Selecting Culturally Responsive Books Culturally responsive teaching is teaching that is respectful of the backgrounds, home languages, and cultures of students. When selecting diverse resources for your classroom library, it’s important to identify books that offer authentic representation and avoid stereotypes. Culturally responsive texts highlight authentic and diverse experiences and perspectives. Criteria for Selection A culturally responsive classroom library is successful when it includes a range of many protagonists and reflects a variety of lived experiences. A diverse classroom library will not only reflect cultural diversity, but also represent a variety of regions and geographic locations, individuals with physical disabilities, neurodiverse protagonists, and LGBTQ+ people. Diverse, culturally responsive books should be at the core of your literacy instruction. Your readers will want to read about characters and subjects that are different from themselves, but they will also be eager to read about characters and subjects whose experiences resonate with their own. Consider these tips while curating your collection: • Books should explore a variety of cultures, languages, and perspectives. • Books should have high-quality text and engaging illustrations, as well as a good story. They should not exist only to teach a lesson (Wanless, 2016). • Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors: Choose books that help children see themselves. Include books that mirror different aspects of identity (like ethnicity, setting, or beliefs) of children in the class, so that they can imagine themselves in the story. These books will also allow other students to see their classmates in the starring role. • Include both fiction and nonfiction titles that introduce readers to new people, places, or concepts that they may not yet have encountered in books or in their daily lives. • Subscribe to newsletters or check in with your local library regarding new titles. New titles are published all the time! By giving attention to overarching messages in the books in your classroom library, you can determine whether your collection includes nuanced diverse representation. Types of books to consider include books that depict diverse characters thriving or triumphing in a variety of circumstances; books that depict or celebrate cultural institutions or traditions; books that depict characters striving and surviving in the face of oppression; books that provide lessons from history, including folktales; books that depict cross-group relationships and characters of different backgrounds interacting with each other; and books that feature “every child”: when characters from underrepresented backgrounds star in a story where their background isn’t central to the story being told.
USING CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE BOOKS IN YOUR CLASSROOM
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