able to shine light on more experiences. We can begin to increase representation in our classrooms in ways that tell young people that many experiences matter, representation matters, and most importantly, they matter.

Here are four book lists to start expanding representation on your classroom bookshelf:

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How to Audit Your Classroom Library for Diversity

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A bingo card can tell teachers a lot about the people and genres that are represented in their class library-and the ones that are missing. Aron Vellekoop León / Ikon Images We know that representation matters, that in order for our classrooms to be spaces where everyone is affirmed and included, young people must see themselves and their lived experiences in our curricula.

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September 18, 2020|
Chelsey Roos

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I learned about the concept of a diversity audit from a School Library Journal article by Karen Jensen. In a diversity audit, you evaluate an existing collection or service provided by your library to get hard numbers on how diverse your collection or service truly is. This can cover anything from seeing what percentage of your board books feature non-white characters, to how many LGBTQ+ titles are written by Own Voices authors, or evaluating the performers you've hired over the last year to see if they are representing diverse cultures.

Last year, I performed a diversity audit on a special collection of books in my library: our Booklegger collection. This collection consists of books for grades K-5 that staff and volunteers take on school visits to book talk. We have about 150 titles in this collection, with 5-10 copies of each title. When I started my position, I chose to start my diversity audit with this collection because it's highly used, and something we take directly out to the community.

Here's how I did it:

Step One: Research the Community

I used census data and other statistical information to get a good picture on the populations in my K-5 community. Using tools like the U.S. Census Bureau, I learned a lot about the racial breakdown of my community. Around 30% of my area's children aged 5-12 identify as white, followed by around 25% identifying as Asian, 20% as Latinx, 15% as mixed race, and 7% as Black. Please note - even if my area's population was not this diverse, it would still be incredibly important for our collection to be diverse. All children need to see diversity in their stories.

Step Two: Data, Data, Data

Next, I surveyed my collection, going through every book we bring to schools and charting the characters. I looked at whether they were human or animal, and whether they were clearly depicted as belonging to a particular race or ethnicity. I also charted LGBTQ+ characters, neuroatypical characters, and characters with disabilities. Then, I went back and did it all again for the writers and illustrators.

Data nerds, unite!

Step Three: Compare your Data Sets

I discovered with alarm that although only 30% of our community's children were white, more than 60% of our books in this collection featured white main characters. The next largest percentage? Books about non-human characters like animals and robots. We needed to improve our collection, quickly.

Step Four: Getting the Gate-Keepers on Board

Now that I knew how biased our collection was, I needed to get two groups of people on board to fix it. The first was my manager - as the one in charge of our budgeting, I needed her support to fund a revamped collection. The second group I needed to get on board was my volunteers who go out to the schools to do book talks. I needed to convince them to stop sharing some of their favorite books in order to make room for new, diverse ones. I gave them a presentation, complete with pie charts, to show them why we desperately needed this change. We talked about the famous "windows and mirrors" analogy, and I talked about my own unconscious bias as a white person. I also revamped my training class for new volunteers and staff, so that we could spend a week devoted to diversity.

Step Five: Get New Books!

No surprise, this was the best part. I researched all kinds of diverse books, and got kids, staff, and volunteers to test-read them for me. For each book, I looked for reviews that were written by a member of that culture or identity - I wanted to know if someone on the autism spectrum would find fault with the representation of an autistic character, for example. I used resources like We Need Diverse Books, American Indians in Children's Literature, and ALSC's own lists of Notable books and award winners. I took notes on what my test-readers had to say, and then I put in a request for a cart full of new books.

After all that, was everything fixed? No, of course not. Although we had increased diversity in one collection, it was just one collection. Every other collection needs to be addressed, as well. There are also areas outside our collection that need work - from diversifying our volunteers, to our performers, to the selection of books we put on face-out displays. However, every step we take inches us towards truly representing and supporting our entire community.

Today's guest blogger is Chelsey Roos. Chelsey is a member of ALSC's Advocacy and Legislation committee and is currently a children's librarian at the Castro Valley Branch of the Alameda County Library.
This blog relates to ALSC Core Competencies of I. Commitment to Client Group,IV. Knowledge, Curation, and Management of Materials, and V. Outreach and Advocacy

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How to Conduct a Diversity Audit - ALSC Blog

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I learned about the concept of a diversity audit from a School Library Journal article by Karen Jensen. In a diversity audit, you evaluate an existing collection or service provided by your library to get hard numbers on how diverse your collection or service truly is.

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DEI Audits: The Whole Picture | Equity

by Christina Fuller-Gregory
Jun 06, 2022 | Filed in News

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How diversity, equity, and inclusion auditing tools help build stronger collections

Last year, I received a fortune cookie from a library friend. The fortune inside read "a diversity audit is in your future." Of course, the fortune was written and planted by my friend as a wink and a nod to the hard work and complexity of the diversity auditing process, but for many of us who are committed to building strong collections developed through a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) lens, that fortune may very well be true.

Diversity auditing isn't easy. It's often painfully slow and high touch, and must be conducted with care. This process of discovering, acknowledging, and (hopefully) mitigating collection gaps can be akin to finding and placing a missing puzzle piece, as it allows patrons to benefit from a collection that reflects a more complete picture.

In response to the collective need for libraries to more easily analyze the diversity of their collections at the item level, Baker & Taylor, Ingram, and OverDrive have recently introduced collection development auditing tools. But, it is important to note that these tools-Collection HQ's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Analysis, iCurate inClusive, and OverDrive's diversity auditing support services-were not designed to replace the manual diversity auditing process, but to enhance it. In other words, you're still the leading actor in the diversity auditing process, with these tools acting in a supporting role.

HOW DO THESE TOOLS WORK?

It is easier for me to determine whether a resource is beneficial when I understand how it works. If you're familiar with the dashboard formats used by Ingram and Baker & Taylor to support the collection development process, then you'll easily be able to navigate iCurate inClusive and Collection HQ's DEI-focused collection auditing tools. Earlier I mentioned how painfully slow the diversity auditing process could be. In these tools, users get back some of the time lost, as both platforms quickly and responsively provide a snapshot of the diversity gaps in collections.

OverDrive's strategy to support DEI-focused collection auditing is decidedly more hands-on. In order to evaluate a collection for diverse titles, a library requests a diversity audit from its Overdrive Account Manager. From there, OverDrive's Content Specialist and Staff Librarians develop and present a live, customized report to the library. Post-presentation, OverDrive works with the library to develop an individualized set of collections goals based on the findings.

What sets OverDrive's resource apart from iCurate inClusive and Collection HQ is that it doesn't provide a tech-based interface to support collection development. This nuanced, multi-stepped approach to DEI-focused collection auditing support would particularly benefit libraries without the staff bandwidth to support more in-depth diversity audits. However, will this resource benefit a library looking for immediate access to specific information?

EXPANSIVE DEI SEARCH CATEGORIES

When it comes to specific information, these DEI tools deliver by offering expansive search categories. While both iCurate inClusive and Collection HQ have similar scope, iCurate inClusive, offering twelve DEI search categories, has built in additional categories for Muslim and Jewish Interest that focus on both cultural and religious aspects. Similarly, Collection HQ, with thirteen DEI search categories, has developed specialized categories that include Equity and Social Issues, Religion, and Substance Abuse.

OverDrive's hand-curated lists have been developed for eight categories, in addition to lists dedicated to diverse book awards, and specialized list categories based on interest.

Each of the librarians I spoke with about these DEI collection auditing tools found the categories provided to be extremely broad. So broad, in fact, that some wondered if, in its vastness, something important could be easily overlooked. Of course, as we're in the early days of utilizing these tools, there's still opportunity to expand or narrow search categories. OverDrive's current list of categories are a mix of backlist and frontlist content, classics, authors, and characters. Future iterations of OverDrive's DEI collection auditing resource could see lists categorized in a way that makes it easier to view offerings from authors who are members of diverse populations, apart from titles that may not fit into that category.

AUDIT ASSISTANCE Baker & Taylor's Collection HQ (left) and Ingram's iCurate inClusive (right) help supplement manual audits

BIPOC LIVED EXPERIENCES

One of the most important considerations for these DEI auditing tools are the ways in which they approach, amplify, and acknowledge BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) lived experiences. In conducting the diversity auditing process, it's important to check our own biases, particularly as we must acknowledge that bias is often an uninvited guest. That is the humanness of bias. If we're able to see bias in ourselves, we must also consider how bias could also show up in the technology we use to evaluate our collections. There's no denying technology's impact on the ways in which we search for, categorize, and evaluate books. This is why it is so important that Collection HQ's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Analysis, iCurate inClusive, and OverDrive's diversity auditing support services make it a practice to thoughtfully identify keywords, and effectively manipulate Library of Congress and BISAC headings to better find books. At one of the libraries helping to shape Collection HQ's DEI tool, Carol Green, collections services manager at Chattanooga Public Library, realized this early on in the development process. "One of the first thoughts I had was how the DEI tool was going to find these [diverse] books if the catalog didn't have these specific keywords," she shares.

For Green, the importance of accurately and effectively identifying keywords was underscored when she noticed that author Amy Tan, who is Chinese American, was not properly categorized. Green shared her concerns with Collection HQ, and, in response, the team developed a process to allow users to manually add titles.

Another important aspect to consider is how these tools ensure that the titles included do not feature stereotypes or tropes. "I do wonder if these tools are folding in socioeconomic status inside of equity and social issues," shares Dontaná McPherson-Joseph, Collection Development Librarian at Illinois's Oak Park Public Library. "I would be interested to see how that would be teased out. If all of the stories returned about anyone who is not white include narratives that they are poor, or urban, or in prison, it's really doing a disservice to the tool, a disservice to users, and I would be interested to see if they could pull that out."

When we think of DEI in library services we often ask: Who is being seen, who isn't being seen, and why? The diversity auditing process invites us to ask new questions-Who isn't being considered? Why can't I find these stories in our collection? Whose interests, perspectives, stories, histories are being overlooked?

ARE THESE TOOLS RIGHT FOR MY ORGANIZATION?

During my research on these tools, I spoke with someone who asked "why are we tracking this data, other than our edification?" If your library has been successfully implementing collection development measures that embody the windows and mirrors approach, you may feel that utilizing these resources is of no benefit. But as library workers, we're in the information business, and when it comes to identifying ways in which we can better serve often marginalized populations, it's always better to take a "more is more" approach.

And while I realize that the size and scope of each library is vastly different, and the case utilization for these tools may vary, it's difficult to imagine a library that would not benefit from CollectionHQ's branch, system, or regional level-DEI analysis capabilities, iCurate inClusive's comprehensive presentation feature, or OverDrive's concierge-level diversity auditing resources.

Ultimately, I am not here to sell these products, or extol their value. I'm here to share what I've learned about them based on interviews and analysis. And, based on what I've learned from the many librarians I've spoken with about these tools, they view the idea of having access to a snapshot of their collections as a win, understanding that these tools are exactly that-tools that cannot and do not replace the diversity audit itself. If your library is committed to a holistic approach to DEI work, that work must start at the heart of library services-our collections. These tools, in concert with the diversity audit, allow us to keep our promise that libraries are for everyone, because they allow us to build strong collections that don't overlook anyone.

For more resources and information on conducting a diversity audit, check out " Diversity Auditing 101: How to Evaluate Your Collection " by Karen Jensen.

Christina Fuller-Gregory (she/her/hers) is a librarian, maker, and experienced equity, diversity, inclusion, and social justice practitioner. A 2021 Library Journal Mover and Shaker, Christina's work is driven by a desire to see libraries develop strategies for weaving equity, diversity, and inclusion into the fabric of their organizations.

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Last year, I received a fortune cookie from a library friend. The fortune inside read "a diversity audit is in your future." Of course, the fortune was written and planted by my friend as a wink and a nod to the hard work and complexity of the diversity auditing process, but for many of us who are committed to building strong collections developed through a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) lens, that fortune may very well be true.

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Audits for Library & Information Organizations

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Audits for Library & Information Organizations

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Audits for Library & Information Organizations

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion - Libr , and Inclusion - Library Audit Repor udit Report 

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion - Libr , and Inclusion - Library Audit Repor udit Report 

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Conducting the Accessibility Audit: How OneAcademic Library Identified Barriers for Patronswith Disabilities

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Conducting the Accessibility Audit: How OneAcademic Library Identified Barriers for Patronswith Disabilities

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Rebecca M. Marrall Western Washington University Libraries, rebecca.marrall@wwu.edu
Nora K. Burmeister Western Washington University, nora.burmeister@wwu.edu

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Diversity Considerations in YA: Doing a Diversity Audit

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Diversity Considerations in YA: Doing a Diversity Audit

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An Updated Look at Diversity in Children

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Using numbers from the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, this infographic—updated from 2015—illustratesrepresentation in children’s literature. The quantity of diverse books may have gone up, but thatdoesn’t necessarily indicate accuracy and quality oftitles.

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Is Equality in the Children's Book Industry Possible?

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Is Equality in the Children's Book Industry Possible?

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And Do We Have Time to Wait? (infographic)
When we look at CCBC's statistics in the framework of how many books we need to make to stand in equity with white Americans, we begin to understand our real position. I estimate that the children's book industry would have to increase its production level by 45% to accommodate an equitable increase in children's books by PoC and indigenous voices.

Including LGBTQ and disabled numbers helps flesh out the conversation and continues to illustrate the relationship between power and presence in children's books.

In order to significantly change these numbers and what they represent, beyond children's books, we need to take our creativity into our own hands.

With greater accessibility to indie-publishing we NOW have the opportunity to begin not just publishing our own voice, but healing ourselves from generations of ancestral silence and invisibility through our own power.

Join Me! Stay Connected:

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Is Equality in the Children's Book Industry Possible?

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And Do We Have Time to Wait? (infographic) When we look at CCBC's statistics in the framework of how many books we need to make to stand in equity with white Americans, we begin to understand our real position.

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Author Jason Reynolds talks new book, gets a call from Queen Latifah

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2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health

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The Trevor Project’s 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health is the organization’s fourth annual national survey, amplifying the experiences of nearly 34,000 LGBTQ youth ages 13 to 24 across…

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Mike Curato from The National Book Festival 2020

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Mike Curato from The National Book Festival 2020

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Mike Curato: 2020 National Book Festival

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Below is a list of awards or lists for children's books that are friendly and inclusive to LGBTQ people and themes. The Stonewall Awards and the Rainbow Book List are determined by the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table of the American Library Association. The The Water Dean Myers Award is given by We Need Diverse Books, which includes LGBTQ titles as part of their advocacy for diverse reading materials. The Lammys are well-publicized awards that include categories for children's and YA titles.

Why Research Children's Book Awards?

We've designed children's books that have won numerous awards. While updating our award-winning titles page, I got curious, how many awards for children's books are there? I put together a spreadsheet of all the awards that books we worked on had won, then all the awards our client publishers had won. And then added more awards as I heard about them. I've categorized the awards with keywords, added links and descriptions. You can see the whole sheet below.

Contact me if you know an award I should include.

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Below is a list of awards or lists for children's books that are friendly and inclusive to LGBTQ people and themes. The Stonewall Awards and the Rainbow Book List are determined by the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table of the American Library Association.

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#READWoke by Cicely Tyson SLJ School Librarian of the Year

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#READWoke by Cicely Tyson SLJ School Librarian of the Year

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A school librarian's reading initiative highlights social justice.

These are volatile times. Across the country, parents of color are having "the talk" with their kids about how to prevent the police from seeing them as a threat because of their skin color or how they dress. Families are being torn apart and deported. Each day on TV, we witness acts of social injustice. I come to school and talk about these events with my students, many of whom have opinions-but not much knowledge about their rights.

Every year I have a theme in my school library. In 2017, it was Harry Potter. In our current political and social climate, I knew that my students were hurting and needed something different this year. After coming across the Stay Woke edition of Essence magazine, I launched Read Woke at my library.

What is Read Woke? It's a feeling. A form of education. A call to action, and our right as lifelong learners. It means arming yourself with knowledge to better protect your rights. Learning about others so you treat people with respect and dignity, no matter their religion, race, creed, or color.

I concluded that a Woke Book must:

* Challenge a social norm * Give voice to the voiceless * Provide information about a group that has been disenfranchised * Seek to challenge the status quo * Have a protagonist from an underrepresented or oppressed group

We started Read Woke in September. The students were asking questions in response to the many cases of unarmed black boys and men being shot by police officers. They wanted answers. They were angry. They staged a walkout, but that did nothing to appease their rage.

My school is more than 70 percent Latino. The day DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) was repealed, my students were crying and afraid. That made my movement even more relevant.

Students who read four recommended books from my Read Woke list can win a T-shirt, a free book, and post a photo on our Instagram. They may review titles, too. I also asked teachers to adopt Woke Books-they read them and use trivia questions to quiz the students on their knowledge of the titles.

Our most popular books are Dear Martin, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, The Book of Unknown Americans, and The Hate U Give. They all have characters who look like my students and face issues plaguing our society. There's a waiting list for these titles, and our circulation has increased from 2,340 to 2,817. Faculty circulation shot up by almost 50 percent!

"Before this, I had never read an entire book," one student commented. "I will keep reading woke books."

Students are recommending books and engaging in serious dialogue.

I bought the books using my county-allocated funds. A student-run school T-shirt lab created the shirts in exchange for publicity.

When I started Read Woke, I asked myself how I could make an impact. A quote from The Librarian of Auschwitz exemplifies my mission: "The library has now become her first-aid kit, and she's going to give the children a little of the medicine that helped her recover her smile when she thought she'd lost it forever."

Let the healing begin.
Hunger by Roxane Gay
I am Malala :The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera

The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe
Sugar by Deirdre Riordan Hall The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
What's on your Woke Books list? Let us know in the comments.
Cicely Lewis is a small-town girl from Mississippi with a passion for promoting literacy in nontraditional ways in her media center at Meadowcreek High School in Norcross, GA. Currently, she's featured on the cover of the 2017 "The Power of Librarians" calendar.
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'Read Woke' School Reading Challenge Makes an Impact

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A school librarian's reading initiative highlights social justice. These are volatile times. Across the country, parents of color are having "the talk" with their kids about how to prevent the police from seeing them as a threat because of their skin color or how they dress. Families are being torn apart and deported.

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 Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass Doors

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 Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass Doors

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Mirrors, Windows and Sliding-Glass-Doors Article .pdf

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Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors 30 Years Later

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Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors 30 Years Later

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Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass Doors

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Through the Sliding Glass Door- The Reading Teacher

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Through the Sliding Glass Door- The Reading Teacher

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Through the Sliding Glass Door-The Reading Teacher Article .pdf

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Topic Summary

In recent years, there has been a lot of attention paid to the diversity of children's books, shining a light on the lack of diversity and amplifying the need for more children's and young adult literature that reflects our multicultural society. In 2014, an organization named We Need Diverse Books formed, following a regularly trending hashtag with the same name (#WeNeedDiverseBooks) that helped bring attention to the issue. We Need Diverse Books advocates for changes in the publishing industry "to produce and promote literature that reflects and honors the lives of all young people."

In 2015, an African-American 11-year-old girl named Marley Dias brought further awareness of the issue by launching the #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign, highlighting the lack of kids' books with African American characters. Marley is an avid reader but according to her, was tired of all the books she was given to read at school because they were all about "white boys and their dogs." She set out to change that and started her campaign to collect and donate 1,000 books that feature black girls as the main character. Marley has amassed more than 9,000 books and is now writing her own book.

Often, when educators and others talk about diverse children's literature, they use the terms "mirrors" and "windows." A mirror is a surface that forms reflections and when you look into one, you see yourself. Hence, "mirror books" are books that contain reflections of people-their race, culture, gender family, religion, etc.-and enable people to see themselves in books in a variety of ways. Reading books about your own identity group(s) can help people feel good about those parts of themselves. A window is an opening where you can look outside. Hence, "window books" show the people reading them a window into other people, events and places that they might be unfamiliar with. Window books help to expose children to different kinds of people.

The Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) compiles annual data about the diversity of children's literature and their statistics indicate improvements in recent years; however there is still progress to be made. The number of diverse books being published each year remained steadily low for more than two decades, but in 2014 it began increasing noticeably, which could be due in part to the We Need Diverse Books movement. While the number of diverse books has increased, it is still not on par with the general demographics of our country. Further, the number of books written by people of color is still quite low.

Age

7 and up

Questions to Start the Conversation

Why do you think there is a focus lately on diversity in children's books?

What are your thoughts and feelings about the lack of diverse children's books?

Why do you think Marley Dias started her #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign?

Do you think you read more "mirror" or "window" books? Why do you think that is?

What would be a mirror book for you? What would be a window book?

Questions to Dig Deeper

(See the Additional Resources section for articles and information that address these questions.)

What other aspects of your life or forms of media lack diversity?

Do we have diverse books at home, in our library and local bookstore? Why do you think that is?

What other actions can people take to make sure there are more diverse children's books available?

Ideas for Taking Action

Ask: What can we do to help? What individual and group actions can help make a difference?

Conduct an informal "study" of your school or neighborhood library and bookstore and assess the diversity of their book collection. Talk with the librarian or bookstore manager about including more diverse books.

Use the #WeNeedDiverseBooks hashtag to share your thoughts on social media about the importance of diverse books.

Write a letter to a book publisher about the need for more diverse children's books.

Additional Resources

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Topic Summary In recent years, there has been a lot of attention paid to the diversity of children's books, shining a light on the lack of diversity and amplifying the need for more children's and young adult literature that reflects our multicultural society.

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Jason Reynolds on book haters... - VideoLink

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Watch, crop and share YouTube videos safely without comments, ads, or other distractions. Our free link-sharing technology tools are useful for schools and parents to give a children friendly YouTube experience.

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Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Self-Assessment Audit (DEISAA) - V.1

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Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Self-Assessment Audit (DEISAA) - V.1

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Version 1 of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Self-Assessment Audit

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MEASURING DIVERSITY IN THE COLLECTION: A collection diversity audit is a crucial tool for libraries to assess their offerings. Starting small makes it manageable

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MEASURING DIVERSITY IN THE COLLECTION: A collection diversity audit is a crucial tool for libraries to assess their offerings. Starting small makes it manageable

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Mortensen, Annabelle

Library Journal, 2019, Vol.144 (4), p.28

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Diverse Collections: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights

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Diverse Collections: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights

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Student-Led Collection Audit on Picture Books for Ethnicity/Race

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Student-Led Collection Audit on Picture Books for Ethnicity/Race

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Copy of Data Collection on Diversity in Picture Books