Education Week - October 20, 2021 - 11

fore deploying them in schools.
The list of resources featured professional
development books for educators
about culturally competent
teaching and dismantling biases.
And it had books for students, including
works that featured characters
of color, were by authors of color,
and/or were about diversity. Those
titles ranged from Jaden Toussaint,
the Greatest, a chapter book series
about a kindergartner of color who
solves problems using the scientific
method, to Stamped: Racism, Antiracism,
and You.
" While some might be quote-unquote
controversial, a vast majority
of them were just books with Black
characters in them-not even about
race necessarily, " said Jamie Hill, a
Black parent in the district who serves
on the diversity committee. He added
that the list included books about several
influential people, including Rosa
Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Ruby
Bridges, and Malala Yousafzai.
High school students in the district
protested the board's decision to
freeze the reading list, and teachers
spoke out against the board's influence
on their curriculum. " There are
teachers looking over their shoulders
wondering if someone's going to be
at their door, darkening their door,
saying you said something or you
mentioned something or used something
that you were not supposed to, "
teacher Patricia Jackson told CNN.
Parents were divided about the
restrictions, Hill said. Some parents
were appalled at the board's decision,
while others were afraid critical race
theory was being introduced and that
their children would be made to feel
guilty for being white.
Some parents would say things like,
" What if my child's feelings are hurt? "
Hill said. " I've heard a lot of that. But
what about my child's feelings? "
On Sept. 20, nearly a year after first
freezing the list, the school board announced
that it would " immediately
release the list " and revisit the review
process at a later time.
" What we are attempting to do is
balance legitimate academic freedom
with what could be literature/materials
that are too activist in nature, and
may lean more toward indoctrination
rather than age-appropriate academic
content, " said Jane Johnson,
the president of the school board, in a
statement. " To that end, we recognize
the intensity of opinions on all sides of
these issues, and we are committed to
making this long delay right. "
Hill said he worries that when board
members do a more comprehensive
review, they'll pull some of the books
that explicitly focus on anti-racism.
" Maybe books like I Am Human
won't be banned, but A Is for Activist
will be, " Hill said. " If a book brings up
whiteness or equity, ... those are going
to be the 'bad books.' ... There is nothing
on this list that is egregious or false.
These are people's experiences. "
Teach books that resonate with
students, educators say
Books should be both windows
and mirrors, author and education
researcher Rudine Sims Bishop once
wrote-they should expose readers
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to new worlds and perspectives while
also reflecting their own experiences.
And students are more likely to want
to read books that they can relate to,
educators say.
" If our goal is to create readers-who
want to read and find reading a source
of affirmation-we need to expand our
canon, " said Pamela Mason, a senior
lecturer on education at the Harvard
Graduate School of Education.
Ryan McHale began teaching The
Hate U Give to his 8th graders in central
Massachusetts three years ago
and found that his students enjoyed
reading and discussing the book.
" There's a little bit of something for
everyone, " he said. His Black students
feel seen and heard while reading the
book, while his LGBTQ and immigrant
students resonate with the code-switching
that's featured in the plot. And all
students can appreciate the central
theme of finding your voice and standing
up for what's right, McHale said.
The book is often challenged for
its profanity, but McHale said there's
nothing in there that kids don't already
say. The N-word appears in the
book, but McHale always has a conversation
with students before they
get to that chapter to acknowledge the
history of the word and why McHale,
who is white, will not say it, even
when reading the book aloud. He
also pauses every five or six chapters
to have a day dedicated to discussing
what's happening in the book.
Still, he has received some pushback
from parents for teaching the
book, and he's anticipating more this
year due to the anti-critical-race-theory
rhetoric.
" I have been labeled by a few parents
as a woke indoctrinator, " McHale
said. " I was accused of trying to make
white kids feel guilty for being white. "
But books like The Hate U Give
cover difficult and powerful concepts
" in a way that is humanizing and
possibility-driven, " said Kimberly
Parker, a literacy consultant and the
co-founder of #DisruptTexts, a grassroots
effort to bring more diverse
books into classrooms.
" There are people who don't want to
be uncomfortable; they don't want to
have to turn and face and confront the
history of this country, " she said. But
" children are aware of race. I think it's
our responsibility to really make our
classrooms spaces where we can have
conversations and the discourse and
the dialogue that we need to be able
to put young people out in the world. "
After all, Mason said, banning
books won't stop teenagers from reading
them.
" Once you make something forbidden,
it becomes all the more attractive, "
she said. " Children will find
those books one way or another, but if
that's how they're getting them-[without]
an adult role model to help them
put [the story] in context-I find that,
as an educator, more troubling. "
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EDUCATION WEEK | October 20, 2021 | www.edweek.org | 11

Education Week - October 20, 2021

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