Read Outside Your Bubble (eBook)

Expand Your Bookshelf, Expand Your World

Nita Creekmore (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
229 Seiten
Jossey-Bass (Verlag)
978-1-394-24464-5 (ISBN)

Infos

Learn how to foster student engagement, cultivate empathy, and encourage a love of reading by bringing diverse literature into the classroom

Using an instructional coaching framework, Read Outside Your Bubble introduces teachers to a new mindset for helping students develop literacy and become lifelong readers. By building an accessible and inclusive literacy curriculum, you can pique students' interest in the world outside their #bubbles. 'Bubbles' are identity markers of race, religion, orientation, and socio-economic status. In this book, instructional coach and parent Nita Creekmore takes a conversational and research-backed approach to introducing her L.E.A.P framework, which guides you through the process of crafting your curriculum. You'll also learn how to develop lesson plans that increase compassion, cultivate empathy, and encourage a love of reading and history.

• Follow the research-backed L.E.A.P. framework to choose diverse reading selections for K-12 classrooms
• Learn step-by-step techniques for creating an inclusive curriculum that engages students in literacy
• Help turn students into lifelong learners by encouraging them to think beyond their own circumstances and think critically about the world around them
• Teach students how to compare and contrast themes and ideas across content areas

The primary audience is teachers, curriculum coaches, curriculum specialists, instructional coaches, and homeschooling parents will appreciate the practical, future-minded approach in Read Outside Your Bubble. This book brings diversity into classrooms in a way that will prepare students to participate in the creation of a more inclusive world.

Nita Creekmore is a distinguished educator and instructional coach consultant. As the founder of Love. Teach. Bless., Nita has dedicated her career to enhancing literacy education through diverse texts and supporting teachers in their instructional journey. She is also the co-owner (with her husband Michael) of Creekmore Conversations, LLC, a consulting firm specializing in building school relationships and parent education. Visit www.love-teach-bless.com to learn more about her work or follow the handle @LoveTeachBless on Instagram.

Textauszug

My Why

As a child I have always looked for someone who looked like me in the pages of the books that I read. It began when I was little, and the desire has not gone away. I've always looked for myself or someone who looks like me in movies, TV shows, schools, and my places of work. Representation in the areas of my life matters. It has always mattered to me and still does even as an adult.

Books are no different. When I was a child in elementary school, there weren't many books that had covers with someone of color displayed on the cover and definitely not as the protagonist in the story. As a child, it was something I craved. It was something I needed. I wanted to read books that represented Black girls like me.

Growing up, my family instilled in me a great deal of self‐worth and always made me feel seen, valued, and enough—even when the world was saying otherwise. My family was my rock when I had difficult times in school making friends or when I was struggling to read. They were always there to remind me of my genius.

Still, in kindergarten through fourth grade I felt unseen. In my elementary years, I was often one of the only Black students in my classrooms. Up until fifth grade I hadn't had one Black teacher. I think that this has a huge effect on how I showed up in school and how much I felt seen and valued. For example, my parents would push me and have high expectations for me as a student, but when I got into the school building, I was often in a space where as long as I was doing enough, it was okay. But inherently it was not okay. I needed my teachers to see me—really see me—and push me to my potential. I needed them to have representation in their classrooms, in the curriculum they taught, and in the stories they read—the stories I read. I needed them to give me the tools so that I could show my genius. Needless to say, I pushed through regardless of this lack of representation.

When I decided to become an educator in 1997, a goal of mine was to ensure that all students felt seen, valued, and heard in my classroom. I wanted them to feel this in how I treated them, in the walls of my classroom, and in the curriculum. I wanted them to feel they were a part of our community, and one way to do that was to make sure they were represented in all areas of our learning community, even in the books they picked up from the shelves.

When students feel valued, seen, and heard in their classroom community, they not only learn at higher levels, but they feel emotionally and psychologically safe in the classroom. They connect with their teachers and their classmates, and a learning community is built. I did not need to dig into research on that theory because I am the research. I know it because I have lived it. I know it because I have felt it. I know it because I have built relationships with students where they have shared with me about past experiences in classrooms where they felt less than seen and valued. I know it because it's my truth. When students can see themselves and others that look like them in the books that they read and the curriculum they are taught, they will soar to great heights.

Don't just go find the research—be the research. I invite you to take the step, the plunge, and see just how much your students soar by ensuring that they see themselves in books, in curriculum, and in your learning environment. They should see others as well so that their bubbles are expanded, which expands their world.

What Does the Title of This Book Mean?

Reading outside of your bubble is a phrase I created and began hashtagging on my @loveteachbless Instagram page. I have always shared inclusive and diverse books with my own children, with my students in my classroom, and with students in other classrooms. But I also began sharing inclusive books on my social media page. I shared these books because I wanted to open other folks' worlds to the importance of diverse literature. I wanted to be able to also support Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) authors and illustrators. I wanted to share their work and their art. When I shared their inclusive texts, I began using the #readoutsideyourbubble hashtag because I realized that so many folks stay comfortable in their own bubbles, learning about themselves, reading about themselves, and reading about their own communities and their own experiences. There is power in that, especially if you're reading and learning about your own bubble that is not offered in schools. In other words, if you are learning more about yourself, your culture, your lineage, or your identity that isn't taught in schools, reading inside your bubble is essential. I believe that it is important to start within your own bubble. Taking time to learn about who you are, where you came from, your history, and your ancestors is essential. It is pertinent to know who you are and digging into your identity and its intersections is a great place to begin.

I also believe that we cannot just stay inside our bubbles. Learning about ourselves is a continuous journey, but I believe we can do both simultaneously. We must take time to learn about others outside of our bubbles. The use of inclusive books is a great place to begin, especially in schools. Expanding our bubbles makes us better humans. Once we realize and accept that we are different, and our differences should be honored and celebrated, we can begin to ignite change. We are different, beautiful, and interconnected.

Once we come together in community, our world will be stronger, better, and more humane. Without community, freedom is harder to attain. We are threaded together. That is what reading outside our bubbles is about. Reading outside our bubbles is reading and teaching with inclusive books at the center in culturally responsive ways. Inclusive books, or diverse literature, are books that are welcoming to all readers that also include a variety of perspectives and experiences. They can help readers see themselves and others in the pages of a book. Inclusive books can help break down barriers, release stereotypes, unlearn biases, and increase perspective‐taking. Inclusive books can also help readers learn about different communities, races, cultures, genders, lives, and orientation, and can help readers to develop understanding, empathy, and compassion. That is the essence of reading outside your bubble because when you do so, you expand your bookshelf, and you expand your world in the process.

Why I Wrote This Book

I did not decide to become a teacher just to teach. I love teaching, yes, but I became a teacher to change the world. As naive as that may sound to some, it's the truth. I knew that by teaching that I could help to change the world one student at a time by the connections I made, the relationships I cultivated, and the lessons that I taught them. I decided to write this book as a pathway to continue fulfilling that—a pathway to changing the world.

This book, Reading Outside Your Bubble, is about reading and learning about ourselves and reading and learning about others who may look like us. It is about reading and learning about those who may not look like us. I wrote this book for educators and families to realize why reading outside your bubble is so powerful and why teaching inside and outside your bubble can be powerful too. Reading outside your bubble can change the world—I believe that, and I have hope in that. I have written this book to include pathways to take to read and learn outside of your own bubbles as educators and to teach students to read and learn outside their bubbles as well. I wrote this book for folks who are doing this work but also for folks that want to do more and may not know where to begin. This book will help you bring inclusive and diverse literature into classrooms, but to not just end there. I want this book to also be a bridge that can be used to cultivate and foster the relationships with students and teachers, to cultivate active readers, and to increase reading engagement of our students.

The Pathway

I created the LEAP framework that anyone can use to help to guide themselves through the process of truly cultivating a learning environment that immerses inclusive texts in their curriculum. If you are a homeschool parent/guardian, you can do the same. This framework stands for Learning, Equity, Accessibility, and Purposeful and professional learning. It helps to guide educators into learning and expanding your bubbles for yourselves and our students, how to make reading outside your bubbles equitable and accessible to all, and how to cultivate community and alignment in the learning environment.

When students read outside their bubbles through mirrors, windows and sliding‐glass doors, metaphors used by the great Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, they are engulfing themselves in text in a way that increases self‐acceptance, acceptance of others, connection, and engagement. This aids in creating lifelong readers and learners. Students are more open to learning, and they learn at great heights. They can showcase their genius because they have read about others who came before them that have showcased theirs unapologetically.

Knowing the importance of reading outside our bubbles is a critical step to being able to do this work. Rooting in that purpose is what will be our guide in ensuring that we continue and won't falter. Expanding our world to make it better is life's work. It is what we are called to do.

What You Will Find in This Book

Reading Outside Your...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 5.3.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik
• Schlagworte: coaching book • coaching teachers • curriculum development • Inclusive curriculum • Inclusive Education • Instructional coach • k-12 literacy • k-12 reading • Literacy • literacy coach • literacy education • Literacy teacher • reading curriculum • reading diversity • Reading Teacher • reading teacher book
• ISBN-10: 1-394-24464-9 / 1394244649
• ISBN-13: 978-1-394-24464-5 / 9781394244645