By Janine M. Schall, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
So far this month we’ve had blog posts about Latinx children’s books that tell stories of immigration or non-conforming gender identities. For this week’s post, I’m turning to a more festive topic: winter holiday Latinx picture books.
By Gilberto Peña Lara, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Gender is often presented as a binary where children have only two specific gender trajectories. As social norms, children are expected to conform to male or female ways of being. When children deviate from these social rules they are often met with harsh scolding, ridicule or even threats of harm. School is a place of socialization where children are socialized in many ways including rigid gendered identities. The classroom also offers important opportunities to break with sexist and homophobic attitudes and language. Just as we have a responsibility to stand up to racism or advocate for diversity, we also need to position gender identity as equally important and a basic human right. Continue reading
By Maria Leija, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
There are many children’s books that are now available to discuss immigration. Discussing immigration sheds light on the emotional and physical hardships that documented and undocumented immigrants face as they immigrate to another country and/or live in their new country. The impact of immigration status on teachers’ as well as students’ and their families’ lives continues to be important for understanding the need for changes in schools. For example, societal views on immigration affects families’ home life and children’s schooling experiences. Because immigration policies and practices affect the health, academic performance, and school attendance of undocumented students or students living in mixed-status families; teachers, administrators, and school communities are not exempt from dealing with the repercussions of immigration policies. The American Federation of Teachers encourages teachers to discuss immigration issues as a way to create a safe learning environment and so that students identify educators as allies who can provide important information. Continue reading
By Janine M. Schall, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, TX
This month in WOW Currents my colleagues and I discuss various aspects of children’s literature that features Latinx characters and settings. The Latinx population in the United States has grown dramatically and Latinx people now make up about 20% of the U.S. population. Yet this group remains underrepresented in the media, including children’s book publishing. Continue reading
By Yoo Kyung Sung, University of New Mexico and Junko Sakoi, Tucson Unified School District
In this month’s WOW Currents, Yoo Kyung Sung and Junko Sakoi talked about their project, “Read, Write, Review for Us (RWRU)” and how it is helping to educate local Tucson children about the refugee experiences of kids just like them. This week we will focus on the positive developments that came from the students’ pen pal experience. We will also discuss what teachers can do through classroom instruction to cultivate awareness of the diversity of people and cultures in the community.
By Sakoi Junko, Tucson Unified School District and Yoo Kyung Sung, University of New Mexico
By Sakoi Junko, Tucson Unified School District and Yoo Kyung Sung, University of New Mexico
This week, we will continue the discussion about text sets, which were created by the “Read, Write, Review for Us (RWRU)” project to help educate local Tucson children about refugee students’ homelands and the diversity within those groups of people. Once the first text set was displayed for book browsing in the classroom, the 5th graders were able to “relocate” their old home into the various stories within the books. We observed the excitement in the students’ voices as they shared stories of their homeland with their peers. It became obvious at that point that even the 5th graders did not know each other’s backgrounds. Because they are often generalized as “refugee students”, the students’ individual identities are often forgotten. With the exception of customs, the refugee and immigrant students are no different from any of the American students beginning the new year in a new classroom every August. It was particularly advantageous to put aside the term, “refugee” and allow the children to learn about each other from a fresh perspective.
By Sakoi Junko, Tucson Unified School District and Yoo Kyung Sung, University of New Mexico
Children’s literature may be one the best mediums for promoting new learning in the classroom. Text sets are especially helpful in that they offer a collective of literary landscapes full of unfamiliar places and various perspectives. This week, we introduce a text set that we put together to support the new Tucsonan (immigrant and refugee) children’s cultural affirmation while they develop the Tucsonan side of their identity. The text sets we create for “Read, Write, Review for Us (RWRU)” projects are to inform local Tucson children about refugee students’ homelands and the diversity within those groups of people. When the the topic of refugees is framed in this way, students will realize that the term “refugees” does not always mean war-zone survivors. Students learn that it can also include those surviving climate change. For example, the Marshall Islands are drowning due to climate changes and many of Marshallese had to relocated to places like Tucson.
By Yoo Kyung Sung, University of New Mexico and Junko Sakoi, Tucson Unified School District
In the last decade, Arizona consistently ranks among the top ten states with the number of refugee arrivals (Refugee Processing Center, 2018) with more than 15,400 refugees resettled in Arizona from 2012 through 2016. Accordingly, Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) received refugees since the late 1970s from the Southeast Asian countries, Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba, Somalia and Sudan. Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi refugees have been the largest groups to arrive in Tucson in 2018 (Arizona Refugee Resettlement Program, 2018), in addition to fifty other countries with thirty-eight different languages. In the past five years, TUSD yearly enrollment has averaged around 900 refugee students across K-12 schools (Tucson Unified School District, 2018).
By Seemi Aziz, University of Arizona
Middle Eastern regions and Muslims have been unfailingly in the media and news. Children’s literature and Young Adult literature also tap into this trend and brings forward concerns faced by these regions, presently. Turmoil within the regions has become a predominant global concern since the refugee crises has brought the impact to Western shores, impacting their economy, balance of power, and in some cases, law and order. Most earlier books were written by people outside of the regions, thus, not true insiders to the cultures, raising concerns of authenticity. Commonly held trends as well as issues in literature about Muslims is that of migration, refugees, Muslim people at the center of strife and Muslim people as violent, blood thirsty terrorists. There is an issue when these assumptions, generalization, and stereotypes are taken as truths.
