Diverse Books for Children

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We came across two excellent book lists recently.  The Institute for Humane Education created an annotated list of 14 Children’s Picture Books Exploring Race and Racism.  KQED’s Mind/Shift published 25 Books that Diversity Kids’ Reading Lists this Summer.  As Mind/Shift reports, a Cooperative Children’s Book Center study found that in 2012, “…the total number of books about people of color—regardless of quality, regardless of accuracy or authenticity—was less than eight percent of the total number of titles we received.”  NPR’s Code Switch reported in June on the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign at BookCon.

OSU Grant News

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Did you hear Karen Thompson (OSU College of Education Assistant Professor) on the radio this morning?  KLCC interviewed her about the federal grant she received for work with the Oregon Department of Education and WestEd on studying academic achievement of all Oregon K-12 students who enter school as English language learners.  A full news release is online.

Sexual Violence on Campus

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Since President Obama established the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault several news stories have been published about issues of rape on college campuses.  One of the most recent was published in the Washington Post on June 29.  Just the day before that, NPR had a story about Tackling Sexual Assault On Campus with Comedy, featuring a recent segment of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

So what is OSU doing to prevent and respond to sexual assault?  Check out http://oregonstate.edu/sexualassault/.  There’s a link there to Get Involved in solutions.

Dual Language Programs in the News

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The Associated Press (AP) published a story on June 28, States Encourage Bilingualism with Diploma Seals, that has been picked up by several news sources across the nation.  It features 2014 graduates from Corvallis High School’s Dual Language Program.  The teacher in their story, Amanda Filloy Sharp, is co-instructor of one of our summer Dual Language Academy courses, Biliteracy in the Schools.  If you’re interested in taking that course and/or Spanish in the Community, contact Stacey Lee (stacey.lee@oregonstate.edu or 541-737-2983) for more information.

Crossing the Line Between Blue and Pink

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Crossing the Line Between Blue and Pink | Teaching Tolerance.  This is a lovely article about how Oregon teacher Jim Hiller addresses social justice in a literature unit for fourth and fifth graders.  Hiller writes,

Each day for a week or so, I would give a broad overview of an “-ism” that impacted our society: racism, ageism and classism, among others. I read aloud a fiction or non-fiction picture book featuring that topic. My students always detested the cruel and oppressive treatment of individuals like Anne Frank and Jackie Robinson

Then we would hit sexism…