Category: Inclusion

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One Shelf Project – High-Quality, Culturally Relevant and Historically Accurate Literature

Mary Cronin, Director at the Cook Memorial Library in Tamworth is working on a grant with Chocorua Lake Conservancy to bring a series of programs for all ages to Tamworth this fall about the history and presence of Native Americans in this region through educational programs with Wabanaki REACH and others.
One of the organizations the library connected with is Gedakina, based in Essex Junction, VT, but serving all of New England, which has an interesting One Shelf Project to for schools and libraries, described as follows:

One Shelf Project – 2020 marked the birth of The One Shelf Project, a Giveaway of culturally relevant, historically accurate, and high-quality traditional literature and educational materials to school districts, community culture centers, and libraries serving children across New England and Upstate NY. This year’s selection included 50+ books for K-12 as well as Teacher Resources. We hope to make this an annual event in the future. See http://gedakina.org/index.php/2020/10/one-shelf-project/The One Shelf Project book list of 50 titles can be found here, http://gedakina.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/2020-One-Shelf-Project-book-list.pdf. They are working on a new list of titles for the next round of the project. Leah Summerfield is the person doing that, and she is interested in connecting with New Hampshire librarians. 


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Navigating Youth Media

As the forward in this report states, “Young people are navigating their developing
identities in the midst of tremendous social and technological change. They are increasingly relying on digital media to connect, learn, and play.” This initiative is seeking to identify current media habits, gaps and ways media can better benefit youth.

This report is the first publication of an initiative called By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audiences. Media production by youth, with youth, and for youth describes approaches to engaging public media’s “missing audience” of tweens and teens
who fall between content offerings for young children and adults. This literature review is a precursor to the full report, which will represent the ideas of a diverse group of youth ages 10-17 being interviewed at the time of this publication.

Navigating-Youth-MediaDownload

Blog post: Let’s Talk About Public Media and the Next Generation

More about By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audience

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Media Literacy in Early Childhood Report

Now that living in a virtual world seems to be a part of this so called new normal–media literacy is even more important to even our youngest.

Executive Summary

The TEC (Technology in Early Childhood) Center at Erikson Institute in partnership with the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE), the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), and the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) was awarded a grant by the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) in 2018 to host two national forum meetings to discuss media literacy in early childhood with experts and practitioners with the objective of developing materials to support the understanding and teaching of media literacy in early childhood.

This report recognizes and builds upon the extensive media literacy educational materials, books, research, and policies that have been developed to date. The framework builds upon many existing media literacy-focused frameworks including Teaching Tolerance’s Digital Literacy Framework (2017) and Project Look Sharp’s Process of Media Literacy (2018). The child development and children’s media use findings bring together decades of research from various fields in order to understand media literacy in early childhood. The cultural considerations, activities, and tips highlight existing educational materials and concerns raised by practitioners who serve children in a variety of settings. The barriers and solutions to sustaining this work shed light on the challenges practitioners and caregivers face daily. The intention of this Media Literacy in Early Childhood Report is to utilize media literacy, child development, and early education knowledge to develop educational materials and advocate for support for media literacy education in early childhood.

This report provides:

1. an updated definition of media literacy in early childhood;

2. an explanation of developmentally appropriate media literacy education for children under age 8;

3. background on the developmental abilities and expectations of young children with regards to media use and media literacy; and

4. guidelines to support media literacy in early childhood.

TEC-MediaLiteracy-ReportDownload
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December Programming & STEM

From Becky Tapley, STEM Math Education Specialist (pronouns: she/her/hers) at the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance:

As we step into the month of December tomorrow, I wanted to send some resources your way to help you reflect on the activities you may engage your youth with this season. 

The first article has excellent thoughts about ways to build awareness, representation, and sensitivity into your December planning: 

https://www.helpteaching.com/blog/4-ways-to-make-your-classroom-holiday-inclusive.html

Some highlights are these 4 tips:

-Don’t Assume, Stereotype, or Tokenize
-Build Diversity into Your Lesson Plans
-Think Outside the Usual Holiday Cliches
-Consider Forms of Inclusion Outside of Religion and Culture

One topic that is brought up in that article is to include some STEM projects. “Holiday STEM projects offer more great ideas since they often focus on things like winter weather that can be examined outside of a cultural or religious context.”

Check out Howtosmile.org and search for topics your youth are interested in.

One example: How Animals Stay Warm: https://www.howtosmile.org/resource/smile-000-000-002-092

From snowflakes, to penguins, to winter data collection: http://mathwire.com/seasonal/winter05.html

Winter Math and Science Snow connections: https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/blog-posts/lindsey-petlak/winter-math-and-science-can-be-snow-much-fun/

I hope these give you some ideas on how to make your December activities and celebrations inclusive and engaging!

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CSLP-Child & Community Well-Being Committee – Summer Food

The Child & Community Well-Being committee just released its latest resource (with Luke’s help). The one-page CSLP Summer Meals Talking Points flyer includes brief talking points and a quick to-do checklist. It’s an easy-to-digest introduction for summer meals advocates to share with coworkers, library administration, Board, community officials, and prospective partners. It’s now available for download on the CSLP website. Find it on the Libraries and Summer Food resource list here:

Libraries and Summer Food

Or direct download here: file:///C:/Users/deborah.l.dutcher/Downloads/cslp-summer-meals-talking-points-flyer%20(1).pdf

Whatever summer 2021 is going to look like, meal sites will be needed, and state administering agencies for the Summer Food Service Program are going to start recruiting any minute now. Please consider sharing the Talking Points flyer with your libraries, and let them know there’s much more support and info in the CSLP Libraries and Summer Food how-to guide.

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The National Day of Racial Healing will be on January 19, 2021

On this day, individuals in organizations and communities come together to explore their common humanity and build the relationships necessary to create a more just and equitable world. 
WHY DOES THIS DAY MATTER? Racial healing is not only important, it is essential – because healing is at the heart of racial equity. It is not the responsibility of one person, one group or even one organization to drive healing. The responsibility belongs to all of us to participate in these honest, powerful and moving experiences and to pursue this journey together. Through racial healing, we can all forge deep, meaningful relationships, lay the groundwork to transform broken systems and create a world in which we are a new force for positive change. 
We choose Healing over Hatred, Belonging over Bias, and Unity over Division. Together we can bridge the divides to transform communities for our children and future generations.

There is a toolkit for libraries and another for teachers:
https://healourcommunities.org/day-of-racial-healing/

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ACTIVITY KIT: EMBRACE DIFFERENCE, MAKE A DIFFERENCE

“This fall, Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group invites you to embrace difference! From our favorite foods and activities to how our families look and the stories that we know, everyone is different. These differences, from the small and simple to the large and complicated are important. Check out some of our favorite books to start the conversation!” ~ Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group

Visit Here: https://www.mackidsschoolandlibrary.com/activity-kit-embrace-difference-make-a-difference/?e=e71e0337225fe31a7824675a01bc9fa1f77ab58ad11dbc5ade7c28fa5bd65ffe#more-2302

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National Runaway Prevention Month – November

I wanted to share some resources for you to help support the youth in your community during National Runaway Prevention Month.

The National Runaway Safeline has some great resources, including:

-Free Educational and Outreach Materials:

https://www.1800runaway.org/free-promotional-materials/

-Presentations about the National Runaway Prevention Month for the community, social media posts and more. https://www.1800runaway.org/nrpm/

-Runaway Prevention Curriculum. “a free, evidence-based, interactive, 14 module curriculum intended to educate young people about alternatives to running away as well as to build life skills so that youth can resolve problems without resorting to running away or unsafe behavior.”

https://www.1800runaway.org/runaway-prevention-curriculum-sign-up/

-They also have prevention specialists that will lead a virtual youth group discussion:

https://www.1800runaway.org/providers-educators/kids-call/

Also there is an excellent article on Webjunction: https://www.webjunction.org/news/webjunction/serving-homeless-youth.html This is a great opportunity to network with social service agencies and homeless prevention programs.  

Remember:

1 in 10 young adults (age 18 to 25) and 1 in 30 minors (age 13-17) experienced unaccompanied homelessness in a one-year period. This translates to approximately 3.5 million young adults and 700,000 minors (Morton et al, 2017)