DIVERSITY BY THE BOOKS IN APS COLLECTION
Culturally diverse titles help to reflect many students’ own cultures
School district has put together a set of 45 titles aimed at promoting respect and understanding of one’s own culture and those of others.
This school year Albuquerque Public Schools students will have some new titles on their classroom shelves that have a diverse range of characters.
APS departments — Language and Cultural Equity and Library Services and Instructional Materials — put together a collection of books that tackle issues of identity, including race and multiculturalism.
The 45 titles make up the new “Culturally Responsive Classroom Libraries,” which will be available in elementary and middle school classrooms early this semester.
Some of the titles include “How Tia Lola Came to Stay,” “Yo Soy Muslim” and “They Call Me Guero: a Border Kid’s Poems.”
The idea is to have books that reflect students’ own cultures while teaching them about others.
“In order to help children feel
welcomed and engaged in school, we must show our students that we see and value all aspects of them, including their language and culture,” Madelyn Serna Marmol, APS associate superintendent, wrote in an email. “It is our hope that by putting books in front of children in which their cultures or cultures of other students are represented, we can positively impact a student’s acceptance of their own race and others’ races.”
The district worked with educators who are African American, Native American, Hispanic and LGBTQ+ to put the list together, according to Serna Marmol.
She said the collection was recognized by the book vendor, Follett, which has shared it with other schools and districts as an example.
Rachel Altobelli, the director of library services and instructional materials, said one of the issues districts face when it comes to finding new titles, including culturally responsive books, is that they have to create the collection themselves. But now other schools and districts can use the APS list as a starting point.
Follett could not be reached for comment.
Altobelli said the books will be available for all elementary and middle school students district-wide.
While high school students can find reading material on these topics in their school libraries, she said the district is eyeing getting more books of this nature into high school classrooms in the future.
She noted the district has been working for years to curate a set of work at the school library level that has a sundry of perspective but the new initiative is focusing on the classroom material.
“We’ve been successful doing work in the library but that’s not the only place where kids read,” Altobelli said.
According to an APS report, students checked out 1,596,733 books in the 201718 school year and 1,446,440 books in the 2018-19 school year.
Altobelli said the “Culturally Responsive Classroom Libraries” are added into existing classroom libraries and it’s up to teachers to incorporate them into the curriculum.
Serna Marmol said the collections are the first step to getting more diverse texts into classrooms and will be expanded upon yearly.
People can offer feedback and suggestions at aps. edu/libraries/bookrecommendations-form.
The classroom collection follows the creation of APS’ Multicultural Library that was generated for teachers, librarians and employees to check out culturally responsive books, which they could use for their lesson plans or bring back to their students.