A thread on the value of #DisruptTexts at the elementary level, because I can’t stop thinking of yesterday’s drivel.

In an Oct. 2020 interview, MG author of #WHATLANE?, @TorreyMaldonado, said:
“I’ve had educators tell me that it’s a good book, but it’s not for their students, +

“because their students are white. When I hear that, I think, Wow! You only want to give white kids books about white kids and white experiences? … How are we ever going to build empathy?”

I’ve had this reaction from a white parent (“why are you reading a book about racism to my child? Why are you teaching racism in school?”)
Here’s why: compassion is empathy + action. You cannot stand up for people if you do not understand an abundance of their life experiences. +

This is where the vital work of #DisruptTexts comes in for me, and why I don’t understand the pushback and vitriol (including death threats) the founders are receiving.

If my 5th grade classroom bookshelves are lined with “classics” that are mainly written by white people +

for white kids, how do white kids develop empathy —> compassion for their friends who have been - and continue to be - marginalized? If I only have so much room on the shelves of my class library, then, yes, I am going to intentionally choose to line those shelves with books +

that not only help kids who might not yet have seen themselves in books have that experience, but also help kids who have *only* seen themselves - and not their marginalized friends - in books expand their worldview.
Let me be clear: this is not banning books. Rather, the team +

at @DisruptTexts and their work helps me - & my students - think critically about what we read, why we read it, why the author may have written it and, most crucially, what we can *do* when we understand the stories of people with different life experiences than our own.
/end

Thought I was done. This should really be a blog post. When I attended the #DisruptTexts panel at#NCTE19, I was introduced to their principles. Without taking too much space, I wanted to share how the values and instructions has helped the students I serve. +

1. The first of the core principles is to continually interrogate my own biases and how they informed my teaching. To that end, I knew my library didn't reflect my students. When I booktalked books by authors who wrote stories to which my students of color could relate, +

independent reading shot up in my classroom. Our library has gone from the publicized-by-publishers (read: white) authors to authors whose stories reflect the lived experiences of all my students, regardless of genre. +

2. I was also under the biased misconception that I had to "teach" the read aloud that "went" with the curriculum. I know now that many of those books were chose for reasons that have nothing to do with equity, nor do they center the voices of the students I teach. +

A small, yet very meaningful step was to look through a critical lens at the books I was reading aloud and make intentional changes. For my students, this resulted in an understanding of counternarratives and a compassionate movement toward ethnicities, races, genders, etc., +

and their beginning to dismantle the "single story" of people w/ different lived experiences. Last year, more students (pre-COVID) chose human rights (LBGTQ, racial equity, gender equity) as their advocacy topic than in the 3 years prior; I believe this is #disrupttexts at work

3. Finally, a principle of #DisruptTexts we acted upon was to center the voices of BIPOC in literature through a @DonorsChoose project. We curated a list of Black authors and authors of color to make our fantasy unit more equitable. It was too white (curriculum recs & my bias.) +

The project was funded 100% and, although the books arrived too late for last year's fantasy book clubs, I CANNOT wait to share the author choices with this year's group of kids. No, this doesn't mean they can't read Rick Riordan if they don't want to. It means they have equity +

in the choices available to them now.

As the #DisruptTexts founders say, this is just the beginning of constant, consistent action for me in service of my students. In lifting up voices of all races & ethnicities, we lift up our students. And THAT'S the ballgame.

/really done