Tag Archives: diversity

The BEAUTIFUL Skin We Live In!

Seems like I have been waiting FOREVER to share this post with you, but I wanted to wait until the final products were hung up before I finally wrote a about it.  Man, it’s been hard!

If you have every visited my classroom, or if you have read this blog before, you hopefully know that diversity and community are two important parts of my classroom.  I have done much over the last year to incorporate more diverse texts into my classroom (and life!), have celebrated cultures of our classroom families, and stressed with my kiddos how amazing it is that we are NOT all the same!  Different is BEAUTIFUL!

I used some similar books from years past, because they are great and still worked to share that diversity, appreciation, celebration, inclusion message I wanted to send.  Kids really enjoyed them. 🙂

I have done portraits many different ways over the years, but wanted to really focus on making them LOOK like us, especially the beautiful COLORS of us.  It was a fun experiment to find just the right combination of paint to represent each kiddos’ face, and we had some great conversations about what we noticed, what we liked and what each color looked like.

The walls in this new room have afforded me the best place so far to display these masterpieces.  They are high and smiling at us and we can see them from everywhere.  I LOVE that you can see each kiddo’s personality in their portrait and even if they weren’t labeled we’d be able to tell who is who because they did such a FABULOUS job creating them.  But most of all I love that they represent how beautifully and wonderfully made  is each and every one of my Rm. 111 kiddos. 🙂

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New DIVERSE Books for the New Year!

I have to tell you about a little secret.  Hopefully it will become something everyone knows about soon, though, because it is SUCH A TREASURE!!

As an end-of-year gift, I was sent on my Winter Break with a gift card from our school’s PTO (thanks Mrs. Sisul!) to Eyeseeme, and independent bookstore near here.   They operate with the mission of helping every kid see themselves in the books they read.  This is such an important work and as far as I know, they are the only bookstore of their kind in our area.  I visited it today with my teacher friend and her kids, and WOW did we discover a treasure!  It’s only been recently (through the help of many smarter-than-me teachers and librarians on Twitter and some great teachers I work with) that I’ve become more aware of the inequality that exists in children’s literature as it pertains to characters of color–or anyone who isn’t white, really.  It is really sad when I think about how many kiddos never get to see books with characters that look like them.  I know that for too long I’ve taken that fact for granted.  And man–for a long time I didn’t even know it was a “thing.”  I know I only have that luxury because I’m white.  Anyhow, I’m hoping to continue to help this group of kiddos see themselves, as well as look for and EXPECT to see diverse books around them.

Our class has already been on a little journey of our own to read books that contain black and brown characters, and so of course, we were treated with many options for new books to enjoy together with Mrs. Blair’s collection at Eyeseeme.  Check out what I ended up coming home with today:

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I found some favorites that I’ve read in previous years but just didn’t have a copy of yet (like Those Shoes and Pretty Salma), as well as some that are from authors that Rm. 202 kiddos already know (Sand Sister, Just a Minute, Pecan Pie Baby and Another Important Book), as well as some that I know will become some of our favorites since they contain strong, powerful characters (all the rest of that pile! hee hee).  I CANNOT wait to share these with my first grade friends!

Oh, and thanks to some very kind Rm. 202 families, I was able to add some other new titles via Barnes and Noble.  Here are a few that I got the other day:

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I have all of the rest of that I AM series in the classroom and was excited to complete my set!  I found Ada’s Violin on a “Best of 2016” list and Luna & Me just looked great.  I was able to grab some Lauren Castillo books and a couple of other good ones before break, too, but they’re at school and so I don’t have pictures.  Oops.  Either way, it’s raining books in Rm. 202 right now and that’s a great way to start a new year!!  We are so blessed. 🙂

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Happy in Our Skin!

For the last few years, I’ve started the year with creating beautiful things to hang in our room.  It’s so great to watch as our bare walls fill up with amazing creativity that spills out of our first grade minds!

This project is both fun and meaningful as it’s based on helping kiddos see that while we are all different that’s an amazing thing, and that within those differences we can celebrate ways we are also the same.

As with many things, we started our conversation with books.  We read Shades of Black by Sandra Pinkney and Happy in Our Skin by Fran Manushkin together.

We talked about how each of us looks different, has different talents to share and brings many different things to our classroom community.  Also, we have many things that are the same because we’re all kids.  We all want to be loved, to belong, to contribute, to learn.

We wanted to create beautiful images of our unique and different selves to hang on the wall, and we did so with lots of different creative things in our room.  We also borrowed a mirror from our friends in Ms. Turken’s room so we could see some of the close-up details of our faces.

Now they hang along the top of our wall and we can see them smiling on us every day!  We are definitely learning to celebrate the beautiful skin we live in, and appreciate how different we all are!

Self-Portraits

One thing I believe is that we’re all beautiful.  I want to help my students believe the same thing, and celebrate diversity.  One way we began to do this is to read books about the ways we are all beautiful and then create art to showcase that–art that will hang in our room all year to help us remember. 🙂

Last week we read the book The Skin You Live In, by  Michael Taylor.  It is written in the form of a poem, so it sounds good, but the point of the story is that our skin is something to celebrate and appreciate.  The pictures are really great, and everyone loved reading it!

Screen Shot 2014-09-06 at 4.15.31 PM(photo courtesy of goodreads.com)

After we read it, we talked about the beautiful skin that we live in in our class, and started a project to create portraits of ourselves.  I have done this many times with classes, and sometimes there’s paint involved, sometimes markers, sometimes colored pencils.  This time is was colored pencils, along with yarn, fabric, string and glue. 🙂

I was so impressed at how diligently everyone worked to make it both creative and authentic to themselves.

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Look! We got to practice our cutting skills with this project.

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I love that we have so many adult helpers at our school to support us! Mrs. Gaglio is helping Makayla create her portrait. 🙂

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We also got to practice our gluing skills.

I had to highlight Ava and the way she masterfully demonstrated her understanding of using "just a dot, not alot."

I had to highlight Ava and the way she masterfully demonstrated her understanding of using “just a dot, not alot.”

Here Diego is helping Briannia figure out how to make the cloth look like her clothes. I love how projects like this have opportunities to work both alone and with each other.

Here Diego is helping Briannia figure out how to make the cloth look like her clothes. He figured out how to solve the problem, and is showing her how to sketch the shape of her shirt before she cuts the fabric. I love how projects like this have opportunities to work both alone and with our classmates, sharing our knowledge and teaching each other.    This picture exemplifies the phrase I love–everyone is a student and everyone is a teacher.

I just had to take a picture of this part of our rug as we worked. Learning is messy, friends! (Don't worry--they know how to respect our environment and they picked it all up!).

I just had to take a picture of this part of our rug as we worked. Learning is messy, friends! (Don’t worry–they know how to respect our environment and they picked it all up!).

We had just the right spot to hang them so they can smile down on us all year! :)

We had just the right spot to hang them so they can smile down on us all year! 🙂 There are a few friends who aren’t finished yet, and theirs will fill that hole by the clock when they’re done.

There’s a title I haven’t gotten up there yet that I think will start in that spot on the left.
Close up. 🙂