Rarely Convenient, Usually Necessary

In my last post, Brutally Honest: Opening Up in the Classroom and on the Page, I talked about tips authors gave for creating characters readers can root for at nErDcampLI. While I thoroughly enjoyed that session, it wasn’t my favorite session of the day. The organizers of nErDcampLI had the fantastic idea to start the day with four nErDtalks. JoEllen McCarthy and Kristen Picone explained that they decided to begin with these inspirational speeches after attending a different nErDcamp. By now you probably have guessed that the nErDtalks were my favorite part of the day.

JoEllen McCarthy gets nErDcampLI attendees ramped up for the day.

Author and middle school educator Karuna Riazi started us off with her talk, “Who Do We Welcome Home?” She talked about how she is probably the only person in her generation who has never read Harry Potter even though she knows she’s a Hufflepuff. Even though Harry Potter is a fantastic series, she discussed the fact that many people from diverse backgrounds had to make their own home in Harry Potter because they couldn’t find themselves depicted on J.K. Rowling’s pages. 

Karuna Riazi author of THE GAUNTLET and THE BATTLE.

Ms. Riazi asked the room full of educators and authors who we are making a home for in our books and in our classrooms. As authors, who are we including in our pages? As educators, do we have literature that represents students from various racial, religious, socioeconomic, gender diverse and neurodiverse backgrounds? Are we taking the time to make sure we know how to pronounce students names? Then, she showed a photo of the students she welcomes home every day.

Karuna Riazi and her students.

After Ms. Riazi, author and illustrator Lita Judge took the stage. She challenged the educators in the room to provide all sorts of windows for students to enter the world of writing. Ms. Judge shared that she entered the world of writing through her artwork. Are we welcoming all learners in our classroom, or are we only creating homes for students who have strong verbal/linguistic skills?

Illustrator/Author Lita Judge

A page from one of Lita Judge's childhood journals.

Next up was the unforgettable, inimitable Charles Smith Jr. I am embarrassed to say I had no idea who he was before last Saturday, but I’ll always remember him now. His performance of his biographical poem filled the room with electric energy.

He pointed out that when he was a child it was hard for him to find people who looked like him in books. Mr. Smith has spent his life creating books that feature African American people so that other African Americans will be able to see themselves portrayed in picture books. Today in my class, we used Brick by Brick to talk about again-and-again moments. Throughout the book, Smith focuses on the hands of the various people who built the original White House.

Charles Smith Jr. performs his electric, biographical poem.

Emma Otheguy closed the session. She focused on what we are welcoming home instead of who we are welcoming home. Ms. Otheguy pointed out that when we fund one-on-one technology for each student, but we don’t have money for books or to staff libraries that we are sending a strong message that technology counts and books and librarians don’t matter. 

By the way, I blogged about Ms. Otheguy's novel, Silver Meadows Summer, on August 1st, 2019.

Emma Otheguy asks the audience to consider what materials we are making homes for in our classrooms and in our schools.

I find myself thinking about these questions throughout the school day. What could I be doing to make all the various types of learners in my classroom feel more at home? How can I make more space for empathy, compassion and inclusion so that there’s less space for distance, judgement and exclusion?
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The answers aren’t being delivered overnight in tidy packages. No, the answers come at various times throughout the day. Sometimes they come at inconvenient times. Change is rarely convenient, but it’s usually necessary.