This event has reached capacity. Thank you for your interest!

You are invited to a professional learning opportunity focusing on engaging children with Indigenous Literature This PLO is co-sponsored by ITEP and the WOW Center. Please RSVP by January 30 to reserve a space.

This PLO focuses around the picture book, We Are Water Protectors by Lindstrom and Goade, and Postcolonial Love Poems by Natalie Diaz. Attendees will receive free copies of these two Indigenous books, plus be able to select other non-Indigenous books for their classrooms. The PLO includes:

• Learning about and browsing text sets of new Indigenous children’s books and books on water conservation. One exciting recent development is the publication of many new Indigenous books for children that are written and illustrated by Indigenous authors—Native voices telling Native stories. Since the majority are published within the last several years, the PLO will give you an opportunity to browse these books and identify ones that particularly interest you. We will also have a text set of books on water conservation because of the focus of We Are Water Protectors, for which Michaela Goade became the first Indigenous illustrator to win the Caldecott.
• Time to meet and plan lessons around We Are Water Protectors and other books that you have located during the browsing time. This planning will be an opportunity to enact the ITEP framework.
• You will receive professional development certificates
• While the PLO ends at noon, you are welcome to spend more time with the books in our Indigenous collection or to browse other books in our global collection that may be of interest to you in your own work, including books by the authors coming to the Tucson Festival of Books.

For those of you who are teachers, your students can participate in a virtual Imagination Friday with Michaela Goade on February 17. You will receive further information on that at the PLO. Also, you will receive information about the Tucson Festival of Books on March 4-5 and an invitation to meet Natalie Diaz at the festival.

Big Read Tucson is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and will feature a series of literary events from January to early March and will explore the theme of water. The series will center on two books: Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz, and We are Water Protectors written by Carole Lindstrom and illustrated by Michaela Goade. The final event will be Sunday March 5, 2023: “Poetexts of Love: A Community Celebration” author presentation with Natalie Diaz at the Tucson Festival of Books.

Free parking is available at the surface parking lot north of the intersection of First and Vine. Sometimes free parking is available at the Second St. Garage next door to the College of Education. The WOW Center is also located just off of the 2nd St. Modern Streetcar stop.

To request disability-related accommodations that would ensure your full participation in this event, please email wow@arizona.edu or call 520.621.9340.

Event details may change.