Classroom Read Alouds to Facilitate Conversations About Race

Here is a collection of books that will help you facilitate discussions with your children or students around race, discrimination, social injustice, and prejudice.  In order for us to make a change in the way our society has viewed and accepted racism for so long, we need to start teaching our children to recognize it and how to fight against it.  Having open discussions about it is a starting place instead of sweeping it under the rug because the topic makes you feel uncomfortable.  Accepting that horrible things have happened and continue to happen to people due to the color of their skin will help you to see the need for change.  This isn't just a part of our history, it is part of our present.  

Use these books to start a conversation with your children.  They are not stand alone lessons.  Watch and listen to these videos together.  Take time to pause and address questions.  Have an open discussion with your kids afterwards about how these stories relate to what is happening today and what each of us can do to make a change.  If you don't know how to answer a question, be honest.  Grown ups don't always have all the answers, and that is okay.  Do some research and get back to your child.  

Let's teach this next generation to be better.  To be more accepting.  To be less prejudiced.  Let's make our world a better place for people of color because then it will be better for everyone.  

Some of these books have additonal resources in them that you don't get from a Youtube read aloud.  If you are interested in purchasing them, here are the names and links to buy them on Amazon.  I'd also like to encourage you to purchase them from a small and local bookstore if you are able to.

We are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom

Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman

White Flour by David LaMotte

Soccer Fence by Phil Bildner

Let's Talk About Race by Julius Lester

Shining Star by Paul Yoo

Separate is Never Equal by Duncan Tonatiuh

My Hair is a Garden by Cozbi A. Cabrera

Viola Desmond Won't be Budged! by Jody Nyasha Warner

When I Was Eight by Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton

The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson

I am Not a Number by Dr. Jenny Kay Dupuis and Kathy Kacer

Ruth and the Green Book by Calvin Alexander Ramsey and Gwen Strauss

Something Happened in Our Town by Marianne Celano PhD, Marietta Collins PhD, & Ann Hazzard PhD

As an Amazon Associate, I may earn from qualifying purchases.

Classroom Read Alouds for Distance Learning

I've been having a lot of fun creating Bitmoji rooms for my class to interact with during distance learning.  This one links to Youtube videos of each of the books being read aloud by a variety of people.  Feel free to share it with your own students and children.  

Listen to James and the Giant Peach

I LOVE this recording done by Taika Waititi and other celebrities of James and the Giant Peach.  First of all, I love pretty much any book by Roald Dahl.  I regularly read them to my classes.  They are such fun read alouds with all of the unique and interesting characters whose voices can be so differentiated.  Secondly, this recording is done so well!  I enjoy watching the actors react to each other, play off each other's interpretations, and even their little sidebars are amusing.

I made this little game for my students to find each recording in order so they can listen to a little bit at a time.  

My New Favorite Cookies

I am not a huge cookie eater most of the time.  Usually, I can only eat one, MAYBE two, but then that is enough sweet stuff for me.  I grew up in a very health conscious home so when I first got out on my own, I went a little crazy with the sweets.  I've now cooled down and have a more moderate appreciation for goodies like cookies, cake, pie, and candy.  

A friend of mine shared a recipe on Facebook recently that I had to try. They were called Banana Bread Chocolate Chip Cookies.  I had a plethora of bananas and since my one year old is the only one who eats them at our house, there was no way she was going to get to them before they got all brown and gross.  It looked like a pretty simple recipe so I decided give it a try.  BEST DECISION EVER (unless you are asking my waistline)!!

Click on the picture above to take you to the recipe.  Those are not my cookies... those are the ones from the website.  I don't have the photography skills to show you how mine turned out, but they were pretty close to the same.  I don't put as many chocolate chips in mine and my second batch had a combo of white chocolate, regular chocolate and pecans.  

Anyway, let me tell you about these cookies... They are delectable!  The dough isn't overly sweet and is light and fluffy making them taste like they were made from cake mix.  I don't know if it is the bananas, the sour cream, or what but they have the perfect cookie texture.  The bananas are not overpowering but give you a pleasant and unique flavor, different from your generic chocolate chip cookies.  You can mix and match and whatever sort of extras you want to them and I am sure they would all be delicious.  The first time I just added chocolate chips and they were to die for.  The second time I made them I mixed white and regular chocolate chips and also added crushed pecans.  I literally have to force myself to stop going back for "just one more."  I try to savor each one and make it last, but one is never enough.  

If you are worried about your waistline, then these might not be the cookies for your, but if you are worried at all then why would you be thinking about making cookies?  I, on the other hand, want to enjoy every minute of the rest of my life and I certainly enjoy every second I spend eating one of these.  Everything in moderation, of course, so I won't be making these too often, but you can be sure that I will never go back to regular old chocolate chip cookies again.

Thanks recipes2day.org for my absolute favorite quarantine recipe!

5 Ways to Cope with Teacher Stress

An artificially aged photo of me and absolutely how old I feel on some of my tougher days.

Stress makes you age prematurely, it weakens your immune system, and it takes a toll on your mental health.  I don't pretend to be an expert at dealing with stress well, but it is something I am working on.  After being diagnosed with cancer in 2017, all of the doctors I saw reiterated over and over that stress is a killer and I needed to do everything I could to eliminate it in order to get well.  At the time, that meant taking a leave of absence from teaching to undergo treatment and to heal and recover after the chemo and radiation were over.  I DEFINITELY should have taken more time before returning to work but I felt guily about not going back.  I felt like I should be all better since I'd finished treatment a month and a half prior.  Looking back, I was definitely not all better but c'est la vie.

Back to School Modifications

For those of us in education, we have all started to wonder what school is going to look like in the fall when students return (we hope!) to our campuses.  There will certainly be modifications for social distancing, disinfection, and health standards.  There is so much unknown right now about how Covid-19 is going to progress and change our society that it is hard to plan for anything, much less how school will look in August.  For teachers though, planning is one of those things we must do and so it is a hot topic of conversation.  We are all wondering what to prepare for and not getting any answers.  I would like to theorize about some of the changes that we may be looking at.

What I Learned From Having Cancer

When you are diagnosed with cancer, you face the unknown.  I didn't know that every type of cancer is treated with a different combination of chemo drugs, with different types of administration, different lengths of treatment time, and different schedules.  You don't know how your body will react to the treatment, the lasting side effects, whether the treatment will cause other types of cancer in the future, or whether it will work or not.  It is terrifying and overwhelming.  You start seeing oncologists and they feed you so much information that you can't comprehend because your mind is in a state of shock. 

1.  A second set of ears and eyes!  One important thing I learned was to take someone with me to every appointment who could either take notes or at least be another set of ears to listen and remember what we were being told.  After the appointment we could discuss what information we had heard and what questions it created. 
2.  Write your questions down!  When you go into a doctors appointment and they start talking, it is easy to forget everything you wanted to know about beforehand unless you have a list to discuss with them.  I continue to use this for doctors appointments now for my baby and myself because I still struggle with chemo brain.
3.  "What is chemo brain," you may ask.  Well, that is another thing I learned about.  One of the effects of chemo for me was short term memory loss/lapses.  It was pretty severe for the first 6 months or so where I couldn't even recall conversations I had with people or things they told me.  The number of times my husband would tell me something and then bring it up later when I had zero recollection are too many to count.  It has now been over two years since I completed treatment and I still struggle to remember things at times.  This may have been exacerbated by pregnancy and now postpartum hormones, but I definitely still feel like my short term memory is affected.  I've seen much improvement since the beginning though, especially after doing brain games like Sudoku and Scrabble.
4.  Your hair grows back different!  When my hair first grew back it was curly after I'd had straight or slightly wavy hair my whole life.  I had cute little ringlets for about a year and a half until my hair got long enough to weigh them down and I trimmed them off over time while trying to get some kind of styled haircut. 
5.  The nurses in oncology are amazing!  They put so much care and skill into what they do to make the lives of people who are at their lowest, a little bit better.  The nurses at my oncology clinic, especially those who administered the chemo were some of the kindest, sweetest, most caring women I have ever met.  I often think my job is hard, but I can't imagine how hard it is for them every day to see the struggle of the people around them and not always being able to do something about it.  Losing patients you have formed a bond with, seeing the treatment ravage their bodies and fail, watching people waste away... When I completed chemo they celebrated me like family with a small gift, hugs, and getting to ring the bell at the celebration station. 
6.  One of the biggest things I learned is that stress is a killer.  Every doctor I saw reiterated this over and over again.  Stress wears your body out and when your body is exhausted, your immune system can't work to the best of its ability.  We all have a little cancer in us at one point or another, but most peoples' immune systems are strong enough to fight it off without them being the wiser.  Mine was not and this has really given me a different perspective on how I need to approach things in my life.  It has made me prioritize my family and over my job.  It has made me questions whether the stressors of my job are even worth it.  Although, I have not made any major life changes because of this, I do think about it regularly and evaluate what I can do the alleviate stress in my life.  I expect that larger changes will come as I try to keep myself more grounded.