When I was an ELL teacher in Massachusetts, I had a classroom in which 10 different languages were represented. I wanted to make sure every student saw themselves reflected in our classroom library, but as I worked to find books that connected with my students’ lived experiences, I couldn’t always find what I was looking for. I turned to Instagram to connect with fellow educators, trade book recommendations and share advice on making the most of our libraries.  

As a Black woman, I’ve been interested in how identities play out in our classrooms throughout my 16 years of teaching, but honing in on the importance of representation and classroom libraries has opened a new avenue of learning and collaboration. I believe our libraries can and should serve as launching points for meaningful and purposeful conversations about inclusivity, diversity, equity, and equality – all of which are integral to building well-rounded global citizens. 

If you think about our students approaching a locked door, they need a key to open it, but the key’s only going to get them so far. They have to push the door open, they have to add weight and momentum. They have to turn the handle. So the books, especially for young people, are essentially the keys when it comes to learning about justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. When we look at big issues through the lens of books, we have a way to start the conversation. Books start the conversation and introduce new ideas, but they’re not the only answer. Other work has to come in. 

I want to share some of what I’ve learned about how we can build our libraries intentionally, use those libraries as launching points, and then continue the work of cultivating anti-racist classrooms beyond the library.

Our own research has to come first, and fellow teachers can be powerful resources. 

Before you build your library for your students, immerse yourself in the joy of deep research. As teachers who want to offer books as a key toward citizenship, we need to start with our own learning first. We need to follow people on social media with identities different from ours, read books and watch television shows that introduce us to lives different from ours, and continue approaching the world with curiosity. As we learn, we not only confront and overcome biases in ways that are supportive of our teaching, but we also gain similar learning experiences to those we’re inviting our students to take with us. 

Building our own knowledge base helps prepare us for conversations that might come up during our class discussions. If we’re informed, we will be better able to select books with realistic and affirming portrayals of our students’ identities and better equipped to notice and address bias in books. 

I’ve found that turning to my fellow educators online is the best way to find books that my students will connect with. On Instagram, you might follow Naomi O’Brien and The Book Wrangler. They create resources that focus on starting a conversation from picture books and work to take an intersectional viewpoint. 

We need to introduce books through an intentional process that creates space for dialogue.

1. Equip students with context and vocabulary. 

When we introduce books highlighting identities that aren’t yet familiar to our students, they might not have all the vocabulary they need to discuss such identities with respect. Sometimes, we just need to be honest and open and introduce new vocabulary in a neutral way. For example, “This is a book about somebody who is transgender. Transgender means this. Have you heard that word before? So when we read this book, you’re going to see X, Y, and Z, and I want you to be aware of how this person describes themselves.”  

2. Pause during the reading for frequent check-ins. 

So let’s look in, and then while we’re reading, we touch base, we stop and ask questions to check in on their bias, and does it fit in with some of the maybe inappropriate stereotypes they’ve learned or maybe some of the more cruel things they might have heard either at home or just on the news or from other students. How can we build on what they might know and either affirm it or negate it, or at the very least get them to start asking questions so that they can begin the journey of exploring answers on their own?

3. Correct misconceptions with empathy.

As educators, part of our philosophy should be the idea that every child deserves to be respected, loved and cared for in our classrooms. When students bring biases into the classroom – and we all have biases – we need to make sure that we find opportunities for learning, so all identities are respected. When students share inaccurate or inappropriate viewpoints during our check-ins, we have a chance to make space where we can point out harm and move toward understanding. In many cases, there’s value in doing our own research in front of students and sharing how we’ve moved beyond our own biases. We might be able to say, “I don’t know that term, let’s look it up together,” or “This is what I thought before, but I’m reading that this is wrong.” We can say, “Here’s what I found out when I was trying to understand what this meant or how that plays out or why I was confused, too.” This way, we’re offering empathy to our students as they correct their biases while still protecting the identities in the room. 

4. Ask students for feedback instead of making assumptions about when they feel represented in your library. 

The work of building truly representative classroom libraries needs to happen in collaboration with our students and is an ongoing process. Even though I’m deeply engaged in this work, I still have experiences that humble me. Once, I had a student who I already knew because I taught her older brother, and I was friendly with the family. I was pretty confident in knowing all of this child’s identities, and that I’d worked hard to make sure they were all represented in our library. One day, I asked her specifically, “Do you see yourself in our classroom library?” and she said, “No, I really don’t.” It was such an ego blow!

I asked her, “What characters do you need to see to feel yourself represented in our classroom?” and she said, “More books about kids with glasses.” She was 100% right! I couldn’t think off the top of my head of any books with main characters wearing glasses. It floored me because I’d been so confident in my book-finding abilities, and I didn’t have anything for her at that moment – a student I knew so well. 

It also floored me as a powerful reminder that we don’t get to choose which identity is at the forefront for any student at any time. I might think, “I have a majority of Black students in my class, so I need books to show the Black experience.” That’s not untrue, but at the same time, we don’t get to decide that Black kids should gravitate to the books we’ve chosen just because they are Black. I knew this, but having a student express that she needed to feel affirmed by seeing other kids with glasses really drove it home. 

It was a great reminder that I have work to do around creating opportunities to let kids tell me how they want to connect with the stories in our room so that I can help facilitate those identity connections for them. We can’t assume we know just because we know pieces of their identity. 

Remember, books are not the full answer. We must commit to continuing our own learning. 

We have to remember: We can buy as many books as we want to buy to add to our classroom libraries, but that will not make our classrooms anti-racist, and it will not make us anti-bias educators. That is separate work. Buying the books without doing that work is essentially just making the classroom library look colorful, both literally and figuratively.

If you’re looking for books to support this part of the journey, I recommend the authors Britt Hawthorne, Tiffany Jewell, Ibram X. Kendi, Jason Reynolds and Colson Whitehead. Once you get started with these, you’ll just start finding so many more.

If our goal is to create true equity in our classroom, and for our anti-racist class environment to be represented in our libraries, then the libraries aren’t the first step. We have to take the time to learn about our own biases and how they come to play in the classroom, as well as what being an anti-racist educator really means.