Equity and Anti-Bias in School Library Practice

In this workshop Sandra Hughes-Hassell and Casey Rawson provide tips and information based on their extensive research that will help make your library into a welcoming and engaging place for African American students.

High quality literacy instruction is both a professional mandate and a social justice issue.

One new book we're particularly excited about is Libraries, Literacy, and African American Youth, edited by Sandra Hughes-Hassell, Pauletta Brown-Bracy, and Casey H. Rawson. In their introduction, the authors say that rather than a how-to guide, they want their book to "spur dialogue and reflection about how libraries must change" in order to better serve African American youth. In the interests of building on this dialogue, Dr. Hughes-Hassell and Dr. Rawson were gracious enough to answer some questions for us about their work.

How well do your perceptions of the educational opportunities available to Black youth align with reality?

After attending two days of workshops with Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Anita Cellucci walked away with a clearer understanding of the work that needs to be done to move our schools toward anti-bias practices.

Library services should acknowledge and promote positive racial identity development.

The Culturally Responsive Library Walk is designed to be a collaborative tool for administrators, librarians, and teachers to assess the library's responsiveness to the needs of the Black students who attend the school

School librarians, like classroom teachers, can be socialized into punitive cultures in schools. However, school librarians can and do actively resist these norms. Here, I offer four pedagogical stances for paradigm shifting toward justice that can inform the work librarians are doing in schools.

This infographic offers some interpretations of restorative justice for school library practice.

Learn how to build your cultural competence to better serve your students.

The school library is a space of solace and comfort. However, there may be policies in the school or school library that are actually restricting or excluding certain students from using the library; in this article, we'll consider how school and library policies may be affecting use of the library by certain students

One of the challenges and opportunities we have is the journey toward becoming anti-racist, anti-bias educators and developing a program that focuses on and models equity. For me, this journey is closely connected to my very soul. It is easy to make policy changes at a philosophical level, but initiating and maintaining programmatic changes comes from more than boxes on a checklist.

Abolitionist teaching promotes the inclusion of all races in textbooks to broaden students' knowledge about narratives of the diverse people of this country.

Literacy is strongly connected with voice and agency.

Culturally relevant pedagogy is an empowering and multidimensional approach rather than a simple celebration of diversity or set of steps to follow.

We study educators who help students who live in poverty beat the odds and have visited schools in the United States and five other countries, interviewing hundreds of educators to better understand how they disrupt poverty's adverse effect on lives and learning. We are often asked to share what we have learned with educators, board members, and community stakeholders.

Providing safe space for students also means ensuring that we are mindful, intentional, and aware of the issues our students are facing in their day-to-day lives. If we are truly mindful of the challenges faced by our students we must focus on the real world issues that impact their lives.

Having the books is not enough. We must embrace our entire collections and make sure that everyone who comes in can find the books that represent them. Inclusive book talks and displays are a huge first step. Building relationships with our readers is essential.

Janice Hodges and Lajuan S. Pringle write how librarians can support literacy achievements in African American students.

Northside School provides an example of putting lessons of effective library services into action.

In this excerpt from Libraries, Literacy, and African American Youth: Research and Practice Sandra Hughes-Hassell, Casey H. Rawson, and Julie Stivers discuss enabling texts and examples of how to utilize them with students as an important, empowering component of literacy instruction.

Enabling texts recognize multiple identities, promote a healthy psyche, and demonstrate resiliency.

It can be difficult to know where to start once you have decided to take action to improve your library's services for Black youth. And regardless of your race, it can be difficult to discuss race and racism in the workplace. In this video lesson, Sandra Hughes-Hassell and Casey Rawson offer some concrete suggestions for how you can get started, or keep going, with this important work.

We invite you to apply the research presented in this workshop, to adopt and adapt the practices described, molding them to fit the context of your community, and to share this information with your colleagues.

I wondered how we might shift students' from thinking they were assembling a timeline about a legend to focusing on the legacy of a "flawed" leader.

Our school stands about two blocks from the site of the Unite the Right rally. While the protesters protested and the ralliers rallied, quietly the children of Charlottesville wondered where they fit in the story, whether or not they were safe in their own town, and, as the trauma faded, how they could change how their own stories are told.

Harvard's Democratic Knowledge Project collaborated with librarians to help partner libraries learn about the Ten Questions for Young Changemakers framework, experiment on their own, and develop new learning modules and program resources to help other librarians implement the Ten Questions to cultivate civic learning.

The Unspoken Quota sees white is "normal" and color is the "other" or "extra," so we're fine with diversity being limited to a lesson or a month. We need to do better.

If we can commit to understanding the intersectional identities of our students and how those identities interact with the history of power, privilege, and important social issues, then we librarians will have a much better chance of realizing the potential of our positioning to create knowledgeable citizen activists.

The proclamation "the libraries we work in are safe spaces" makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside. Yet, the question we should really be asking ourselves is, do our learners feel invited enough by the library to determine for themselves if the library is a safe place?

Equity remains one of the most significant concepts when deciding how to develop library procedures and manage resources. In addition to our many hats, we are now called upon to be equity warriors. We hold the perfect position to welcome all students into a safe learning environment that supports them in their personal growth and academic development. It is our charge to provide equal access to books and other resources to support our students in their personal growth and academic development.

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You skillfully recounts a counter-narrative of the history we think we know and defines what it means (historically and today) to be a segregationist, assimilationist, or antiracist. To support student understanding of the complex histories of race and racism in America that Stamped lays out, consider these book pairings and classroom ideas.

Fortunately, there are many resources available for educating ourselves about what "anti-racist" means, particularly for uplifting Black voices. Here are a few that I have found very meaningful and helpful in recent months.

Matthew Winner reflects on his practice: "It took me several years in education before I really started to see the students I was teaching. This article is my attempt at communicating in words that which has been working in my heart since I first saw my students with this new clarity."

Characteristics of effective libraries, librarians, and library instruction.