#StepUpScholastic Archives - Teaching for Change

Louise Derman-Sparks Responds to Scholastic

Many years ago, as the author of Anti-Bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children, I was invited to serve on an advisory board for Scholastic to help them produce books for young children that accurately and respectfully depicted the many forms of diversity in our country. With the publication of President Donald Trump, Scholastic is …

Despite National Outrage, Scholastic Defends Children’s Books Celebrating Trump

UPDATE – Scholastic’s celebratory children’s books about Donald Trump are finally OUT OF PRINT. After thousands of letters in an action campaign from teachers, parents, and students across the U.S., Scholastic has stopped reprinting these two books. In June of 2018, we published critical reviews of the Scholastic books for early and upper elementary students about the …

Third Graders Assess and Improve Diversity of Classroom Library

By Jeremy Manger As part of our larger social justice project, my third grade students at High Tech Elementary North County in San Marcos, California completed an investigation into the diversity of our classroom library. Our investigation question was: How diverse is our classroom library? The class decided to examine the library, creating groups of books based …

Virginia Middle School Students Critique Lack of Diverse Books

By Allison Bell This spring my sixth and seventh grade reading students at Gunston Middle School in Arlington, Virginia researched the lack of diversity in children’s and young adult books. After learning about the statistics on diversity in books and the “We Need Diverse Books” and #StepUpScholastic campaigns, students did surveys of our classroom library …

Why Are All the Kids Who Look Like Me Enslaved?

Teaching for Change is partnering with American Indians in Children’s Literature and Ferguson Response Network to collect letters to Scholastic telling them to publish and distribute children’s books that reflect and affirm the identity, history, and lives of ALL children in our schools. We have received thoughtful letters from all over the country. A teacher from …

#StepUpScholastic for ALL Children Flier

The #StepUpScholastic campaign is off to a great start with hundreds of letters coming in from all over the U.S. We encourage you to read selected letters and then write your own. The campaign was launched in late February to address the crisis in children’s book publishing. More than 50% of the children enrolled in …

#StepUpScholastic Twitter Chat

On February 29, Leslie Mac of Ferguson Response Network hosted a twitter chat on the #StepUpScholastic campaign. There was a rich and lively exchange among educators, parents, authors, and other activists as they weighed in on a series of questions about the campaign. Questions ranged from “why target Scholastic” to “what person(s) or moment(s) from your history …