Introductory Post

I am a Senior Elementary Education major focused in Language Arts here at Michigan State. I’ll be graduating in May and will begin my internship this fall 2009 in the Detroit Area. Being a Language Arts major within the College of Education, literacy is therefore a very important aspect of education for me. Not only on an academic level but also on a personal level, I feel that literature is one of the mediums through which we can teach our students about inclusion and tolerance in an ever-growing diverse world. Students are greatly influenced by the world around them, much of which through the media we cannot control. However, we do have the chance to control what kinds of materials we use in our classrooms and I feel in this way we have the option of choosing diverse literature to enhance our classrooms. I also think it is important that we address stereotypes, generalizations, and misrepresentations within our classrooms. I have already begun to do this in my own field placement this past semester. In the literature-based Thanksgiving lesson I gave to my first grade classroom, I made sure to choose a book that discussed the backgrounds of both the Pilgrims and Indians as well as the true story of what occurred, which doesn’t include a “happy ending”. It was not a gruesome story by any means, but it did not sugarcoat the relationship between the Pilgrims and Indians and also did not show stereotypical images of the Indians that are common in most children’s books about Thanksgiving. I feel in this way I have begun to make a small step towards establishing my own personal ideals about creating a diverse and inclusionary literature program for my classroom. In this course, I’d like to learn more about the criteria for choosing appropriate books and would even like some suggestions of exemplary books that can be used in the elementary classroom. I’d also like to learn more about how to address issues of diversity when students have questions; what kinds of resources or strategies should I use for answering any questions?