一个值得讲述的故事

给康妮和汤姆·巴尔, promoting diversity in childhood education has always been of the utmost importance, 这是他们和女儿共同的感情, Dr. 安妮·霍. 现在是韦德体育app官网的校友和特别讲师, Hotz hopes to share her parents’ passion with the larger 韦德体育app官网 community.

受到“尊重父母价值观”的启发,” Hotz established the Connie and Tom Barr Classroom Library Endowment Fund to donate books promoting diversity and inclusion to the classrooms of OU students who are currently teaching. 

“They believed that children should learn and appreciate the stories of different civilizations and cultures so that they could understand their contributions to our collective history,霍兹谈到她的父母时说. “Their hope was that this knowledge would lead children to respect others, value differences and offer their own contributions to make the world a better place.”

今年早些时候，美联社 报道 a slow but steady growth in racial diversity found in children’s books, noting a 3% increase in children’s books written by authors of color and a 1% increase in books written about racially diverse characters or subjects. 尽管有上升趋势, the lack of diverse and inclusive literature available to youth still remains alarmingly high, driving projects such as the Barr Classroom Library Fund to bring as many of these titles as possible directly to students’ classrooms.

“The goal is to provide teachers with quality literature that is representative not only of the students in their classrooms and their students’ communities, 还有那些边界之外的世界,霍兹说. “It is critical that children and young adults have access to literature in which they can see themselves and through which they can experience cultures and understand perspectives that are different from their own.”

每年, the endowment fund will award grants to 韦德体育app官网 students who are currently enrolled in either the 阅读与语言艺术 graduate or postgraduate courses and are concurrently working full-time in schools throughout Michigan. The same individual can receive the award a maximum of two times. 

The first recipients of the endowment fund are third-grade teacher Alexandra Frontera and kindergarten teacher Emily Hawkins, both of whom expressed gratitude for the opportunity to share new stories with their students to help them see the world through a larger lens. 

“It is an honor to contribute to the valuable work of sharing inclusive, culturally diverse books with children in order to create a more equitable society,弗朗特拉说. “I am eager for my students to see themselves represented in literature and to have a growing awareness of cultures that differ from their own. I am filled with gratitude for this generous donation of books for my students.”

霍金斯同意, lauding the endowment as an opportunity for her students to feel represented in the stories they read.

“When Professor Hotz shared this amazing opportunity with my class, I was in the midst of creating a wish list of books from diverse authors and illustrators with suggestions from several of my RDG master’s courses,”她说。. “每本书都有不同的人物, along with characters that resemble my kindergarten students. These books will allow my students to connect with characters and also read outside of their own experiences.”

据霍兹说, both Frontera and Hawkins demonstrated a commitment to preparing students to become “citizens of the world” by exposing them to diverse characters, communities and cultures in the stories they read in their classrooms.

“Each of these stories has powerful messages of perseverance, 所有人的接纳和相互联系,霍金斯说. “I am so grateful to be a recipient of this endowment and can’t wait to share these purposeful books with my students in the fall.” 

For additional information on the reading and language arts programs available at OU, visit 奥克兰.edu/rla.