Welcome!

Bienvenidos! Welcome! I'm an undergraduate student majoring in elementary education as well as Spanish, with a minor in teaching English to speakers of other languages. Within this, my interests include education in the inner city, migrant students and families, how the church or other non-public institutions can work to improve literacy and other educational outcomes, and bilingual education programs.

Of course, as a future educator, I have an addiction to children's and young adult books reaching back to my own childhood. I also remember an awareness of other cultures from a young age, primarily coming from the missionaries that periodically visited my church. Growing up in a high-print environment with these international influences resulted in a passion for diverse literature, especially those books with high quality illustrations or those that manage to capture the spirit of a culture particularly well. I can't imagine creating a classroom atmosphere without incorporating diverse children's literature and teaching a curiosity about other places and peoples.

One concern as I read a new children's book is always whether the information represented is accurate; I wouldn't want to present a book to my students only to find out that an "insider" from that culture completely disagrees with the content! For books from Latin America, I have a general idea what to expect, but I hope to learn more about evaluating all children's books for cultural validity and improve my critical literacy skills.