Creating Spaces for Voice, Choice and Resistance
Dorea Kleker, Narges Zandi, and Kathy G. Short
Our teacher inquiry group at a bilingual school focused on picturebooks about the experiences of immigrants and refugees. We spent November and December browsing and sharing picturebooks every two weeks. In January, teachers started using their selected books in classrooms and we met to share students’ responses. Our initial plan was to spend 30 minutes sharing, 30 minutes trying out webbing as a response strategy, and 30 minutes planning with grade-level partners on which books and dialogue strategies to use next. An hour later, teachers were still sharing student work and we quickly revised our plan to briefly share several examples of webbing and then move to partner planning.
For the next meeting, we proposed sharing in small groups to provide time for other engagements. Teachers quickly protested, “We never get a chance to share with each other and we want to hear everyone.” We adjusted our plan for the remaining meetings to spend most of the time on sharing student responses and then briefly introducing a dialogue strategy and ending with partner planning. We initially felt guilty that we were not offering new ideas but recognized that sharing and learning from each other was their priority and so needed to be ours as well.
As the group facilitators, we were intrigued with why the group evolved in such an interesting manner, recognizing that teachers used the inquiry group as a space for connection and innovation in their teaching, despite the many district-imposed mandates. Teachers were required to complete Science of Reading training, spend time on benchmark testing to prepare for the annual state tests and attend regular district in-services on data interpretation. The inquiry group became a space to resist these mandates and focus on what they considered most important–children’s voices.
After closely examining our notes from the inquiry group sessions, we identified key characteristics of the space that was created, viewing that space as a community of practice. In this article, we first introduce the school context and then look closely at the ways the inquiry group created a space for children’s voices and deep exploration of literature.
School Context of the Teacher Inquiry Group
As one of the oldest schools in Tucson, Guerreo was established in 1901, becoming a two-way dual language (Spanish/English) magnet elementary school in 1981. Located in a historic barrio, teachers have a longstanding commitment to social justice and advocacy. With 300 students, the school has multi-generational ties to the neighborhood and greater Latinx community.
Teachers take great pride in their school community. The school garden, murals, folklorico group, and mariachi program provide opportunities to learn academic content and language within meaningful cultural contexts. In addition to collaborative grade level planning, teachers participate in district in-services, which they report are primarily focused on learning new instructional programs and analyzing data from benchmark tests.
Kathy visited Guerrero and introduced the inquiry group as a place where teachers could browse and discuss picturebooks on immigrant and refugee experiences, learn about ways to engage students with these books, and share and learn from one another. Additionally, each participant was offered ten picturebooks of their choice to add to their classrooms, funded through a grant. Ultimately, eleven teachers across the grade levels chose to participate, including the librarian and art teacher. The group met biweekly after school for 90 minutes in the school library during 2023-2024.
Kathy, Dorea, and Narges served as facilitators, planning the sessions and gathering books and materials. Kathy and Dorea were university faculty and Narges, a graduate student who had recently arrived from Iran and so connected with faculty over her challenges as a new immigrant. Dorea had a history with the school as both a parent and student teaching supervisor.
In the fall semester, we structured initial sessions around larger conceptual frames related to immigrants and refugees and encouraged personal connections to these ideas, followed by time to browse tables full of books. As facilitators, we did not position ourselves as experts nor this inquiry group as a time to learn information. Instead, we encouraged deep, thoughtful engagements with picturebooks.
We first explored the conceptual frame of “journey” as movement along a pathway. Teachers created maps in their journals documenting their life journeys (e.g. physical, psychological, social, culture, cognitive, spiritual, political, etc.) and considered which were chosen versus forced. We also discussed the concept of hybridity, using their journey maps to consider intersections between their multiple identities. We provided critiques of western humanitarianism in refugee picturebooks (Vassiloudi, 2019) as a frame for reading the books and considered how readers could move from pity to empathy. Following a discussion of borders and walls as lines that both define and divide us, the journey maps provided a way to discuss the borders and walls in our lives and their influence on our journeys.
The books we browsed were arranged into thematic text sets. This chart provides examples of some of the picturebooks in each set. A full list of picturebooks and novels around these themes is updated annually on the Worlds of Words website.
| Text Set Themes | Examples of Book Titles |
|---|---|
| Displacement due to Violence and War | The Capybaras, Alredo Soderguit A Journey Toward Hope, Victor Hinjosa & Susan Guevara My Name is Bana, Bana Alabed & Nez Riaz Seven Pablos, Jorge Luján & Chiara Carrer Still Dreaming/Seguimos soñando, Claudia Martinez, M. Mora Tomorrow, Nadine Kaadan |
| Journeys of Hardship, Loss and Hope | Finding Papa, Angela Pham Kraus & Thi Bui Idriss and His Marble, Rene Gouichoux & Zau Migrants, Issa Watanabe Room on Our Rock, Kate Temple, Joi Temple, T. Baynton To the Other Side, Erika Meza Two White Rabbits, Jairo Buitrago & Rafael Yockteng |
| Life in Refugee Camps and Detention Centers | Hear My Voice/Escucha mi voz, Warren Binford, et al. Lubna and Pebble, Wendy Meddour & Daniel Egneús The Notebook Keeper, Stephen Briseno & Magdalena Mora These Olive Trees, Aya Ghanameh Until Someone Listens, Estela Juarez & Teresa Martinez Wherever I Go, Mary Wagley Copp & Munir Mohammed |
| Displacement and Belonging in a New Place | The Carpet: An Afghan Family Story, Dezh Azdad & Nan Cao The Day Saida Arrived, Susan Gomez Redondo & S. Wimmer Gibberish, Young Vo Mina Belongs Here, Sandra Niebuhr-Siebert & Lars Baus The Rock in My Throat, Kao Kalia Yang & Jiemei Lin My Strange Shrinking Parents, Zona Sworder |
| Home as Two Places in the Heart | Home is in Between, Mitali Perkins & Lavanya Naidu The Home We Make, Maham Khwaja & Daby Z. Faidhi Homeland: Dreams of Palestine, Hannah Mourshabeck I am Both: A Vietnamese Refugee Story, Karisa Greene The Lotus Seed, Sherry Garland & Tatsuro Kiuchi My Two Border Towns, David Bowles & Erika Meza |
| Immigration and Refugees Across Time and Place in Nonfiction | Border Crossing, Sneed Collard & Howard Gray Finding Home, Jen Sookfong Lee & Drew Shannon I is for Immigrants, Selina Aiko A Place Called America, Jennifer Thermes Their Great Gift, John Coy & Wing Young Huie What is a Refugee? Elise Gravel |
| The Significance of Names | Alma and How She Got Her Name, Juana Martinez-Neal The Boy Who Tried to Shrink His Name, S. Parappukkaran My Name, Supriya Kelkar & Sandhya Prabhat My Name is Saajin Singh, Kuljinder Kaur Brar & S. Kaur Say My Name, Joanna Ho & Khao Le Thao, Thao Lam |
| Walls and Borders | Every Little Letter, Deborah Underwood & Joy Ruiz Free, Barroux The Line in the Sand, Thao Lam Little Mouse and the Red Wall, Britta Teckentrup The Wall: A Timeless Tale, Giancarlo Macri & Carolina Zalotti The Wall in the Middle of the Book, Jon Agee |
Table 1. Picturebook text sets on refugee and immigrant experiences.
As teachers browsed text sets, they took notes on graffiti boards, booklists and journals. Immediately following browsing, teachers met in small groups to share a favorite book, why they selected it, and any observations. Our last session in the fall was a time to reflect on what we collectively noticed about these books. Teachers also selected ten books they wanted for their classrooms, using grant funds.
Beginning in January, each session started with teachers sharing experiences from their classrooms around a selected picturebook. We then introduced a dialogue strategy, such as Webbing, Consensus Boards, Save the Last Word for Me, and Sketch to Stretch (Short & Harste, 1996). Additionally, teachers worked with a partner to plan the books and strategies they wanted to use the subsequent week. In our final session in late April, we reflected on our personal learning journeys in journals, discussed why this set of picturebooks was so significant to them as teachers, and why they gave such importance to time for sharing with each other.
Guerrero Teacher Inquiry Group as a Community of Practice
We quickly realized that while the group already had a strong identity as Guerrero teachers, the inquiry group provided a space for enacting a community of practice within their school setting (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Communities of practice are formed by people who share a concern or passion for something they do, engage in a process of collective learning, and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. A community of practice is not merely a group of teachers from the same school. Instead, a shared domain of interest supports building relationships over time and through sustained interaction. Participants learn from each other, resulting in shared practices and resources, such as experiences, stories, tools, and strategies to address recurring problems.
Initially, this space built on a shared interest in exploring these books and topics with children and a desire to learn how to more effectively engage in these interactions. As the weeks progressed, we saw numerous ways teachers were deeply invested in and committed to the group. They consistently showed up after long days of teaching, shared student work, engaged in joint activities and discussions, brainstormed and planned future work, and developed shared practices for a growing number of resources–books, dialogue strategies, personal stories and creative ways to tie these experiences into standards and mandated curriculum.
Most notable was the insistence of teachers on learning from all group members. They were not content with partner or small group sharing and were adamant that they hear from everyone. They valued their collective competence, a result of sustained interactions and careful listening to the stories of teachers’ and students’ lives and their classroom practices. They were invested in these stories and eager to build a shared understanding of the content and their school community. At the same time, the school was under pressure from the district to implement Science of Reading and to raise test scores so finding time in their classrooms required valuing children’s voices and making a commitment to connect children with these books.
As we examined our field notes, we focused on describing the kind of space created at Guerrero within their community of practice. The following sections describe the characteristics of this space in providing a place for literature despite district pressures.
Space for Sharing and Celebrating
The space created through the inquiry group was a space for sharing and celebrating teachers’ personal stories and experiences, children’s voices, and teaching practices with picturebooks. Teachers chose to stand in front of the group and use the document camera to share student writing and drawing, always celebrating each other’s sharing by clapping.
The inquiry group was a space where teachers–many of whom were immigrants–could share personal stories about the challenges and injustices of living in the U.S. and experiences traveling back and forth across the U.S./Mexico border, experiences that connected them to the books and characters, no matter the cultural or geographical context. For example, Thao (Lam, 2021), a book about a Vietnamese child whose name is mispronounced, led to teachers sharing their experiences with people mispronouncing their names. A book about the Berlin Wall in Germany brought connections to our border wall. Sometimes, a book created a strong visceral response, such as when Yvette shared that she couldn’t even pick up the book about la migra.
In addition to personal connections and stories, teachers shared responses from students, rarely able to limit themselves to only a few. Sometimes other teachers added interpretations as they knew these students from previous years or knew their families. They noted their discussions opened spaces for children to share and connect with books through personal response.
The value of learning about each other, students, and teaching practices became the central defining feature of the group. Stephanie stated that the meetings provided time to get to know colleagues and students, so it was meaningful to share in the whole group, rather than small groups. She did not like to miss sessions even though she was often exhausted by the end of the day. Sharing details of their teaching practices offered new ideas for using picturebooks with students. Teachers often commented on the “creativity and knowledge” present within the group. This collaborative exchange not only fostered creativity but also strengthened teachers’ sense of professional community, helping them to enrich their approaches to picturebooks.
Space for Learning through Inquiry
Inquiry is a stance that we bring when we collaborate with others to connect to and reach beyond our current understandings to explore tensions we find significant (Short, 2009). Inquiry thus combines uncertainty and invitation. A feeling of uncertainty encourages us to wonder and to question as we move beyond current understandings to pursue new possibilities. Invitation provides the courage we need to pursue those uncertainties and tensions and to take a risk by thinking with others about possibilities. We need the support of a community to inquire, especially as teachers in a time of mandates and constant test pressure.
We identified three characteristics of our community of practice as a space of inquiry. One was that our meetings were a space to explore, linger, and dig deeply into books. Another is that there were many options to make choices, rather than a singular path. Finally, the space encouraged risk taking.
In our meetings, we had time to explore, linger, and sit with books, a rarity in the frantic pace of daily school life. In our first four meetings, we spent most of our time surrounded by books. We provided a chart of the text sets with book covers and short annotations and a column to take notes about anything teachers wanted to remember about a book. They could stay with one text set and look deeply or rotate around the 3-4 tables loaded with books. The last 15 minutes of each session were spent sharing books in pairs or trios.
This time to read and share books that touched their hearts and minds was valued. Many talked about the lack of time to engage with books in their professional development sessions. The opportunity to be a reader and to think deeply about their reading was absent and they had not realized how much this absence affected their thinking about the need to deeply engage children in conversations around books.
In the fourth meeting, we put out the books teachers indicated they were most interested in so they could make decisions about which 10 books each wanted to order. They revisited these books in the spring meetings because each brought several of their selected books to share student work around a book and to plan with a teaching partner for their next engagements. Having the opportunity to think about a book with their teaching partner before reading aloud to students provided time to consider how to invite more depth to student responses just as they were finding for themselves in revisiting a book several times.
This constant revisiting deepened their insights and appreciation of the books. Often when a teacher shared student work around a book, another teacher immediately asked to borrow that book because it wasn’t in their text set but they saw potential with students. When Mercedes and Alma shared the confusions of second graders with My Strange Shrinking Parents (Sworder, 2023), Tessa asked to borrow the book, curious about how fifth-grade students would respond to this conceptually difficult book.
Another important characteristic of the teacher inquiry group was that teachers made choices to determine the direction of their work with students. District in-services consisted of information on best practices around math or reading. Within our group, teachers agonized over which 10 books they wanted for their classrooms. We browsed 165 books, so they had many options. Some selected fun picturebooks about walls, such as The Wall in the Middle of the Book (Agee, 2018) and Little Mouse and the Red Wall (Teckentrup, 2018), while others focused on books about the U.S./Mexico border, such as Border Crossings (Collard, 2023) and Until Someone Listens (Juarez, 2022).
Teachers also selected the dialogue or instructional strategies they wanted to use. We briefly introduced different dialogue strategies as invitations they could use, adapt, or ignore. Many explored graffiti boards, finding students responded well to the openness of drawing and writing their thinking anywhere on the board. Sarahi encouraged second graders to find different ways to map the journey of The Wall in the Middle of the Book (Agee, 2018), with children coming up with a trail, bubble map, web, and sequence boxes. Julian developed a class chart to record the comments of first graders as they discussed a book, capturing and honoring their thinking. Dulce and Tessa adapted Save the Last Word for Me to encourage fifth-grade responses.
At each meeting, teachers decided on the book they wanted to use next and the strategies to invite dialogue. These decisions were made with teaching partners and were influenced by sharing from other teachers that excited them about a book or dialogue strategy. When Julian shared the responses of first graders to Room on Our Rock (Temple, 2019), their excitement about the book changing meaning when read backwards led others to ask to borrow the book.
One of the most powerful ways in which the group was a space for inquiry was in supporting risk taking. Teachers marveled at the books, asking, “Why don’t we know about these books?” Some were already in the school library, but they had not looked at them closely. The books were also not the safe happy stories from the reading program or district in-services. Teachers commented that they would have been afraid to use these books with students except for the support of the group. Knowing that other teachers were using these picturebooks in their school gave them “courage” to do so in their classrooms. They gained strength through community.
Teachers also gained courage as they saw how engaged students became in responding to books and the depth of their personal responses and wonderings. Instead of answering comprehension questions from the reading program, students shared personal stories from their lives and asked hard questions about the policies that led so many families to suffer. When Sonia shared Until Someone Listens (Juarez, 2022) with second graders, they were upset that the mother had to leave the family and go to another country and wondered why “the man” (border police) separated the family, recognizing this policy as causing harm to a family. In discussing These Olive Trees (Ghanameh, 2023) about a refugee camp in Palestine, Tessa commented how fifth graders connected the book to detention camps in Mexico as a way to understand a Palestinian family’s struggle. One child pointed out, “The camp is what they know. The older generation suffers more because they know what they had before and what they have lost. For older family members, there is more loss and pain.”
Another example of risk taking came as Alma and Mercedes shared their collaborative work with second graders around a visual narrative, Migrants (Watanabe, 2020), that uses only images to convey the story of a group of animals who are searching for a place of safety and food. Death in the form of a skeleton accompanies these animals as does a blue ibis as a symbol of hope. There are several pages where an animal has died, for example in crossing a dangerous river. They shared student responses, including children who were so upset about the book that they created alternate endings. Their question was whether they made a mistake using this book. One child shared, “This will stay in my mind when I go to sleep.” It’s always easier to share successes rather than an experience that did not go as planned. In this case, we talked about sharing difficult books, not as a mistake, but as an opportunity to think deeply and experience tension that is not resolved with a happy ending.
The group supported risk taking in that teachers could adjust books or strategies “in the moment” of teaching, to use a different dialogue strategy if another was not working. Since this work was our inquiry together, not mandated curriculum, there was also space to wonder about unexpected student responses as occurred with Migrants (Watanabe, 2020). When second graders found Until Someone Listens (Juarez, 2022) confusing, not understanding deportation policies that separate a mother from her family, Alma asked if this was a weakness in the text or illustrations of the book. We talked about the issue instead being children’s lack of experience and information on deportation, not as a problem with the book separate from readers, and that sometimes we need to provide information about their questions.
Teachers felt free to innovate and play with their teaching, change course while teaching, or question their decisions based on student responses. The monitoring and testing that occurs with mandated programs often signals that teachers need to follow the exact program, which, in turn, shuts down inquiry and professional learning.
Space of Exploration for Own Teaching Contexts
During the group meetings, teachers explored how they might create new spaces in their teaching contexts. These new spaces included conceptual frames, integration of these books into their mandated reading and social-emotional programs, the use of dialogue strategies with books in their social studies program, and the addition of time for book discussions.
One new space that teachers considered was how to use a conceptual frame to deepen student thinking. We introduced the conceptual frame of journeys as movement along a pathway in our first sessions of the inquiry group and then returned to that frame in January to consider their work with children. A conceptual frame provides a way for students to make connections from their lives before moving into a specific focus, like immigration, and to develop a conceptual understanding within which to consider their reading (Short, 2009).
Thinking conceptually, rather than topically, was new but teachers enjoyed thinking about journeys with their students. Some asked students to draw life journey maps, others used The Pink Refrigerator (Egan, 2007), Each Kindness (Woodson, 2012), or Penguin (Dunbar, 2007) to have students draw the journey map of a character, and several used their social studies focus on Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks to map journeys. Many worked with children on mapping, creatively exploring many ways to map a journey, using My Map Book (Fanelli, 2019) to give students ideas about mapping their emotions, hearts, day, or bedrooms. Tessa had fifth graders create maps from the class novel, Holes (Sachar, 2000) and their future journeys to middle school, a journey of concern to students. Dulce asked fifth graders to create maps on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s journey. Their small group maps explored a range of creative formats, including a data chart, Splash Mountain ride, roller coaster, and jet pack.
Our teacher inquiry group also encouraged teachers to think about ways to change existing instructional spaces in their classrooms. They talked about the possibilities of integrating these picturebooks into the mandated curriculum, ensuring that they met educational standards while addressing important social issues like immigration and forced journeys. Yvette, Alma, Sarahí, and Sonia used picturebooks to encourage kindergarten and second-grade students to retell stories using sequence boxes of first, middle and end, a skill they were accountable for in the reading program, giving them more space to use these picturebooks in their literacy block.
Teachers also incorporated dialogue strategies to respond to books that were already part of their social studies curriculum, such as books about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Civil Rights. They used strategies, such as graffiti boards and sketch to stretch to prompt students to engage in deeper discussions, ask questions, and connect the books to their lives, promoting a more interactive and reflective learning experience.
Another existing instructional space was Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), a school goal. Teachers realized children could learn emotional intelligence, empathy and other SEL skills through responding to these books. Border Crossing (Collard, 2023) invited discussions around feelings of sadness and confusion about why such barriers exist, and how they affect animals, families and communities. The Lotus Seed (Garland, 1993) connected students to themes of life, hope, and resilience through images and words that resonated emotionally, such as comparing their own challenges to the symbol of the lotus seed as enduring hardships.
Many teachers created new spaces for sharing books to invite deeply meaningful discussions for students, considering opportunities to hear children’s voices and experiences, rather than to teach skills. They wanted to encourage students to express themselves and consider their own experiences and perspectives. Sarahi commented, “Kids need to be aware of the world around them. We don’t live in a bubble. They need to be more open-minded, not having preconceived ideas. We can make our fears so big, we don’t explore the lives of others.”
Lastly, the group was a space where teachers worked together to choose a picturebook to share with students and exchange ideas on how they each used the books differently. They shared strategies and supported one another in integrating the books into their classrooms.
Space of Resistance and Advocacy
With a strong school history of resistance and advocacy–for students, the school, the neighborhood and the broader community–the inquiry group became an additional space for teachers to consider and enact these same practices for themselves and students. Teachers resisted by becoming problem-posers, shifting perspectives on the books they valued sharing in classrooms, and changing the structures of our inquiry group sessions.
In the current context of excessive testing and ever changing one-size-fits-all curriculum, professional development time in school was typically spent on analyzing test data and attempting to solve the problem of low scores or insufficient academic growth based on numbers rather than teacher input. Freire (1970) argued that these contexts limit teachers to problem-solving issues the district has identified instead of problem posing and identifying what they see as problems within their classrooms. Freire believed that learning is controlled by whomever is the problem-poser and so the district retains control over teachers through taking the role of problem-poser. The inquiry group was a space for teachers to be problem-posers and take back some control of their learning and classrooms. Over our time together, we witnessed their resistance to the mandated curriculum and the structures we planned as facilitators, while also advocating for the value of children’s stories and thinking as important sources of data.
During our initial sessions browsing a wide variety of books, teachers were often surprised and delighted in the themes and stories in these new titles. Stephanie commented, “these are not the books typically used in professional development sessions with boring and nonsensical lines of text focused on phonics and learning to read but books to teach about life.” Even with an active school library filled with high-quality texts, many teachers did not know which books were in the library nor frequently used them in their own classrooms.
Teachers had many connections to the books from their lives. As Latinx teachers living in the Sonoran Desert, the U.S./Mexico borderland and cultures are familiar and personal; however, even books set in this familiar context offer new perspectives on family separation, la migra, and border crossings. Teachers used this space to not just look at text features or consider these texts for reading instruction, but to share experiences and tap into the emotional impact of a book. Through time to read deeply and broadly, teachers recognized the knowledge they gained of borders throughout the world, not just the one in their backyard. Teachers were frustrated that books like these were not in their curriculum once they became aware of what engaging in “difficult” topics in books might look, sound and feel like. They took on a stance of resistance as they committed to using these books in their classrooms.
When the spring semester began and teachers started using these books in classrooms, they were eager to share student responses and to hear from colleagues about their experiences. They vehemently rejected our suggestion to share in small groups; instead, moving their chairs into a large circle and insisting they hear from everyone. Even when we attempted to integrate prompts for sharing (e.g. something that surprised you and something you’re left wondering about) to limit the time, teachers instead continued to share lengthy descriptions of what they did and how children responded, often in Spanish, a language in which we had varying degrees of fluency. In these moments, it was clear that teachers had claimed this space as their own and that their collective knowledge of students and families allowed for additional insights and context to be shared and celebrated.
In our final session, we asked teachers to reflect on their personal learning journeys and to discuss why these picturebooks and engagements were significant to them and why they gave such importance to taking time to share with each other. Tessa commented, “We usually share testing data in meetings, but this feels important and makes a difference.” Others chimed in with, “See what we can do when we’re not focused on test prep?” Through collective spaces of sharing the many ways students of all ages engaged with these books and issues, teachers became increasingly adamant that the books absolutely belonged in classrooms. They believed that the issues in these books created awareness of the world and of one’s own privilege, provided an opportunity to develop empathy, challenged preconceptions, encouraged critical thinking, and, thus, created the potential to change the world.
Teachers recognized that the space they collectively created to share and support one another needed to be extended to students as a space to hear many points of view and to normalize these experiences and topics. Alma shared, “There can be discomfort when thinking about something people are going through, but it is important to have a place to share, especially in the classroom where we feel safe.” Dulce pointed out that when we don’t talk about these topics with students, we “inadvertently show that only certain experiences are valid.” In reflecting on what he learned by creating space for his young students’ poignant insights about these books in a time of political division and racism, Julian proclaimed, “If we read these books 50 years ago, we wouldn’t be here. There is danger in not sharing the truths.”
Final Reflections
In planning for the inquiry group, we developed what we considered an open agenda to negotiate with teachers about what this space would look like. We knew the school to be a strong community of innovative and thoughtful teachers and thought they would be interested in these books because of the school’s history. We did not expect the existence of books on these topics to be a surprise. We underestimated the ways in which mandates were affecting teachers, limiting the space to share books and listen to children’s voices. The inquiry group became a space for teachers to reclaim ownership of their teaching, to collectively make decisions about using books they knew were relevant to students, and to value students’ stories and personal responses to literature. The inquiry group was also a space for us to reconsider the many possibilities for professional learning contexts and our roles in that learning.
Authors’ Note
The inquiry study group was supported by funding from the Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy at the University of Arizona, a Title VI-funded Language Resource Center supported by the U.S. Department of Education.
References
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Seabury Press.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press.
Short, K.G. (2009). Curriculum as inquiry. In S. Carber & S. Davidson, ed, International perspectives on inquiry learning (p. 11-26). John Catt Pub.
Short, K.G. & Harste, J., with Burke, C. (1996). Creating classrooms for authors and inquirers. Heinemann.
Vassiloudi,V. (2019). International and local relief organizations and the promotion of children’s and young adult refugee narratives. Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature, 5 (2) 35-49.
Children’s Literature Citations
Agee, J. (2018). The wall in the middle of the book. Dial.
Collard, S. (2023). Border crossings. Illus. H. Gray. Charlesbridge.
Dunbar, P. (2007). Penguin. Walker.
Egan, T. (2007). The pink refrigerator. HMH.
Fanelli, S. (2019). My map book. HarperCollins
Garland, S. (1997). The lotus seed. Ill. T. Kiuchi. Clarion.
Ghanameh, A. (2023). These olive trees. Viking.
Juarez, E. (2022). Until someone listens. Illus. T. Martinez. Roaring Brook.
Lam, T. (2021) Thao: A Picture Book. Owlkids.
Sachar, L. (2000). Holes. Yearling.
Sworder, Z. (2023). My strange shrinking parents. Thames & Hudson.
Teckentrup, B. (2018). Little mouse and the red wall. Orchard.
Temple, K. & J. (2019). Room on our rock. Illus. T. I. Baynton. Kane/Miller/EDC.
Watanabe, I. (2020). Migrants. Gecko Press.
Woodson, J. (2012). Each kindness. Illus. E.B. Lewis. Nancy Paulsen Books.
Dorea Kleker is a teacher educator working with learners of all ages in a wide variety of formal and informal contexts.
ORCID: 0000-0002-4551-2945
Kathy G. Short is a Regents Professor in the College of Education at the University of Arizona and is Director of the Worlds of Words Center of Global Literacies and Literatures.
ORCID: 0000-0002-9431-366X
Narges Zandi is a second-year doctoral student in Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies at the University of Arizona.
ORCID: 0009-0003-6092-5558
© 2025 Dorea Kleker, Kathy G. Short, Narges Zandi
Authors retain copyright over the vignettes published in this journal and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under the following Creative Commons License:
WOW Stories, Volume XII, Issue 1 by Worlds of Words is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on work by Dorea Kleker, Kathy G. Short, and Narges Zandi at https://wowlit.org/on-line-publications/stories/xii-1/6.
WOW stories: connections from the classroom
ISSN 2577-0551