The Doubts


At the beginning of the week, I talked with one group of sixers about an article by a teacher I know. In her piece, she wrote about reading books about racism, war, and oppression to her K - 2 multi age class. Many sixers felt the books were inappropriate and several expressed doubts that the littles enjoyed this type of literacy work. This being Banned Book week, I followed up our conversation with a slide show about banned books. The sixers were appalled and disgruntled by the idea that so many books they loved had been challenged. In my smarmiest voice, I said, "But I thought you told me just yesterday that many books should be kept away from little kids? Littles might get upset and we need to protect them from scary ideas! Didn't most of you say that?"
They stared at me snarkily until one sixer broke the silence with, "Touche."

I'm enjoying these peeps.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Push push Push.

Thank you for asking children to consider, think and readjust their thinking. I say to my students all the time, "I want you to reconsider your thinking" but I don't ever make them think as hard as you do.

Thanks for your blog. I look forward to find a new post.

Jeff
LH said…
thanks jeff.
ncte????
please confirm your presence...
Anonymous said…
I'm curious what book you are referring to???
LH said…
do you mean books? because we talked about several.
the article we read included references to
Teammates, Sr. Anne's Hands, the story of the Reys' escape from Germany, and news articles that were in the paper when the Sept. 11 tragedy occurred. The slide show was from a website about banned books. You can go to the ALA webpage to get info there, but the ones we talked about were In the Night Kitchen, The Lorax, Heather has 2 Mommies, Harry Potter, and Where the Wild Things Are. And a few others I can't remember at this moment.
Anonymous said…
What book was refers to talking about war, oppression and racism in a K-2 classroom?
LH said…
It was an article by a teacher that discussed her readings of different books with her K-2 group. She didn't share one book with them. She read several over the course of the school year. Teammates has to do with racism, Sami in the Time of Troubles with war, The Reys' Journey article had to do with oppression in Nazi Germany.
Does this help?
Anonymous said…
I love that sixer. This was a great story to share with my sister when she wasn't too fond of running any more on Sunday.

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