“I wrote this piece because I believe it’s my duty as a Mexican American to change people’s minds about Mexicans and stereotypes people say about them because I believe that everyone is equal and everyone should be respected”
– Virginia, fourth-grade writer
Turn to page 83 in Cultivating Young Multilingual Writers: Nurturing Voices and Stories In and Beyond the Classroom Walls written by Tracey T. Flores and Maria E. Franquiz, and you will find this quote from Virginia, although her story begins in Chapter 1. This text to teach young writers is dedicated to families. Two beliefs throughout the book stress that writing can be taught and all teachers can teach writing.
On May 2, I had the opportunity to facilitate a conversation with three brilliant educators: Franquiz, Angie Zapata, and Franki Sibberson. The session was titled “NCTE Heart, Hope, and Humanity: Student Engagement in Elementary Spaces” hosted by School Library Journal and Library Journal in partnership with the National Council of Teachers of English. The session was part of a celebration of reading and literacy.
Three key themes bubbled to the surface after the session:
Students must feel safe to share stories;
Agency in the classroom equates to necessary freedoms for teachers to teach and students to learn;
Knowing our own story and welcoming stories of others leads to increased student empowerment.
Angie Zapata, author of Deepening Student Engagement with Diverse Picturebooks: Powerful Classroom Practices for Elementary Teachers shared messages of hope and asked an important question: As the stories in our classroom are changing, how are we changing the way we teach stories? (p. 7).
During her presentation, she shared beautiful images from a diverse selection of picturebooks. Her text includes featured picturebooks and practical strategies for teachers as they consider using these texts in their classrooms.
Sibberson and Lynsey Burkins co-authored Classroom Design for Student Agency, a book published by NCTE. As school design evolves, Sibberson asks her own important question: What does freedom mean in the classroom?
I have already used this text to reconsider classroom design in my own building, specifically to create spaces for students with disabilities to flourish and gain a sense of ownership in their learning. The text’s chapters focus on classroom design and the classroom library, and the book itself is filled with wonderful colorful images to bring the elements to life.
The presentation by Franquiz hit home for me, bringing back fond and powerful memories of my time with the Wyoming Writing Project. With hints of National Writing Project tenets, Franquiz and Flores tell the stories of six writing project teachers who share stories of excellence and of writing opportunities beyond the classroom walls for students. This text is filled with the experiences of students through their own eyes and stresses the importance of writing your own story. “We cherish every story, every book,” Franquiz said.
If you are looking for ways to engage students in reading and writing in new ways, pick up any (or all three!) of these texts. There are gems of greatness in every one of them. If you watched our session, leave a comment with your thoughts.
Note:
Principles in Practice publishes books that utilize NCTE’s research reports and policy statements and puts those policies in action in classrooms. Two of the books in this blog Cultivating Young Multilingual Writers: Nurturing Voices and Stories In and Beyond the Classroom Walls and Deepening Student Engagement with Diverse Picturebooks: Powerful Classroom Practices for Elementary Teachers have been published with this in mind.
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