Learning Opportunities

“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books”. 

(Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, 1990, p. ix)

The following questions will underpin this 1-hour session, and help guide some of our thinking and planning for the coming school year:

• How might our text choices – whether for classroom libraries, book clubs, or whole class analysis – create rich opportunities for students to better understand themselves and others?
• What considerations might help inform and guide our text selections?
• How might these text choices help us create the conditions for the conversations adolescents need and want to have around issues of diversity, equity and inclusion?
• Finally, what texts did you choose this past year that truly resonated with your students and helped to spark meaningful, and sometimes challenging, discussion?