Challenge

The word "challenge" has far more than the two meanings above. But the defintions above are the imporant ones for the sake of this webpage. It's important that literature in schools reflect the diversity of the population. Kimberly Moran on weareteachers.com writes, "Kids need stories that reflect their own experience as well as the experiences of others." Emily Style introduced a metaphor for this necessity and calls books, "windows and mirrors." The windows are peepholes into the experiences of others and the mirrors reflect their own experiences. Windows and mirrors in books are important whether or not the school's population is diverse because it's important to have empathy for people from all cultures. Highschool teacher, Jarred Amato, started Project Lit, a national movement to increase "access to culturally relevant books... in our schools and communities." This past August, I started pursuing the dream of starting a Project Lit chapter at my school. One of the Project Lit requirements is that each chapter read four books from the list. By the time I had permission to start, there was no longer time to do four books. So, this year we are not an official Project Lit chapter. This year we are a Windows and Mirrors book club and we are reading three books. We look forward to becoming an official Project Lit chapter next year. We met for the first time this March and compiled an interactive Trivia Challenge using Pear Deck, enjoy!