Picture Books have a way of opening conversations about reading, racial equity, and relationships, that are absolutely necessary to improving children’s literacy experiences in Allegheny County.
In the 3Rs, books are carefully selected for their representation, social justice orientation, and high quality. We pair all our books with professional learning opportunities, so that teachers, parents, and community partners have opportunities to reflect, plan, and practice with texts before using them with children. To inform the process of selecting books, 3Rs staff adapted a measure of culturally responsive curriculum for use with picture books, which we call the Caplan Scorecard: Culturally Responsive Picture Book Tool. This tool looks specifically at children’s books across multiple domains, including:
1. Representation: Who is depicted, and how?
- Diversity of characters
- Accuracy and complexity of portrayals
- How identity is utilized/central to the story
2. Social Justice: What opportunities does the book provide to connect to social justice across multiple levels?
- Decolonization, power, and privilege
- Centering multiple perspectives
- Opportunities to connect learning to real life & action
This year, the 3Rs professional learning communities for teachers are centered around eight books, and each one can help them grapple with how they support early literacy. An example is Aaron Slater, Illustrator by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts. In this book, Aaron’s teacher sees his strengths and really values them, even while he struggles with reading skills. After reading the book together, teachers reflect on the way it makes them feel, and how they might use it in practice. Then, teachers work together with 3Rs facilitators to consider the reading experiences depicted in the book, and the ways in which all 3Rs (Reading, Racial Equity, & Relationships) are reflected in the book.
Across participating teachers, teachers reflected on issues related to the ways in which Aaron and other students were not necessarily getting the supports they needed to learn to read. Teachers talked about the importance of modeling making mistakes themselves, and letting students know it’s okay to ask for help, and how teachers can learn to see and use students’ strengths and home literacy practices to promote reading outcomes. To paraphrase an idea shared by a first grade teacher, in response to a page where Aaron starts to feel frustrated at school and decides to focus on “blending in,”
Aaron is phenomenal at art – do his teachers see it? That page where he hangs up his red coat and decides he has to fit in, to hide part of who he is, because school is invalidating – we have to do better! We have to help our kids see – you do know how to do this, your words, your ideas – that’s literacy! It’s in them, and it’s up to us to help them connect their practices to reading and writing content. What if instead of saying “write me a story!” we said “Make me a story? - Tell! Show! Write! Imagine! Sing! Draw! – and then it’s on us as teachers to help them map that on to written language and reading. That’s our job. But we have to validate their innate amazingness.
This deep insight led to a larger group conversation of the ways in which teachers could shift their own reading practices to ensure that students receive equitable, effective, affirming literacy instruction.
High quality racially affirming picture books can help adults do deep personal learning and that is essential for successfully supporting children’s literacy development. In the 3Rs, we call this the “You Work” and we always do this in addition to knowing what is in the book and how to use it in teaching. Before reading high quality, racially-affirming picture books to children, we grapple together, become aware of our own misconceptions, challenge each other, and prepare for the rich conversations with children that lie ahead.
For more info about the 3Rs: https://bit.ly/3Rs-TPS
To Donate High Quality Racially-Affirming Picture Books to children in Allegheny County: bit.ly/PittGivesBooksforChange