Why Equity and Diversity in Text Selections Matter:
A Toolkit for Educators
CCSSO’s Leading for Equity
States Leading for Equity: Promising Practices Advancing the Equity Commitments
Learning for Justice’s Reading Diversity provides tools “promoting a multi-dimensional approach to [text] selection that prioritizes critical literacy, cultural responsiveness and complexity This resource includes two customizable PDFs educators can use and share:
● Reading Diversity Lite: A Tool for Selecting Diverse Texts (Teacher’s Edition) is a one-page questionnaire that helps users include diverse voices in their day-to-day planning by answering 14 simple yes/no questions..”
● Reading Diversity: A Tool for Selecting Diverse Texts (Extended Edition) walks users through the multi-step method Teaching Tolerance uses to identify readings for the Student Text Library. This edition gives users an in-depth look at the complexity and diversity of a text and is ideal for curriculum coordinators, literacy coaches, book-selection committees and pre-service teachers.
Also from Learning for Justice: Let’s Talk: Discussing Race, Racism, and Other Difficult Topics with Students
Rudine Sims Bishop's Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors
Sims Bishop states that books should be windows into the realities of others, not just imaginary worlds, and books can be mirrors that reflect the lives of readers. Sliding glass doors refers to how readers can walk into a story and become part of the world created by the author – readers become fully immersed in another experience. Watch this short video of Sims Bishop discussing this.
Mirrors, Windows, Sliding Glass Doors, and Curtains, from: Writing Native American Characters
Native scholar and activist Debbie Reese talks about Rudine Sims Bishop s theory of literature and representation, Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors, and adds a fourth layer, Curtains. This video is an excerpt from the Writing the Other Master Class Writing Native American Characters: How Not To Do A Rowling, taught by Debbie Reese.
American Indians in Children's Literature
Achieve the Core: ELA / Literacy: Text Complexity & Analysis
Providing high-quality, engaging, and relevant texts is a critical component of literacy instruction. These resources help educators analyze the complexity of a given text and support them as they consider the intersections of their own identities, the identities of their students, and related considerations for complexity, academic success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness.
Achieve the Core: Text Analysis Toolkit
This toolkit aims to support educators in the process of selecting and analyzing texts based on complexity and cultural relevance. The resources focus on tools for reflecting on the identities of educators and the students they serve, analyzing texts with multiple lenses, and considering implications for use in their specific context.
Achieve the Core: Creating Text Sets to Support Culturally Relevant Instruction
This collection of text sets intentionally elevates culturally relevant content and pedagogy. You might use a culturally relevant text set to fill a gap in relevance, perspectives or representation in your instructional materials, center student interests, or enhance an existing unit.
Each culturally relevant text set:
Centers on a single topic (e.g., women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott; the sun, moon, and stars)
Is designed to elevate connections to counternarratives, current events, student identities/languages, multiple perspectives and/or social justice
Contain a variety of open source resources (i.e., articles, videos, websites, art, music) at a variety of complexity levels
Purposely orders resources to support students in building vocabulary and knowledge through a volume of reading
Addressing controversy around important texts rather than avoiding them
Resolution on Meeting Obscenity Challenges to Teaching Materials
Guidelines for Selection of Materials in English/Language Arts Program National Council of Teachers of English/LA
How to ensure equity and diversity in the selection and use of texts/resources
In a survey that included 2,000 schools, educators asserted that children "would be more enthusiastic readers if they had access to books with characters, stories and images that reflect their lives and their neighborhoods."
-First Book, "The Stories for All Project," Web, 8 December 2014.
Questions for Review Committees:
▪ How does the text/text set fit into the larger curriculum? What purposes do they serve?
▪ Has the curriculum been independently reviewed to ensure it is high-quality in overall design?
▪ Is the text/text set appropriately complex and supportive of grade-level work? What are the scaffolds available to provide access to do grade level work?
▪ Is the committee diverse?
▪ Who will be reading the text/text set? In what ways are readers from all backgrounds being kept in mind?
▪ What kind of story is being told? What makes the story difficult? Who is it difficult for? In what way does the nature of that difficulty differ, depending on the demographic makeup of a classroom, school or community? Consider background and prior knowledge as well as life experiences.
▪ Who wrote the text/text set? In what ways is the author qualified to write about the subject/topics?
▪ Who is represented? Are they represented in a way that does not perpetuate implicit or explicit biases[CP3] or stereotypes?
▪ How does the text/text set address the contributions of diverse cultures and perspectives?
▪ How does the text/text set deliberately build knowledge?
▪ Does the text/text set incorporate multiple perspectives in content areas?
▪ Do the readings/resources help build students’ content knowledge?
▪ Why should students outside of the represented group read this text? How will they benefit from learning about an experience different from their own?
Questions for Teachers:
● Given the diverse text(s), does the instruction foster conversations in a responsible way?
● What personal biases/beliefs might you be bringing to the lesson(s)?
● How do you acknowledge/address the role of white privilege [CP4] [GU5] when teaching with diverse texts?
● Who is represented in the text(s)? How are they represented?
● How does the text/text set fit into the larger curriculum? What purposes do they serve?
Teachers can also consider the questions for review committees when considering the materials for classroom use. Consider these questions from Teaching Tolerance: Reading Diversity.
We Need Diverse Books is a nonprofit organization that promotes “literature that reflects and honors the lives of all young people.” WNDB provides books to classrooms, recommends books, mentors writers and sponsors The Walter Award, which recognizes diverse books by diverse authors. The downloadable Booktalking Kit can be accessed here.
We Are Kidlit Collective publishes a summer reading list for children and teens each year that features books about indigenous people and people of color.
Lee and Low Books examines issues of race and diversity in children’s books. It is worth taking time to read through the blog archives
Project Lit is a “grassroots literacy movement” that educators can follow on Twitter. The Project Lit Community encourages schools to form book clubs, with students reading books from their lists.
From https://humaneeducation.org/blog/2019/windows-and-mirrors-and-sliding-glass-doors-ensuring-students-see-themselves-and-others-in-literature/[CP7]
The Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools has developed a customizable Culturally Responsive Curriculum Scorecard to help parents, teachers, students and community members determine the extent to which their schools’ ELA curricula are (or are not) culturally responsive. The resource, with directions for how to use it, is available here. The site also contains a demographic analysis of three commonly-used curricula and book lists in New York City public schools; conducted in October 2018 by the NYU Metro Center, the analysis found that “White authors and characters are wildly over-represented in proportion to the student population.”
The Great Lakes Equity Center developed a resource, Assessing Bias In Standards and Curricular Materials, to provide guidance in reviewing standards and curriculum materials. It includes a scoring and analysis guide.
NCTE: This Story Matters Book rationales are some of the strongest tools for educators to show why This Story Matters in their schools and classrooms. Rationales are created by educators who use their expertise in literacy and teaching, grounded in the standards students need to meet to achieve their educational goals. Each rationale includes summaries, grade-level suggestions, teaching tools, alternative book titles, and more. NCTE has created and collected peer-reviewed book rationales for decades, and a database of hundreds of titles can now be accessed online.
Why Diverse Texts are Not Enough by Tricia Ebarvia
Alfred Tatum’s Enabling Texts Resources is based on a continuum that rates texts in terms of their potential impact on Black adolescent male readers, ranging from “disabling” to “neutral” to “enabling.” This resource includes an Enabling Text Rubric, PowerPoint slides, and a list of enabling texts.
Classroom Library Questionnaire helps educators determine how culturally responsive and diverse their classroom text collections are. Source: https://www.leeandlow.com
The Texts of Literacy Instruction: Obstacles to or Opportunities for Educational Equity? is a useful paper by Elfrieda Hiebert on providing appropriate texts for struggling readers.
Equity Assistance Centers: Designed to promote equal educational opportunities and funded by the U.S. Department of Education under Title IV of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the four Equity Assistance Centers (EAC) provide assistance to public school districts in the areas of race, gender, national origin and religion.
How the #DisruptTexts movement supports teachers’ commitment to be more inclusive: https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/55039/how-the-disrupttexts-movement-can-help-english-teachers-be-more-inclusive
University of Notre Dame Center for Literacy Education:
Cognitive Perspectives on Text Sets from Reading Research
Disciplinary Literacy Perspective on Text Sets
Text Sets and Critical Perspectives
Balancing Perspectives: An Integrative Text Set on Racism and Housing
Let’s Talk: Facilitating Critical Conversations with Students https://www.tolerance.org/sites/default/files/2019-12/TT-Lets-Talk-December-2019.pdf
This Teaching Tolerance resources provides guidance on creating a classroom where critical discussions can thrive and facilitating classroom conversations about injustice in ways that ensure all students feel respected and heard.
Literacy Lens Blog: Education Northwest
Strategies for Supporting Learners’ Engagement with Complex Text:
(from Chapter 9, Access and Equity)
Strategies
Teachers support all students’ understanding of complex text by . . .
Additional, amplified, or differentiated support for linguistically diverse learners may include . . .
Additional, amplified, or differentiated support for students with learning disabilities or students experiencing difficulties with reading may include . . .
Background Knowledge
• Leveraging students’ existing background knowledge
• Drawing on primary language and home culture to make connections with existing background knowledge
• Developing students’ awareness that their background knowledge may “live” in another language or culture
• Providing visual supports and think-alouds to aid in connecting new content to build background knowledge
• Engaging in activities to activate students’ relevant prior knowledge • Previewing introductory materials
Comprehension Strategies
• Teaching and modeling, through thinking aloud and explicit reference to strategies, how to make meaning from the text using specific reading comprehension strategies (e.g., questioning, visualizing) • Providing multiple opportunities to employ learned comprehension strategies
• Emphasizing a clear focus on the goal of reading as meaning making (with fluent decoding an important skill) while ELs are still learning to communicate through English
• Explicit modeling and discussion of strategies and opportunities for practice with guidance in meaningful contexts
• Ensuring ample opportunities for success
Vocabulary
• Explicitly teaching vocabulary critical to understanding and developing academic vocabulary over time
• Explicitly teaching how to use morphological knowledge and context clues to derive the meaning of new words as they are encountered
• Explicitly teaching particular cognates and developing cognate awareness
• Making morphological relationships between languages transparent (e.g., word endings for nouns in Spanish, –dad, -ión, -ía, -encia) that have the English counterparts (–ty, -tion/-sion, -y, -ence/-ency)
• Integrating media to illustrate/define/explain domain-specific vocabulary (e.g. erosion, tsunami)
• Planning for multiple opportunities to apply vocabulary knowledge
• Building from informal to formal understanding
Text Organization & Grammatical Structures
• Explicitly teaching and discussing text organization, text features, and other language resources, such as grammatical structures (e.g., complex sentences) and how to analyze them to support comprehension
• Delving deeper into text organization and grammatical features in texts that are new or challenging and necessary to understand in order to build content knowledge
• Drawing attention to grammatical differences between the primary language and English (e.g., word order differences)
• Drawing attention to similarities and differences between the text organization, features, and structures of different text types
Discussions
• Engaging students in peer discussions—both brief and extended—to promote collaborative sense making of text and opportunities to use newly acquired vocabulary
• Structuring discussions that promote equitable participation, academic discourse, and the strategic use of new grammatical structures and specific vocabulary
• Strategically forming groups to best support students experiencing difficulty
Sequencing
• Systematically sequencing texts and tasks so that they build upon one another • Continuing to model close/analytical reading of complex texts during teacher read alouds while also ensuring students develop proficiency in reading complex texts themselves
• Focusing on the language demands of texts, particularly those that may be especially difficult for ELs
• Carefully sequencing tasks to build understanding and effective use of the language in them
• Offering texts at students’ readability levels that explain key ideas to build proficiency in reading in preparation for engaging students in more difficult text
Rereading
• Rereading the text or selected passages to look for answers to questions or to clarify points of confusion
• Rereading the text to build understanding of ideas and language incrementally (e.g., beginning with literal comprehension questions on initial readings and moving to inferential and analytical comprehension questions on subsequent reads)
• Repeated exposure to rich language over time, focusing on particular language (e.g., different vocabulary) during each reading
• Strategically chunking and rereading text to maintain engagement, to construct and clarify ideas and organize them, and to provide many successful reading opportunities
Tools
• Teaching students to develop outlines, charts, diagrams, graphic organizers or other tools to summarize and synthesize content
• Teaching students to annotate text (mark text and make notes) for specific elements (e.g., confusing vocabulary, main ideas, evidence)
• Explicitly modeling how to use the outlines or graphic organizers to analyze/discuss a model text and providing guided practice for students before they use the tools independently
• Using the tools as a scaffold for discussions or writing
• Offering technology tools to develop outlines, charts, diagrams, or graphic organizers to summarize and synthesize content
• Providing opportunities to collaboratively (with the teacher and with peers) develop and use tools
Writing
• Teaching students to return to the text as they write in response to the text and providing them with models and feedback
• Providing opportunities for students to talk about their ideas with a peer before (or after) writing
• Providing written language models (e.g., charts of important words or powerful sentences)
• Providing reference frames (e.g., sentence and text organization frames), as appropriate
• Using graphic organizers to help students organize their thoughts before writing • Allowing for students to express ideas with labeled drawings, diagrams, or graphic organizers
School Reform Initiative’s (SRI) Equity Protocol can help a group of educators understand how their work promote equity. The short exercise involves sharing and discussing a sample teaching assignment in terms of how it might support/hinder students from a range of backgrounds, then analyzing the students’ work in light of that shared discussion.