Including Diversity Within the Books We Teach

By Lindsey Bernardi

This article discusses the importance of being open to cultural diversity within the classroom. The author talks about how when he started teaching in a different country he had to shift his idea of what a typical “American” student is and adapt to the fact that not every student has the same background and everyone has different needs. He discusses his personal experience with opening up to diversity and explains the importance of being accepting of all students despite their differences. After this, he goes on to explain how being in a different environment led him to include diversity within his classroom. He discussed how important it is to look at race within a text even if it is not explicitly said. Throughout this article, the author highlighted the necessity of being receptive to other cultures and why we need to bring diversity into the classroom.

Some examples of teaching strategies I saw within this article is the idea that you must be open to learning different cultures. Instead of arguing that your culture is right, realize that there is more than one way to go about things and educate yourself on other cultures. I imagine myself adopting this strategy into my classroom by always listening to what my students have to say about and never telling them that they are wrong, since we likely just have different perspectives on what we are discussing.

This article discusses just how important it is to have diversity in the books that we teach in schools. There is a very slim amount of books that feature people of color, LGBTQ+ characters or people with disabilities. This can be very harmful to students since they do not fit into the stereotypical box of characters that are usually in books. It is important to include diversity within literature in our classrooms not only to help educate students on different cultures but also to help students who come from minority groups to feel seen. Without reflecting diversity in our curriculum, we can cause harm to our students.

One teaching strategy that was discussed in this article was finding books that are written by or feature characters from minority groups. The article provided a list of examples of diverse books that would be helpful to teach in class. In addition to that, I have a list of diverse books that I have read in high school and college that have been very beneficial to me and I would like to teach my students one day.

In this article, the authors talk about the importance of including books with people of color in the classroom. The article talks about how it is necessary to include books with characters of color who are not going through traumatic events (like slavery). We should not only use diverse books to educate students but also to reflect the backgrounds and cultures of all students in the classroom. Only including books about slavery when discussing people of color perpetuates harmful stereotypes and takes away the idea that there are many different cultures and backgrounds in our country.

One teaching strategy that was discussed in this article is making sure that we teach books that don’t perpetuate stereotypes and instead promote diversity. While it is important to discuss the history of slavery and racism in our country, that is not the only reason to talk about people of color. I plan on incorporating this strategy into my classroom by finding books that are appropriate to my curriculum but feature characters from minority groups.

This article talks about how important it is to teach books that not only have diverse characters but also are written by diverse authors. It talks about how someone who comes from a majority group will never truly understand the difficulties that come from being within a minority, making it important to teach books that are written by minority authors. An example this article gives is To Kill a Mockingbird, even though it has diverse characters, it is written by a white woman who does not truly know what it is like to suffer racism in our country. The article explains that it is necessary to teach books written by diverse authors to ensure that we are giving accurate information to our students and helping to evolve their mindsets.

One strategy that was discussed in this article is to include books that are written by people of color, not just white authors. I plan on doing this in my future classroom since I have read many books by people of color in college and high school and have many authors I would love to teach when I have my own English classroom. I am going to continue to look for authors of color throughout the rest of my education and find new ones throughout my career as the world around me evolves.

This article talks about how teaching diverse books helps students of color see their full potential. Without showing diverse characters in the literature we teach, we are only inspiring majority groups and disregarding all others. The author talks about how teaching diverse books should not just be done to educate students but also to help inspire them and let all students live up to their highest potential. The author talks about how necessary it is to include books with characters from diverse backgrounds because if not we are causing damage to all students who do not fit into a majority group.

The strategy I picked up from this article was to include books in my curriculum that feature all different types of characters who come from different backgrounds. I plan on using this strategy in my teaching by finding books that include all different types of characters. I want to make sure that each student in my classroom reads a book about someone with a similar background to them so that they feel seen through my teaching.

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