3.7: Literacy Instruction for Diverse Learners

“We have become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.” – Jimmy Carter

“We should all know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.” – Maya Angelou

“A word cloud featuring culture” by EpicTop10 is licensed under CC BY 2.0..

Imagine a class with diverse kids – some with invisible or visible disabilities, different ethnicities, and nationalities – who feel a sense of belonging and whose cultural capital, customs, traditions, and languages are valued in the classroom space. The teacher focuses on building relationships with each child to scaffold and enrich their learning as s/he has an undaunted belief in their capabilities and strengths. In this nurturing environment, every child could blossom and reach for the stars. This is the class every child deserves, no matter where they come from or where they are going!

Diversity and Children’s Books

Diversity and social justice are two key themes in literacy-education research today. This research focuses on teaching children to understand the diversity within human beings in this world and injustice issues associated with diversity. In this context, scholars use “multicultural children’s literature” as the term for children’s literature that deals with diversity and social justice (Cai, 2002). In many early childhood classrooms, multicultural picturebooks from different countries are considered to be the main resources for diversity education. However, the use of international picturebooks may not be sufficient to reduce our children’s cultural biases and develop their ability to make social changes. Helping our children become aware of injustices perpetrated because of cultural differences and to actually act on the issues should be an ultimate goal when exposing them to multicultural picturebooks. Botelho and Rudman’s (2009) critical multicultural analysis of children’s literature gives us some ideas about how to use multicultural picturebooks in attaining this goal. Introducing the topics of race, gender, and social class, they emphasize that understanding who exercises the power in our society, where these three aspects of humanity are intertwined, is a key consideration when deciding which picturebooks to read with our children and what conversations we will have with them.

Facilitating critical reading

In addition, critical reading is something we should promote during read-alouds with our children, after selecting culturally sensitive, high-quality multicultural picturebooks for our classroom library. High-quality texts do not overly explain the story, to invite readers to “draw their own conclusions without being told precisely what to think ” (Young et al., 2020, p. 32). Quality multicultural picturebooks do not necessarily tell the systemic factors regarding social inequity but show the issues. In addressing them, the adults’ role in facilitating critical conversations around the readings with the children is significant (Quast & Bazemore-Bertrand, 2019).

Last Stop on Market Street, written by Matt de la Peña and illustrated by Christian Robinson, is a multicultural picturebook that stands out in my mind. This book is frequently discussed in the recent literacy-education literature that focuses on diversity and social justice. It deals with economic inequality portrayed in an urban U.S. context. The main storyline follows CJ’s bus rides with his grandmother. He usually takes the bus with his grandma after church, even on rainy days. Although in the early part of the story he questions why he needs to take the bus but his friend rides in the family’s car, he and his grandma find real beauty around them during their bus rides.

CJ needs to ride the bus because they don’t own a car. CJ asks his grandma, “Nana, how come we don’t got a car?” Grandma responds, “Boy, what do we need a car for? We got a bus that breathes fire, and old Mr. Dennis, who always has a trick for you” (De la Peña, 2015). In the United States, the use of public transportation is often associated with poverty. Cities and towns there have been built primarily for people with personal vehicles. Therefore, except for metropolitan areas such as New York and Chicago, the use of public transportation is an inconvenience that mostly people on low incomes end up needing to bear. Rather than complaining about the situation, however, CJ’s grandma and he talk about enjoyable things. They focus on people that they enjoy seeing and being with – from the bus driver to a guitar player.

While deficit views and devaluing the cultures of people in poverty are prevalent in society (e.g., they are lazy; something’s wrong with them), Last Stop on Market Street supports the counter-narrative. The last stop, which CJ and his grandma get off at, is a soup kitchen where they volunteer weekly. They are not lazy. They are helping others.

Race is not explicitly spoken of in this book, although readers can see CJ’s skin color is dark. This is where we can have a critical conversation about how people with certain racial backgrounds tend to experience poverty more often than others, and about “how people from all different racial, ability, and cultural backgrounds might share similar poverty experiences” (Quast & Bazemore-Bertrand, 2019, p. 221). As the book does not speak about the reasons for CJ and his grandma’s current economic condition either, more critical conversations between the teacher and the children will be needed for the children to become aware of systemic factors contributing to inequity.

Last Stop on Market Street speaks about the Blind culture (capitalized to indicate that this person belongs to the Blind culture, not just that they do not see) a little more explicitly than racial issues. Another rider on the bus is Blind. When CJ sees the man, he asks his grandma, “How come that man can’t see?” A conversation among this man, CJ, and his grandma ensues in which it is revealed how the Blind culture has a rich appreciation of their world because of their enhanced olfactory and auditory senses. The man tells CJ’s grandma that he even closes his eyes to feel music.

Last Stop on Market Street is a rare picturebook, earning a Newbery Medal, an award that is not for the illustrations but for the quality of the writing. Considering that most of the books receiving the Newbery Medal are chapter books, the accomplishment of this picturebook is remarkable. It is also notable that Matt de la Peña is one of only three Latin-background authors to have won the Newbery. This talented author also won Pura Belpré Honor Book Awards for both this book and his young-adult novel The Living, in 2014. The Pura Belpré Award was founded in 1996 to celebrate the work of Latinx writers and illustrators. Christian Robinson, the African-American illustrator of Last Stop, won the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Award; Coretta Scott King Book Awards have gone to one African-American author and one African-American illustrator annually since 1974. Last but not least, this book won the Caldecott Honor in 2016.

The urban atmosphere as depicted in Robinson’s paintings and collages can make us feel some human warmth, rather than seeming merely cold, sterile, and industrial. His illustrations effectively delineate a remarkable level of diversity among the characters through the many different shades of people’s skin color, hair texture, clothing, gestures, props that the characters hold or use, and whatnot. This quality is also evident in Robinson’s more recent wordless picturebook titled Another, which was published in March 2019. In both of the books illustrated by Robinson, he only uses dots for people’s eyes, although the colors of the dots vary. By doing so, the illustrations avoid potentially stereotypical eye shapes (e.g., thin slanted eyes).

In conclusion, we should reiterate that there are many things that are not explicitly articulated in Last Stop on Market Street, while it delineates an unexpected beauty in the experiences of people who live in poverty. Children’s literature scholars suggest that quality multicultural children’s literature should “avoid the single story or allowing one story to speak for an entire group of individuals” (Young et al., 2020, p. 81). This book does not attempt to speak for an entire group of people in poverty, people of color, or people with (dis)abilities. Still, it vividly depicts cultural specificity, which makes it a high-quality multicultural picturebook (Sims Bishop, 1992). Picturebooks like this can foster our children’s intercultural understanding and the development of empathy.

References

Botelho, M. J., & Rudman, M. K. (2009). Critical multicultural analysis of children’s literature: Mirrors, windows, and doors. New York, NY: Routledge.

Cai, M. (2002). Multicultural literature for children and young adults. Greenwood Press.

De La Peña, M. (2015). Last stop on Market street (C. Robinson, Illus.).The Penguin Group.

Hayes, C., Bahruth, R., & Kessler, C. (1998). Literacy con carino. Heinmann.

Sims Bishop, R. (1992). Multicultural literature for children: Making informed choices. In V. J. Harris (Ed.), Teaching multicultural literature in grades K-8 (pp.37-54). Christopher-Gordon.

Quast, E., & Bazemore-Bertrand, S. (2019). Exploring economic diversity and inequity through picturebooks. The Reading Teacher, 73(2), 219-222.

Young, T. A., Bryan, G., Jacobs, J. S., & Tunnel, M. O. (2020). Children’s literature, briefly (7th ed.). Pearson.