Born to Read Trainers

For this training, Bahia Yackzan and Linda Levesque worked with a very sophisticated group of nine experienced early childhood educators and two Born to Read volunteers. Bahia noted that “it was a wonderful thing to recognize, and adjust our agenda to, the fact that this group of providers was really ready for a deeper level of discussion.” Linda explained that they skipped some of the small group book review activities on the agenda because “discussion was rich and lively as a full group.” In fact, apparently the participants were so engaged that they lost track of time in both sessions and kept talking until after 9:00!

It’s always nice when a participant brings a personal experience to Many Eyes, Many Voices (unless, of course, it takes up too much time!). One teacher in this group brought in several books from the late sixties and early seventies, to show how full of stereoptypes they were. She had adopted a child from Central America in early seventies, and recalled how hard it was to find children’s books that showed skin colors other than white. She also told an anecdote about a local store getting a mistaken shipment of dark-skinned baby dolls, which she was thrilled to be able to give to her daughter.

These participants were also very successful in field-testing the books between sessions. Most reported that children responded well to We Can Do It! While the children didn’t pay that much attention to the differences visible in the photographs, the teachers were able to find opportunities to start conversations that revealed true attitudes about those differences.

There was one comment on a participant evaluation that piqued my interest, and neither trainer mentioned it in her report. Under “What new ideas did this training bring to you?” one person had written “Hot glue gun Braille letters – brilliant!” Can anyone expand a bit on this idea?