Forced and Chosen Journeys: Refugee and Immigrant Experiences in Youth Literature

Join Worlds of Words and CERCLL for a two-day institute.
TIME: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
DATE: Thursday and Friday, May 30-31, 2024
PLACE: Worlds of Words Center

This in-person, professional development event is presented by Dr. Kathy G. Short, Dr. Dorea Kleker and Narges Zandi with participating children’s authors. The $30 registration fee includes lunch, books and materials. Registration is limited to 35.

Join us for a two-day workshop to engage in experiences and books that invite children to immerse themselves in literature about refugee and immigrant experiences. In this interactive workshop, you will explore new picturebooks and novels for your work with students and participate in engagements with these books. You will also interact with several children’s authors/illustrators who will join us to talk about their global books. You will receive their picturebooks along with booklists and other materials.

We are framing this workshop around the conceptual framework of journeys as movement along a pathway to examine the forced and chosen journeys in our own lives. Within this frame, we will explore refugee/immigrant books related to themes of displacement, difficult journeys, detention, belonging, home, language, memory, names and walls. There will be time to browse books as well as use dialogue strategies to engage with books. We will also share our work with children around these books. Our goal is inviting children to critically engage with story as a means of making sense of their own lives and of understanding the lives of children whose experiences differ from their own.

Registration is limited, so reserve your spot today: https://cercll.regfox.com/journeyssummerinstitute.

CERCLL 2018 Summer Institute

CERCLL offers a professional development opportunity in the form of a 3-day summer institute, Reading Globally: Critical Issues in Global Literature for Children and Adolescents.

Participants will explore current trends in global literature for children and adolescents, examine critical issues and approaches to analyzing these books, and experience strategies for critically engaging with global literature. We will use the Worlds of Words collection to immerse ourselves in a wealth of global literature as well as to delve deeply into key books to develop our own critical understandings and to consider how to invite students into a critical reading of the word and the world. An additional component will be interactions that pair classic, well-known texts often used in elementary and secondary classrooms with global children’s and adolescent literature to expand the curriculum and include global perspectives.

The institute will be interactive and include presentations by experts in global literature and authors of global books along with time for browsing and reading books, engaging in literature circles, and discussing classroom connections. There will also be breakout sessions where participants share their work with global literature with each other.

Mitali Perkins will join us on Monday, June 25, and Duncan Tonatiuh will join us on Tuesday, June 26, to interact throughout the day and present on global issues related to their books. Mitali Perkins writes middle grade novels that cross global cultures, including You Bring the Distant Near, Rickshaw Girl, Bamboo People and Tiger Boy. She was born in Kolkata, India, lived in many places around the world, and currently resides in San Francisco. Duncan Tonatiuh is an author/illustrator who is both Mexican and American, growing up in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. His artwork is inspired by Pre-Columbian art, particularly that of the Mixtec codex. His picturebooks include Danza, The Princess and the Warrior, Funny Bones, Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote, Diego Rivera and Salsa.

Continuing Education Certificates are provided for the institute for a total of 18 hours.

Registration Information:
Registration is limited to 60 people. Until May 31, the fee for the institute is only $100 and includes lunch. (The registration fee increases to $140 on June 1st.) You may register as an individual or for a group.

For more information, visit: http://cercll.arizona.edu/2018/03/19/2018-summer-institute/

Globalizing the Common Core State Standards Exemplar List

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and their variations influence K-12 curriculum, particularly in the teaching of literacy, across the U.S. and internationally. With funds from the Center for Educational Resources in Culture Language and Literacy (CERCLL), Worlds of Words (WOW) in the University of Arizona College of Education offers an alternative to the CCSS text exemplar list to assist educators searching for ways to globalize their classrooms and libraries.

Globalizing the Common Core State Standards, Odyssey Graphic Novel

Tucson High Magnet School senior, Parrish Ballenger, reads the graphic novelization of The Odyssey by Gareth Hinds based on Homer’s epic poem. Worlds of Words pairs this book with the CCSS exemplar The Odyssey by Homer, along with Here Lies Arthur by Phillip Reeve, Sita’s Ramayana by Samhita Ami and Tiger Moon by Antonia Michaelis.

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Reading Globally: Critical Issues in Global Literature for Children and Adolescents

Kathy G. Short presents Reading Globally at the Sixth International Conference On the Development and Assessment of Intercultural Competence

We live in a world where our lives are interconnected in complex ways across global cultures as well as fractured with tensions that divide us. Global children’s and adolescent literature provides a means of facilitating intercultural understanding, but issues of availability, access, authenticy, and classroom use must be addressed for this potential to be realized. In this workshop, participants will have the opportunity to explore current trends in global literature, examine critical issues, and experience strategies for critically engaging with global literature. One strategy we will explore is pairing classic, well-known books often used in elementary and secondary classroooms with global children’s and adolescent literature to expand the curriculum and include global perspectives. These global books are linked to the Common Core Text Exemplars and provide a means of globalizing the standards in K-12 classrooms. The books will be available for interactions and extensive book lists provided.

Hello, Dear Enemy! comes to University of Arizona College of Education

By Rebecca Ballenger, Coordinator of Outreach and Collections, Worlds of Words

The news is bleak. Even in homes where comfort and security are the rule, the media confronts children and adults with images of war, animosity and displacement. Some are directly affected while others have many questions, and all seek answers. The traveling exhibit, Hello, Dear Enemy!, does not provide answers, but it does provide a path to conversation. Worlds of Words in the University of Arizona College of Education is the first stop for this powerful collection from the International Youth Library in Munich, Germany.

Hello, Dear Enemy! is a traveling exhibit created by the International Youth Library in Munich, Germany and makes its first stop at Worlds of Words in the University of Arizona College of Education. WOW invites the community to come tour the exhibit, which is free and open to the public. Photo by Jen Ryder.

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