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.

Story as World Making: Connecting Children to Global Cultures – Day 2

Register today for an in-person workshop presented by Kathy G. Short and Dorea Kleker, University of Arizona, with participating authors, Rajani LaRocca and Carol Kim. For more information or to register, visit https://cercll.regfox.com/institutestoriesglobal. Registration closes May 31, 2022.

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

Our work is framed around encouraging children to balance an understanding of their cultural locations and loyalties with a reflective openness to new ways of thinking and being in the world. This open mindedness can be created by inviting children into story worlds where they can experience the ways people live, feel, and think in global cultures. As children develop empathy and knowledge, they come to know their home cultures and the world beyond home. One challenge is to dig below the surface of a culture (e.g. food and festivals) to connect with deeper cultural values, including the significance of language. Through engagements with books, we can challenge children to engage with story as a means of bridging divides and creating intercultural understanding.

Kathy G. Short is a professor and endowed chair of global children’s literature in the UArizona College of Education with a focus on dialogue and inquiry and is Director of Worlds of Words: Center of Global Literacies and Literatures. She has worked extensively with teachers all over the world on literature-based approaches and has authored many books and articles, including Creating Classrooms for Authors and Inquirers and Teaching Globally: Reading the World through Literature. She served as President of the National Council of Teachers of English and the US Board of Books for Young People.

Dorea Kleker is an early childhood teacher, educator and lecturer at the University of Arizona. Working with students and teachers across a wide variety of educational contexts in both the U.S. and Latin America, her work focuses on global and multicultural children’s literature, literacy and play to develop intercultural understanding, and the use of literature to actively engage children as inquirers across all content areas.

Carol Kim believes books and words have a magical ability to change the world for the better, and she writes for children with the hope of spreading some of that magic. She is the author of the picture book biography, King Sejong Invents the Alphabet, as well as 20 fiction and nonfiction books for the educational market. Carol relishes unearthing real-life stories and little-known facts to share with young readers. She lives in Austin, Texas with her family.

Rajani LaRocca was born in India, raised in Kentucky and lives in the Boston area, where she practices medicine and writes books for young people, including Red, White, and Whole (2021), Seven Golden Rings (2020), Bracelets for Bina’s Brothers (2021),Where Three Oceans Meet (2021), I’ll Go and Come Back (2022), and more. She’s always been an omnivorous reader, and now is an omnivorous writer of fiction and nonfiction, novels and picture books, prose and poetry. She finds inspiration in her family, her childhood, the natural world, math, science,and just about everywhere she looks.

Questions? Contact: dkleker@arizona.edu or shortk@arizona.edu
➣ Register here.

A small number of scholarships are available for fulltime teachers and fulltime graduate students. These cover registration, and/or hotel for people participating in both days of the institute. Lodging scholarships are for the nights of June 1 and 2 for individuals traveling more than 130 miles to get to the University of Arizona; they are for June 2 only, for people coming from between 60 and130 miles away. To apply for a scholarship, submit a completed scholarship application form by the deadline of May 20. We will verify eligibility, and our committee will select recipients before we make award notifications on May 25.

This institute is organized and sponsored by the Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy (CERCLL) and Worlds of Words.

Story as World Making: Connecting Children to Global Cultures – Day 1

Questions? Contact: dkleker@arizona.edu or shortk@arizona.edu
➣ Register here.

This institute is organized and sponsored by the Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy (CERCLL) and Worlds of Words.

A Dozen Books on African Mythology: The Significance of Black Mermaids and Sirens

By Desiree Cueto and Dorea Kleker, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

African diaspora folklore, myths and legends have been passed down through oral traditions from generation to generation. A prominent figure in stories told across different African nations is that of the mermaid. The half human/half fish water spirit is referred to by different names depending on the specific African nation and unique cultures within. For example, Mami Wata is a deity whose story is told throughout different parts of West Africa. She is known for bestowing wealth and power as well as destruction. A similar figure, called Yemoja is known to the Yoruba people of Nigeria to be a giver of life, and La Sirene is a Haitian spirit of the sea. Over time, the oral stories of mermaids and sirens have been written and published throughout the world and have become the inspiration for several recent picture books and novels. This set of books features twelve books that center on Black mermaids and African mythology. Continue reading →

Engaging Children in Exploring Language through Dual Language Picturebooks

Professional Learning Opportunity:
Engaging Children in Exploring Language through Dual Language Picturebooks

To apply for this workshop, send your name, grade level, school name and contact info (email, phone and address) to dkleker@arizona.edu by February 25, 2022.

Join us for five sessions on Thursdays from 4:30-6:30 p.m. to explore invitations with dual-language picturebooks that engage children in learning about language and language diversity. Participants will earn 20 hours of professional development credit plus receive a text set of 10-12 picturebooks along with supplies and maps to keep for your classroom. We will meet in person for the first session at Worlds of Words, University of Arizona, and then meet virtually to explore strategies for engaging children with these books and to share our work with each other. Registration for this workshop is limited to 15 elementary teachers.

In a world of increasing linguistic diversity, children need an awareness and appreciation of the multiple languages in their lives and communities. Our goal is to encourage children to view multilingualism as a community resource, not a problem, and to develop strategies for engaging with familiar and unfamiliar languages. Although dual language picturebooks are often used to learn a language, our goal is instead to engage with these books to encourage learning about language and language diversity. In our first in-person session, we will explore the types of dual language picturebooks and how to evaluate these books and each teacher will receive a text set of picturebooks. In each of the following virtual sessions, we will engage in interactions around these picturebooks, such as creating language body maps or neighborhood language maps, along with exploring strategies children can use as readers of these books. Teachers will be encouraged to use the picturebooks and experiences in their classrooms over the following two weeks and we will share with each other at our next meeting. Each meeting will also involve exploring strategies around new books.

March 24, 4:30-6:30 pm – Worlds of Words for introduction and to receive the picturebook text set
April 7, April 21, May 5 & May 19 – 4:30-6:30 pm – Virtual zoom sessions

This professional opportunity is open to classroom teachers in grades K-5 with priority given to teachers applying as partners from the same school. Registration is limited to 15 teachers.

To apply for this workshop, send your name, grade level, school name, and contact info (email, phone, and address) to dkleker@arizona.edu by February 25.

Kathy G. Short is a professor and endowed chair of global children’s literature at the University of Arizona and Director of Worlds of Words: Center of Global Literacies and Literatures. She works with teachers around the world on inquiry and interculturalism and has authored many books and articles, including Creating Classrooms for Authors and Inquirers and Teaching Globally: Reading the World through Literature.

Dorea Kleker is an early childhood teacher, educator and lecturer at the University of Arizona. Working with students and teachers across a wide variety of educational contexts in the U.S. and Latin America, her work focuses on global and multicultural children’s literature, literacy and play to develop intercultural understanding, and the use of literature to actively engage children as inquirers across all content areas.

MTYT: From My Window

Maria V. Acevedo-Aquiño, University of Texas A&M, San Antonio, Desiree W. Cueto, Western Washington University, and Dorea Kleker, University of Arizona

For the final week of July, Desiree and Dorea give their takes on From My Window, a picturebook which shares a name with a previous book discussed this month.

Continue reading →

MYTY: Window

Maria V. Acevedo-Aquiño, University of Texas A&M, San Antonio, Desiree W. Cueto, Western Washington University, and Dorea Kleker, University of Arizona

For the third week of July, Mari and Desiree give their takes to Window, a black and white visual narrative.

Continue reading →

MTYT: From My Window: Children at Home During COVID-19

Maria V. Acevedo-Aquiño, University of Texas A&M, San Antonio, Desiree W. Cueto, Western Washington University, and Dorea Kleker, University of Arizona

Continuing their discussion of “windows” in recent picturebooks, Dorea and Maria give their takes on From My Window: Children at Home During COVID-19.

Continue reading →

MTYT: Outside, Inside

Maria V. Acevedo-Aquiño, University of Texas A&M, San Antonio, Desiree W. Cueto, Western Washington University, and Dorea Kleker, University of Arizona

This month we consider the theme of “windows” as we discuss four recently published books, all with global connections. Windows provide distinct vantage points from which to consider our communities—people, spaces, relationships—and our place among them. While two of these books are centered specifically on the pandemic, we didn’t intend for this to be our focus. However, as we responded, it became clear that we couldn’t ignore the impacts the last year has had on our lives, our communities, the questions we wanted to ask one another and our visions for what comes next.

Continue reading →

MTYT: The Rabbit Listens

We conclude this month’s exploration of picture books that put emotions front and center with The Rabbit Listened, a book that explores the many unique ways we each have for expressing our emotions and the healing power of a friend who can truly see and hear what we need.

Continue reading →