"Mrs. Thomas, this book is boring...", said Alex.
"Alex, are you serious? Jane Eyre is one of the most well-written, widely studied and highly regarded novels that we study in English".
"...but who are these people? What are they even talking about? Can we read something else?"
"Do you have another book in mind Alex? I'm open to suggestions... Class?"
Alex replied, "I don't have a specific book in mind...but can we read something with black people?"
I remember having this conversation with one of my quite, outspoken students, 4-5 years ago. At the time, our curriculum and reading list was prescribed to us and in alignment with the UK curriculum design and outcomes. Though many of the texts were excellent literary works, they were irrelevant, inconsequential and uninteresting to my class of predominantly black Bermudian (island) students.
Upon reflection, it became clear that many of my students were not interested in reading in class, let alone at home, because they had the view that there was no place for them/people like them in the literature they were exposed to in class. For them (and even for me, when I reflect on my own formative education), many of the texts that we read were about 'other' people, 'other' experiences that were deemed worthy of reading about...but they were never experiences of our own.
This epiphany moment propelled me to do deeper research into selecting a wider range of novels to show a greater diversity of representation in literature. We began reading poems, novels and plays by writers of all walks of life - reflecting the experiences of a number of our students. We read about struggles, stereotypes, prejudices, education and societal pressures in African-American, European, Asian, Caribbean and Indian cultures. This shift in reading immediately opened the window and world of reading for my students, making reading something that was also about and for them.
Last year we completed a novel study on the novel, The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas. This was a text I had never studied before, and it was deemed a particularly 'literary' text by those within the community. In spite of this, studying this novel with my students provided one of the most authentic breakthroughs in reading and also built a connection between: the novel, the events taking place in America, and the experiences that they may have had as a young black girl/boy. Many of my students read ahead during this unit, some finished the novel before we even reached the halfway mark. (I even had a few students go on to read other works by Angie Thomas on their own - completely independently - because they wanted to read more about these experiences). A natural desire to read had been created simply by seeing and relating to the content in the text they were reading - which told me that diversity and representation really do matter!
As teachers, we need to not only teach the curriculum, but challenge prescribed reading lists that are not diverse. If we want to promote equity and fairness, and create relevant and meaningful experiences for all of our students, we need to ensure that we promote an integrate a diverse array of texts in class.
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