Last week's post by Ashley Boyd and Janine Darragh hit at exactly the right time for me. I was getting ready to start a new semester and was going to teach my two classes remotely. For us "remotely" means live, synchronous class meetings through a Zoom format. The fact that we are holding school at a university at all is both an act of politics and an act of capitalism. Universities need the tuition money in order to keep the doors open as they receive less and less of their funding from state resources and more and more from, grants, endowment, and other sources.

I think it is wrong when we pretend that we are neutral actors in the classroom. We are not. What we teach, who we call on, or who we allow to maintain the conversational floor are all micro, and perhaps in some cases, macro political acts.

My current YA syllabus (see link) is political and an attempt to be a more inclusive teacher of diverse books; books that more closely align with the students who are in my classroom. It has been engaging as I have spent a bulk of the summer intentionally reading more diverse books and expanding my range.

I have also spent the month of August look back at past contributions from guest contributors. I have been ignoring my own and, frankly, I tend to sing one note a bit too often.  However, for the rest of this post I am going to link to a few of my posts and the post of others that have been overtly political and perhaps with a call to action is one way or another. 

The first post I look back to is a reaction I had to a statement by Secretary of State DeVos. 
A Diverse Reading List for Betsy DeVos
​I still think she is tone deaf to the needs of diverse students in every possible way. For example, school choice means nothing if students do not have the means to get themselves to get to that school. What if the school of choice is full? What about this attend to the supposed waste in education, but fully fund education. 

​I think the books I suggest are good starting point.

My second post is my brief review of one of the most important works of YA nonfiction in the last several years.
Blood Brother: An introduction to Jonathan Daniels 
​I can't say enough about this beautiful and tragic work. Rich and Sandra Neil Wallace do a remarkable job of illustrating the power of being and ally and the reminder that it is not without a cost.

I have written frequently about gun violence in a variety of ways. On June, 15, 2016 I wrote directly in response to the Pulse night club shooting.
Say His Name!
 I return frequently to some version of Janelle Monae's song "Hell You Talmbout."  This post and a few other moved me to collaborate with Shelly Shaffer and Gretchen Rumohr in the production of an edited, and yes, political book, Contending with Gun Violence in the English Language Arts Classroom. What you don't have it yet? Make sure your school library has a copy or two. As you explore this book you will find an abundance of great classroom suggestions.

Rob is a colleague that I just don't see often enough.  Every conversation I have had with him has left me already looking forward to the next one. In January of 2016, Rob responded to the current political climate and pointed to some YA books you might consider.
Ugh! The No More Political Talk Except for this Last Blog about YAL & Politics & Activism
​In the course of this commentary he provides a wealth of book--fiction and nonfiction that you might consider sharing with your students.

Alice Hays is another one of those wonderful ASU graduates who leave Tempe, Arizona and enacts change where she is.  Alice has been talking about YA literature  and Social Activism as long as I have known her. 
Fiction to Action: YA Literature to Inspire Social Activism by Dr. Alice Hays
Her post is a perfect companion to last week's post and fits in this group for sure.

If I am not mistaken, Jennifer is primarily a social studies teacher, but a huge advocate for YA Literature. She and I have guard many doorways at ALAN Workshops over the years. 
Imagining the Past & Envisioning the Present through Young Adult Literature
​She can surely provide you with a wealth of resources if you want to bridge the ELA and the SS classrooms and curricula. I will be forever grateful that she introduced me to Candace Fleming. 

​

How do we think critically about political events? How do we understand the media coverage--left, right, and center? How do we respond? Gretchen is one of most calming influences in my life, but that doesn't mean she isn't without an edge.
Teaching the Angry--or Peaceful--Mob with YA Literature by Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil
Looking back at this post seem especially important since it was written before the current political wave of social unrest and protest and the political convention-or was this even the forerunner and foreshadowing moment of tensions and misunderstanding to come.

I gave a shout out to the products from ASU, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention Susan Groenke and her students at the University of Tennessee. One of those is Arrianna. 
Books as Refuge: Turning to YAL During Times of Uncertainty by Arianna Drossopoulos
​This is another post that shouts out to be included in this collection.

Do we forget? Do we cover up? Do we just ignore and pretend? I recently meet a white woman in her 50s who grew up in Tulsa, OK. She explained to me that she knew absolutely nothing about the Tulsa Race Massacre (Riots?) until the Watchman series on HBO arrived. 
Dreamland Burning: A Charge to Make Sense of the Present by Interrogating Our Past by Ashley D. Black
Ashley post on Dreamland Burning is a great introduction to the even and how YA fiction addresses the time period. One might ask "Is it even possible to get an accurate, unbiased report of any unsettling event?" I hope so, but it probably takes more time and patience that we often allow ourselves before we spout an opinion.

In light of the anniversary of 100 years of women's suffrage in the United States, I can't skip this one. 
Herstory YA Literature to read together during Women's History Month by Deborah Van Duinen
I think we need to constantly remind ourselves about the level of inequity that still exists between men and women--in our work places, in the number of acts of micro aggression that a women will experience compared to men, and how much of the work within most families that women are simply expected to do automatically.

The last one for this post (There are more browse around the contributor's page.) is by Morgan Jackson a local Las Vegas teacher. I can't believe that it took us so long to meet. Morgan has jump right into the local and national YA community as soon has she was made aware of the existence of ALAN and other organizations.
YA Literature as Protest by Morgan Jackson
​Are you wondering where to start? Have all of these posts troubled how you think about literature and literature instruction in the classroom? If so, you are ready for Morgan's post. If you are still wondering and pondering if classrooms are political, well you need Morgan's post.

Until next week.

Many of us who work at universities in teacher preparation programs are wondering if we have been doing enough to promote social justice ideas. The recent events have, perhaps, caused us to think about the inequality of access to health care. The ongoing social unrest helpfully forces us to look inward at our own racist actions and beliefs. How can we do better? How can we be better? Two literacy educators who help me think about this work are Ashley Boyd and Janine Darragh. I am glad they offered to post for the blog.

If you’re reading this blog post, most likely, you, like us, believe wholeheartedly in the potential of young adult literature to change lives. We have heard such testimonies from adolescent readers, and have had, on occasion, the same experiences ourselves. As we work with young people, preservice, and in-service teachers in the field of young adult literature, we are further convinced that these books we love have the capacity to not only impact readers on an individual level, but also to alert students to the potential they have to enact change in their communities and the world. 

​YAL tackles topics such as racism, heternormativity, poverty, and indigenous rights, not only thereby reflecting the lived experiences of students who are marginalized by systems of oppression, but also assisting readers who may have less knowledge of particular areas. Through reading, students can grow in their understanding and empathy, and potentially be inspired to take action.
 
In 2009, Steven Wolk connected YAL’s reflection of social issues to its potential to enhance readers’ democratic sensibilities.  He avowed “teaching for social responsibility with good books does far more than encourage civic participation; it redefines the purpose of school and empowers all of us—students, teachers, administrators, parents—to be better people and live more fulfilling lives” (p. 672).  His notion extends civic learning from the social studies classroom and into the English Language Arts classroom, employing books as a means to help students develop critical literacies and to unpack the world around them.  This work is crucial, especially in the contemporary moment, when democratic participation is key to creating change and addressing the multitude of inequities plaguing our society in every state across the nation as well as around the world.

We, of course, agree with Wolk, though we continually found ourselves wondering if, perhaps, there was a way to extend his work. How, we wondered, can we provide opportunities for students that build on their learning of social issues through young adult literature, opportunities that go beyond discussion and reflection and allow them to act?  This question has motivated our work as English teacher educators, researchers, and collaborators over the past four years, and we have engaged in these multiple contexts to develop and implement a process built around young adult literature that helps readers of various levels undertake social action projects. 
 
When engaging in social action projects, students determine a contemporary problem that exists in their community (local, national, or global), design steps to address it, and implement their action.  Our model, which we call COAR, includes four explicit steps:  Contextualize, Organize, Act, and Reflect (Boyd, 2017; Boyd & Darragh, 2019).  We do not conceptualize COAR as a stringent framework but rather a way to guide students through the process smoothly and with attention to detail. 
 
In the first step, contextualize, students determine a social problem rooted in their understanding from their reading.  Through trial and error, we have realized the importance of specifically narrowing from issue to problem.  For example, one group of students with whom we have worked limited their topic from ‘racism’ to ‘the stereotyping of Black men’- a topic inspired by their reading All American Boys (Reynolds & Kiely, 2015). We have learned that for students to design a project with tangible actions and results, this initial move of contextualizing and narrowing is key.  If students attempt to tackle topics that are too broad, they tend to feel overwhelmed and at a loss for what to do. Additionally, as part of this phase, it is important for students to gather information on their topic of interest. We suggest students complete extensive background research on the problem they name as well as posit why and how this problem is connected to systems of power. 
 
Next, students determine their action related to the problem they identified and organize for it.  In this step it is crucial that students contact the correct individuals needed to participate or to provide guidance for their actions.  If they were to propose a campus march to support the #BlackLivesMatter movement, for example, they would need to decide how to spread the word, what route the march would take, what permissions must be garnered, and who would speak. In the third step, students perform their planned action and collect evidence, such as images and artifacts, to document the implementation.  Finally, they reflect on the process, noting successes and challenges, and plan for next steps.  The reflection and next steps portion is key so that students can begin to view change as ongoing and realize that social action should not stop at the conclusion of one event.  

​Between the two of us, we have found success using COAR in middle school, high school, and university classrooms.  For example, in one middle school, students read All American Boys, a book about an incident of police brutality and the aftermath in the local community. One middle school reader shared that this book allowed them “to see the huge problem we have with racism and how it affects everyone.”  They applied their understandings of racism, police brutality, and white privilege to conduct a number of social action projects. For example, the whole class crafted graffiti art in the school courtyard to share messages they learned from the book and felt needed more attention.  One small group composed a rap about racial equity and shared it with the local school resource officer, and another group created anti-stereotype posters and hung them around the school (Boyd & Miller, 2019).  

​In the university classroom, we have challenged students in our own Young Adult Literature courses to complete social action projects with the members of their college campuses as their audience.  After reading Ruta Sepeteys Between Shades of Gray (2012), a piece of historical fiction that traces a young Polish girl’s journey to survive work camps during the Stalin era, readers undertook a project to raise awareness of refugees’ experiences. They partnered with our local campus library to create a book display with additional texts and distributed requests to sign a petition related to the United Nations refugee campaign.  Of social action projects, one of the group members stated, “I think it’s an enormously valuable perspective shift to show students that they can be the ones making a difference and working for a better world.”  

While we allowed our students to choose social justice issues connected to the young adult novels they read in our classes, an overwhelming majority of our university student groups selected mental health as their issue, narrowing their topic to various related problems.  One group, for instance, connected their work to the stigma surrounding mental health problems referenced in The Unlikely Hero of Room 13b (Toten, 2015).  In the novel, a teenage male diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder takes part in group therapy where he meets new friends and embarks on a romantic relationship with one of his fellow members.  One cluster of our students designed an action in which they advertised resources available on campus and through student services to assist with mental health.  The students connected with a foundation established for a local football player who had recently died by suicide and distributed bracelets with messages of hope and phone numbers for campus resources in a well-trafficked area on campus after publicizing the distribution event on social media.  

Another group partnered with a psychology professor to offer a viewing of a film that
they felt inaccurately represented mental disorders and led a critical dialogue afterward with their forty participants. Still another created an interactive display on campus with resources, books, and a space to share coping strategies for stress and anxiety. 
 
Inspired by the novel Darius the Great is Not Okay (Khorram, 2019), one group sought to investigate the ease and barriers connected to accessing mental health supports on campus. Group members identified that the new counseling center was not on current campus maps and did not have signage outside of the building to guide students to its location. This group started a petition for funding to update the campus maps and purchase a building sign. 

​In addition to these projects, students who read Speak (Anderson, 1999) debunked dominant narratives of victim-blaming in instances of sexual assault through visual displays of clothing with accompanying messages in popular spaces on campus; others created a blog related to their reading of The Queen of Water (Resau, 2012) to describe their new awareness of human trafficking and to raise others’; and still others led an open mic event to increase attentiveness to climate change after reading Pitch Dark (Alameda, 2019).   

This community-oriented work made the books come alive for students and gave them a way to express the indignation they felt while reading or a manner through which to share new perspectives.  Many articulated in their reflections positive sentiments such as “the greatest reward out of this project was knowing that we made an impact” or shared that the projects “get students thinking about social issues” and allow them to “engage in the world” while “involving higher level thinking to fulfill the requirements.”  Many also noted the tendency for young people to not be taken seriously, but felt this project had the potential to change those perceptions.  Young adult literature has previously connected to these more additive and complex understandings of youth (Petrone, Sarigianides, & Lewis, 2015), and these projects provide an additional validation of that possibility. 
 
We have built on our students’ work in Reading for Action: Engaging Youth in Social Justice through Young Adult Literature (2019).  In the book, we focus on one social justice topic per chapter and one young adult novel.  Amongst other topics, we include bullying, global poverty, the gender spectrum, and women’s rights, and we offer myriad before, during, and after reading strategies as well as ideas for social action projects for each. As former secondary teachers ourselves, we know how busy teachers are, so we tried to provide as many resources as possible, including other young adult and canonical texts connected to each issue, music, film, and electronic resources. Although we emphasize that ideas for action should come from the students, we hope to provide samples to illustrate the kind of work we envision that students can accomplish.    

​Given the current predicament of schools, we feel it important to provide a brief note about the potential of these projects in a virtual space.  As much of social action projects is self-directed and relies on research and communication via the Internet, email and telephone, we believe that such work fits well in this era of online education.  Furthermore, many of our students’ projects relied on social media to advertise or to complete the action itself, as several created websites, blogs, or Twitter and Instagram accounts to raise awareness.  Even open mic nights could be held through online platforms such as Zoom and community film viewings through arenas such as Netlix Party provide a way to chat collaboratively while watching from different places. Therefore, this work can still be undertaken in the context we now face, and we hope that it is. 
 
Young adult literature gives us a medium through which to read, think, and talk about issues that may be uncomfortable for some or discerned as controversial in society.  It provides us with insight, perspective, and experience; the rich texts we have now develop readers’ empathy and afford for a depth of personal connection. We believe that harnessing this capacity of YAL and channeling it into action is key for addressing inequities and building communities. As we have said before, “Reading is important. Discussions can be valuable. But reading for action- that is something that can empower, inspire, and ultimately change the world for the better” (Boyd & Darragh, 2019, p. 195). Certainly, in these unpredictable times, we need that more than ever. 

​Boyd, A. & Darragh, J.  (2019).  Reading for action:  Engaging youth in social justice
through Young Adult Literature.  Rowman & Littlefield. 
 
Boyd, A. & Miller, J.  (2020).  Let’s give them something to talk (and act!) about: 
Privilege, racism, and oppression in the middle school classroom.  Voices from the Middle, 27(3), 15-19. 
 
Boyd, A. & Darragh, J.  (2019).  Critical literacies on the university campus:  Engaging
pre-service teachers with social action projects.  English Teaching:  Practice & Critique, 19(1), 49-63.   
 
Petrone, R., Sarigianides, S.T., & Lewis, M.A. (2015). The youth lens: Analyzing
adolescence/ts in literary texts. Journal of Literacy Research, 46(4), 506-533.
 
Wolk, S.  (2009) Reading for a better world:  Teaching for social responsibility with
young adult literature.  Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 52 (8), 664-673.  

Until next week.

Let’s imagine that some one in your family will be chosen by a lottery to experience the effects of the Covid virus. They will be expected to show up and report for infection. The result will be unknown. How much medical care they will receive is up in the air and how mild or serve the case will be is a mystery.
​
This is one of the strange ideas I think about as I pedal my bike around Las Vegas 5 to 6 times a week. Since mid-March, I have covered over 1300 miles and 140 on a couple of 20 year old bikes with fantastic Brooks saddles. 

Communities closed schools in the spring when the numbers of COVID cases and deaths were much lower. Yet, we are talking about going back to school in a variety of formats. I am not sure I have heard of a format that I think will be successful. By that I mean, a system or program that will really take into account poverty, racist practices and policies, teacher and parent workloads and realities, and the fact that elementary kids are restless, nose picking, clingy beings that really can’t be held accountable to were masks, not touch each other, or use screen time in appropriate was for 5 to 7 hours a day.
​
As a society we seem willing to talk about starting things up as if we were in normal times. Well, we are not in normal times. The numbers are everywhere. I don’t need to recite them here. In simple terms, in six months we are at 160,000 deaths (even if we admit that some of the number are inflated it is still crazy and unacceptable.). that is more than two times the number of dead in during the entire Vietnam conflict, more than WW1, and we are approaching half the number of dead in WW2 with many projects that we will reach the 405,399 total before we have a vaccine and the pandemic under control.

Let's go back to imagining. If we knew that we would be forced to take on COVID without question on a certain date, would we be more involved? Would we be more respectful?

Back to my bike riding. When I first started riding the streets were vacant. I saw no one on the streets and only a few cars. Now, the streets and traffic are back to normal. I am still on the streets. Why, it is safer than going to a gym. On the bike, I breathe in and out alone and without contact.

I don't regret reading any of these. I could, after all, just stop listening. I thoroughly enjoyed The Marrow Thieves, Thirteen Doorways Wolves Behind Them All, The Librarian of Auschwitz, and What if it's Us. I could write about all of them. Instead, I am going to write briefly about books that I have ignored for too long or that I might not have picked up at all if they hadn't been just waiting there to be checked out on Libby.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E. K. Johnston

I have know about this book for several years. Some of my colleagues have blogged about it and I know that is a key text when people connect YA to Shakespeare's plays. 

I was unprepared for the absolute power of listening to the Hermione Winters tell her story of abuse and neglect. This is a prime example of when actually listening to the text might be more powerful than just reading it. This a tremendous text that explores the consequences of rape from the point of view of a victim and a survivor.

Countdown and Revolution by Deborah Wiles

Again, This trilogy by Deborah Wiles has been on my radar for awhile. I had it on my shelf and then I would let a student take it. As we know, those books rarely find their way back home, but they do find their way into classroom. Listening to these books back to back was a great experience. I loved how she wove the characters together from one book to the other, I loved the use of music, and I loved how real characters were mingled in with the fictional ones. 

Reading these books reminded me of reading the works of John Dos Passos. I think his USA Trilogy is too often neglected. I hope we don't do that with this wonderful trilogy.

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett

This books was not on my radar. I did have a copy. I even had a copy on my "to be read" list. The blurb grabbed me, but I just hadn't taken it up yet. Then browsing titles through my Libby app, this one popped up. The books I had hoped to check out weren't available and I had quite a few on my wait list, but The Grace Year was ready for immediate check out. 

This was a powerful text imagining how the rights of women are often systematically stifled my community customs and beliefs. In fact, it demonstrates how easily women will push against each other to maintain those systems of oppression instead of striving to support one another.

For me this book is part fairy tale, part dystopian nightmare, and all about the strength of a young Tierney James who finds a way to survive and flourish in this speculative fiction that might remind you of the Handmaid Tale

Sadie by Courtney Summers

Maybe above all other things I liked this book because it was a great "who done it" story. It kept me making connections throughout the whole narrative. There is a lot to love about this book in terms of its structure, his character development and its style.  It also fits within the tradition of early realistic YA fiction in which young adolescents try to figure things out with absent adults or without the help of adults who might make the world better for the adolescents in their life if they were gone.

The Lovely War by Julie Berry

This cover didn't work for me. I get it now and it works, but I think you should check it our for yourself. This is a fantastic love story set in back ground of WW1; yet, told from the perspective of Greek gods who are in the midst of the chaos of WW2. This story is a powerful story of love, loss and reconciliation. Yes, they are still meddling in the lives of the mortals around them.

I could say something about each of these books. I loved the simple escapism of the novels by Grisham and Patterson. I should also tale about Stamped and Please Ignore Vera Dietz. As always, I recommend that you browse around a bit.

Until next week.

Cindi is one of the lovely people I meet as a result of hosting a Summit at UNLV. Cindi attended the first one as a presenter and has stayed connected. I love her love of YA and her perspective. We finally arranged a time for her to do a post. Take it away Cindi.