Defending Texts That Represent Our Students

When I was in elementary school, I frequently got in trouble for reading. Mom always read to me at night, and I read on my own as soon as I was able, reading ALL the time. In first grade I remember being yelled at by Ms. Kovac because I was reading "wrong," not sounding out words, but sight reading. It made me defiant and sassy in class. I got in trouble a lot. In fifth grade, my teacher had a bookcase in his room, full of books, that we could choose and read at will. No one monitoring. No yelling. I read the Oz books (once completing my reading for a book project due that day in class under my desk surreptitiously). I also read Orca, which should NOT have been in a fifth grade bookshelf.

Later in eighth grade, a brief stint at a private school, introduced me to lots of dreamy things- like community service as part of school, a place where learning was encouraged, you weren't labelled a geek and made fun of, guitar lessons, inter-mural sports that were fun, and where people didn't make fun of you if you didn't know how to play. I thought it was heaven. I only got a semester there, but it was a bright spot. This school was also where a kind librarian introduced me to The Handmaid's Tale and Confederacy of Dunces. Again, not sure I would have recommended to an eighth grader, but I thought they were magic.

As I grew up, I always had a book in hand, was always reading. But I always was made fun of for it, even in graduate school. I had a professor early in my grad school career tell me to do all the reading before class. So I did, and it became a habit. And my classmates hated me for it, making fun of me in seminars. I got made fun of when I read for pleasure and people saw me, because I'd done the school reading.

But it never stopped me. I am still a voracious reader, although the PhD altered my reading habits, and I'm still trying to re-adjust to pre-PhD habits and enjoyment.

I rarely saw myself in the books I read, although I enjoyed almost everything I read. There were no girl heroines in fantasy or sci-fi, the majority of what I loved. I was teaching high school before I read YA books by people like Tamora Pierce and Stephanie Meyers and adult texts like the Mary Russell books and Margaret Maron where I saw characters younger me (heck, older me) could have related to. L.M Montgomery, L.M. Alcott were exceptions in my reading loves, not the rule, and the historical distance meant they read as much fantasy to me as did the magic wielding female protagonists in the other books I read.

I am a straight, white, cis-woman, so I can't imagine how much worse this disconnected feeling is for my students. What it is like for the majority of them I to sit in English classes every year, being taught the Anglo canon by Anglo teachers, and never, ever encountering anyone who looks, and acts, and talks like them, other than a brief glimpse during Hispanic Heritage Month or Black History Month, or as a diversity box checked in a single short story being read, or a poem, or a single piece of art.

This is one reason why I try to focus on representation and not diversity. Too often, in seventeen years of teaching I've seen diversity used as a checklist- I taught a short story by Amy Tan or Maxine Kong, so I'm done- rather than a radical revising of the texts taught.

Last year I actively worked in my classes to decolonize my classroom, and to make explicit moves, that I explained to my students about making sure they were represented in my class. So this summer I have focused on building on that.

Throughout the years I have included independent reading, but it was often the thing that got cut first as we ran out of time, it was not a regular routine. This past year, every day we read for 15-20 minutes. The students could choose anything they wanted- books from my classroom library, articles or webpages on their phone, anything. They record the pages read each day, and respond in some way, but it's not graded. It is reading just for the sake of reading. I used to require projects, and assignments, but they had like a 30% completion rate, and never did what I wanted, which was to get students to read regularly and LOVE it. 

So this is how class starts, students come in, get their reading, and settle in. I take attendance, but right after, I sit up front and read my book. It's not time to police students, or grade, or anything else. I read right with them. I set my book on the whiteboard tray when finished, so people can see what I'm reading. I read three books this past year that started to nudge me towards building and expanding on these percolating ideas- Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas, and the book that started me thinking this way, teaching untold stories, Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly.

This summer I actively looked for resources, people, and ideas that would help me build on these ideas. Twitter came through, introducing me to We Need Diverse Books, and Project Lit.

One thing I love about Project Lit is exposure to texts I might not know otherwise. Some I've read, others I am planning on reading. I used their recommended books as a start for what I wanted to give to my students.

What I decided to do was to identify books that I thought represented my students, and I created an Amazon wishlist that asked for five copies of each book, so that I could use them in literature circles with my students. I posted on Twitter and Facebook, and asked friends to give if they could, but share if they couldn't. And I was overwhelmed by the response. People I did  not know bought copies of books and sent them to me. I ended up with six class sets. I will probably have 30-35 kids in my English 9 class, so I'd need seven books. So I spent my own money buying four more sets. First Book was instrumental in me being able to do this.

I will say, that one thing I noticed is that these texts are engaging, and a HUGE improvement over what my students have been reading/told to read. BUT, my students are 85% Chican@ and roughly 10% Native. And there are few books that reflect these experiences. There are books that focus on Latinx in New York, or in LA, but those are very different experiences than my students have in New Mexico. So, I will continue to look for books that show those stories.

Here's how I plan on using these books.
English 9 has the essential question, "Who am I?" So I'm going to start first marking period with a unit that focuses on where my students are in my curriculum, their stories, their personal narratives, how they define youth culture, and what it means to them. As part of this, I'm going to combine the independent reading and class novel approach I usually use, because I want to ease them into class, and not require too much work at once. So the first week they will book shop from these literature circle sets. They will choose a book to read, and with only five copies, once they're gone, they're gone. Their groups will be based on the books. We will still start class with reading. I'm going to encourage them to read these books, but explain in the future they can choose. Then during our workshop time we will spend our time talking about these books, the big ideas, and working with these books.

Once we move into second marking period, these books are then available for them to read for independent reading if they want.

I'm hoping this will do a couple of things. The first is that my students will realize that they are at the center of our class. The second is that they will engage with the reading.

This is a whole new approach, so I'm just going to focus on those two things this year. But I plan on asking students during conferences how they feel, what they liked, and what I could improve. I also plan on continuing to model, working my way through all these books. I also plan on continuing something I started last year, where students can write recommendations for books they want me to buy. I didn't have a lot last year, but the students were shocked, and really touched when I DID buy them, so I want to build on that.

Some of  these books deal with issues that are going to be hard for some people. Not my students, because they deal with hard issues every day, but maybe adults. The Hate You Give and All-American Boys have garnered national attention because South Carolina police are challenging the view of police in these texts. Like many things these days, it's complicated, but it's also reality. The fact is, black and brown men and boys are more likely to be shot by police than white men and boys. The last few years the news and videos from phones have brought from the forefront the fact that white men and women can wave guns and knives and threaten police and live but black and brown men are shot dead. These are not debatable facts. These are issues. But they can be touchy ones. They can lead to hard conversations.  Add to this that many of my students have negative relationships with authority due to past trauma, and you have lots of emotional, traumatic feelings. And you have some people whose privilege has sheltered them from these experiences, so it is easy to turn "I have never experienced this" into "this doesn't happen."

I believe these are hard, necessary conversations. I think asking students to think through what they think are the greatest issues facing their generation is valuable. Teaching them not what to think but how to become informed and evaluate sources is valuable. It is vital for me that my students know that I see them, that their stories have value, and they are represented.

But I have been teaching for seventeen years, so I know things can be challenged. So I'm preparing. The students will choose their own texts, I won't assign, and if a parent prefers they read something different, they can change. I've also created a document, and Project Lit is pulling together some resources, that has some of the research, resources, and arguments for student choice in texts. Defending Representative Texts.

So that's how I'll start my year. I would love to hear how you guys are integrating representative texts into your classrooms. I also welcome additions to the above document, and suggestions.