After the Audit: Classroom Libraries that Foster Critical Consciousness

When I first started my work as an elementary school librarian 12 years ago, I didn’t yet comprehend just how powerful books are as vehicles of ideology nor that, as a white woman, my racial identity alone could be a barrier to all children fully accessing everything that a library should offer.

‍

Both as a librarian and the mother of two white children, I came to recognize the potency of books, narratives, and the impact of my own positionality which led me to a pedagogical shift that centers racial and social justice in my work with children and pushes me to continually cultivate my own critical consciousness alongside my students’.

‍

In the world of children’s literature there are many amazing advocates, educators, librarians, authors, illustrators and others doing work that matters. If you follow hashtags such as #OwnVoices, #DisruptTexts, and #WeNeedDiverseBooks, you will be able to follow the work of BIPOC folks who prioritize the books and other media our children consume.

‍

Through these conversations and practices, many educators and librarians embrace the idea of diversifying their libraries by having books that are more representative of the diversity in race, ability, gender expression, sexuality, religion, socioeconomic status, cultures, value systems, etc. of the students in their classrooms and in our world. As a result, over the course of the last few years, I have seen the rise in popularity amongst librarians and teachers utilizing tools such as “diversity audits” to evaluate their collections for representation. I, too, have written about evaluating bookshelves for the Horn Book, and believe this is a good first step in working with young people to start questioning who is being represented in their books and libraries. However, oftentimes this practice can result in a superficial checklist of represented identities rather than leading to the impactful conversations about social identities and their relationship to power that develop a critical consciousness in ourselves and our students.

‍

In the world of children’s literature, and in my own library, much of the conversation around representation centers Rudine Sims Bishop’s metaphor of books as “windows and mirrors”. As an elementary school librarian, I appreciate being able to frame the conversation around this metaphor, as this can concretely illustrate who is represented and reflected in kid lit the most. Sarah Park Dahlen and David Huyuk along with the Cooperative Children’s Book Center recently put out the 2018 infographic of Diversity in Children’s Books 2018.

‍

The creators of this image so rightly point out, that while publishing practices have gotten incrementally better with physical representation of characters, it does not mean the book’s content, authenticity, or character’s self-efficacy is well represented. If representation is only measured in aesthetics, we are losing an integral piece in the purpose of having ‘windows and mirrors’ for our students.

‍

So, how do we move forward as educators in diversifying our classroom book collections and libraries while keeping attributes of authenticity in narratives and agency?

‍

It is important to educate ourselves about the books we choose,because a book cannot “do it all.” Raising your own critical lens as well as bringing in your students’ voices will also help to avoid what Derman-Sparks refers to as “tourist curriculum”--  a result of superficially engaging with diversity in texts which leads to “othering” the ways of being that are outside dominant cultural norms and further marginalizing students.  An educator should not only prioritize their students’ experiences and knowledge, but also recognize the ways in which their own socialization and social identities impact the ways in which certain narratives are amplified or invisibilized.

‍

By developing our own critical consciousness to engage in and facilitate powerful book discussion in which our students share connections and criticisms, we, as a classroom community, can go deeper than we could with merely a superficial reading.

‍

We, as educators, can step beyond simply diversifying our bookshelves by refining our critical lens. In doing so, we can ask ourselves a number of questions that more deeply analyze the ways in which social identities intersect with power and privilege. For example:

• How does my own identity inform which books I utilize with children?
• What narratives do I gravitate toward? What narratives do I shy away from? Why?
• Which parts of my identity inform this selection of books? What parts of my identity make some narratives less attractive to me?
• When I am choosing to engage in a book that highlights characters and practices outside of my racial and/or cultural understanding and experience, do I know who wrote the book or who recommends the book?
• What are the criticisms against the book? Who is lodging these criticisms and what are their identities and positions of power?

Another important factor is to be mindful of is nostalgia.

Just because we may have fond memories of a book, author, or reading experience, does not mean that the text was unproblematic. Nor does it mean that “classics” are better than contemporary books. As I said in Harvard Ed. magazine, “A lot of people will see a brown child on the cover of a book and think that’s enough but it’s not. We have to look critically at the agency of that child, who wrote the book, the dominant narrative in the book. It takes a lot of work.” So what is that work?

‍

One way to do this is to evaluate a collection for bias, not just representation, by asking yourself the following questions:

• Does this text reproduce stereotypes and literary tropes? (ex. magical Black characters, girls in need of saving, exoticizing, etc.)
• Who wrote the book? What is their lived experience?
• Who is the main character? Who’s inner voice, lived experience, and/or comfort is being centered? Who are we invited to empathize with by the narrative?
• Do BIPOC characters have agency? Are BIPOC characters in decision making roles? OR are BIPOC characters relegated to “side-kicks”?
• Does this book center deficit thinking or further victimization of marginalized groups?

‍

These questions are not just for you to consider-- involve children in this work!

Be transparent in your thinking and allow them to question and critique as well. Read more about how a colleague and I did this with a second grade classroom here. We, as educators, should continually refine our critical consciousness, check our biases, and question our motivations, both as a model for and alongside our students.

‍

While the questions above can serve as a starting point to guide you in a deeper analysis of your classroom library and more impactful read aloud discussions with students, you can continue to refine your adult critical lens in the following ways:

• Follow the work of BIPOC-led organizations such as  The Conscious Kid, Disrupt Texts, and American Indians In Children’s Literature
• Purchase, or check out from your local library, books published by independent publishers who work to get often marginalized narratives and stories published. You can check out the list I created on my school website here.
• Participate in an Embracing Equity Online Cohort to further cultivate your critical consciousness and anti-racist, anti-bias identity!

About the Author

‍

Liz Phipps Soeiro (she/her) holds a BSEd from Lesley University ‘02, an MLS from Simmons University in ‘07 and an EdM from Harvard Graduate School of Education ‘19 . She has been an elementary school librarian for over a decade and currently works in Cambridge, MA Public Schools, and is the founder of the Cambridge Book Bike. Liz was named a 2017 Library Journal "Mover & Shaker," 2017 School Library Journal School Librarian of the Year: Hero of Family Outreach, and was awarded the Conant Fellowship at Harvard Graduate School of Education for the 2018-2019 academic year.