Born to Read Trainers » many eyes

a ten-year-old controversy

Brita — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:37:29 +0000

Writing about Linda Capone-Newton’s June training reminded me that while we used to distribute an article from “Newsweek” about the controversy surrounding the Nappy Hair book in every Many Eyes, Many Voices training, there’s no longer any guarantee that this 10-year-old story will get discussed. That’s okay—there are many other connections to current events that can be made during Many Eyes, Many Voices agenda. Still, it would be good for those of you who aren’t familiar with the controversy to read about it. (The controversy resurfaced briefly in 2007, when conservative radio personality Don Imus got into trouble for talking about “nappy hair” in reference to Rutgers women’s basketball players. It’s unlikely to ever fade completely.) The Newsweek article is not available online, but there’s an archived piece from a publication at California State University, Chico, where author Carolivia Herron taught literature at the time. Searching the New York Times website for the teacher’s name, Ruth Sherman, also yields some archived coverage. Trainers who wish to incorporate Nappy Hair should contact us to make a special request for copies of the book and/or the Newsweek article.

Many Eyes, Many Voices in Scarborough

Brita — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:08:39 +0000

Linda Capone-Newton facilitated this small training in late June. The group included pairs of colleagues from three centers who were more inclined to talk to one another than to people they didn’t know, so the main challenge for Linda was to get the discussion flowing more freely. She found that Nappy Hair prompted good discussion.

Participants left Linda’s training excited about “new books and different ways to use books to bring diversity into the classroom.” One planned to “talk to my center director about new books.” Another said she’d “offer a lot of diversity throughout the classroom and be aware of the tough questions that might come.” A center manager intended to “organize resources for teachers to be able to access them.” 100% of the participants said they’d recommend the training to a colleague! Perhaps that why our next Many Eyes, Many Voices training, which is more than a month away, is already filled to capacity…

Many Eyes traveling book collection

Brita — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:40:07 +0000

Born to Read proudly announces its very own LibraryThing catalog! All the books we own, for both children and adults, are now listed online using this website, which was started by a man now living in Portland. The cataloguer was our wonderful volunteer, Amron Gravett. Take a look around the catalog – you may be surprised at some of the nearly 700 titles we own! – and if you have your own LibraryThing catalog, please let us know so we can compare books.

Why should this matter to trainers? Well, we’ve always offered use of a large collection of display books to those delivering Many Eyes, Many Voices close enough to Portland that they can lug the collection around. The collection was catalogued in a spreadsheet. Now that it’s online, local trainers can pick and choose which titles they’d like to display, so that we can prepare a smaller box for them. Trainers who live too far away to use our books can look for copies in their local libraries. Find (and bookmark) this collection here.

one more conference session

Brita — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:42:34 +0000

The Bi-County Conference in Sullivan, Maine, is sponsored by the Child Care Opportunities RDC for Hancock and Washington counties. This April, Bahia Yackzan facilitated two workshops sessions, each one hour and fifteen minutes long, on Many Eyes, Many Voices. She chose to distribute one copy of Thanks to the Animals and one Somali Alphabet book to each participant. Since she had so little time, Bahia made a point of asking the group to state their needs/requests/questions at any point so they would leave with what they came for. Her major goal was to communicate the value of the program and entice the participants to take the full 6-hour training. However, she took the time to read Thanks to the Animals aloud and take the group through the corresponding section of the Activity & Resource Guide. She also played the Somali Alphabet CD, describing this as “a great opportunity to talk about developmentally appropriate exposure, how great it is for even the littlest ones to hear all kinds of sounds.”

We are so pleased to be able to spread the messages of our Born to Read trainings at these conferences around the state. Many thanks to the RDC staff and conference coordinators who have thought of us, and to all the presenters who’ve ably represented us.

Many Eyes, Many Voices in Ellsworth

Brita — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:14:21 +0000

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?