Education research has a problem. The work of brilliant education researchers often doesn't reach the practice of brilliant teachers. Classroom Caffeine is here to help. In each episode, I talk with a top education researcher or an expert educator about what they have learned from years of research and experiences.
In this episode, Dr. AnnMarie Alberton Gunn talks to us about supporting kids and families, multiple pathways to finding reading success, and the need for diverse books in our classrooms and our worlds. AnnMarie is known for her work in multicultural education, multicultural literacies and culturally sustaining teaching pedagogies. She studies multicultural literature and teacher education investigates the culturally sustaining pedagogy in early childhood education settings, and studies of familial impacts of adult males who are incarcerated while developing literacy programs for adult male inmates. Dr. Gunn is an Associate Professor for reading and literacy studies in the College of Education at the University of South Florida. For more information about our guest, stay tuned to the end of this episode.
So pour a cup of your favorite drink. And join me your host Lindsay Persohn for Classroom Caffeine; research to energize your teaching practice.
AnnMarie, thank you for joining me. Welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, Lindsay.
So from your own experiences and education, will you share with us one or two moments that inform your thinking now?
Absolutely. And I think a lot of my thinking now comes from my childhood. So my parents, families were from Poland. And a lot of that Polish culture was infused in many aspects of my life. I grew up in New York, and both my parents were blue collar workers, I went to Catholic school, and my family really concentrated on family, school and church. And so I always knew I was going to college because my parents were always pushing and discussing school and college and how important it is. While I was in middle school, my parents moved to a small town of Florida. And this area of Florida was very much mirroring my own cultural experiences, the majority of my friends were a lot like me, they were middle class, they were white, they were monolingual. And they were from Catholic and Christian backgrounds. So when I graduated college, I graduated with an elementary ed degree. And I wanted to have a whole new experience. So I took a job sight unseen in South Florida. And I was really excited about this opportunity. And this adventure. Honestly, it was just far from home, and I knew it was gonna be very different than my upbringing. Well, I can honestly tell you, I never forget the first day, I walked into this beautiful brand new building, and it was gorgeous. And the principal met me and walked me through the hallways, and I saw these large classrooms and shiny new floors and kids everywhere. And then she walked me out the back doors over to the covered cord. And I saw kids playing and PE, and I've looked out past the basketball court. And I saw my very used and very loved portable, which I then met 30 2nd grade students, which was my first class. So you have to remember this is in the 90s. And then Florida. This is before class size reduction. So this was a very small, portable, with 30 2nd graders, the majority of my students were from Puerto Rico, Haiti, Central America, and Cuba. And this is also before Florida had mandated the consent decree, which had equal opportunities for ESOL learners. So the vast majority of my students were speaking English as a second language, or just learning the language, the majority of them had just come to the country. They were first generation students. And it did not take me long at all to realize that I was not prepared to teach these children. So although I loved the idea of being a teacher, every day coming in with my, you know, my pencils and my gap outfit, and, you know, just trying to be ready to teach some of these lessons, it was really difficult to navigate not only the linguistics difference, but the complete cultural difference and the many different cultural differences within my own classroom. At that point, I was lucky enough to receive a scholarship in my master's degrees in cultural foundations, and it's an ESOL concentration. It was one of the first programs in the country, because at that time, there wasn't a lot of legislation on ESOL and there wasn't a lot of mandates. So my master's degree is an ESOL. And I know that was a pivotal shift in my thinking that opportunity to go back for an advanced degree, to be able to think and learn more about culture about linguistic difference, really about what culture means and how it impacts identity, how it impacts learning how it impacts teaching really changed me moving forward. I continued teaching in a classroom for about nine years after that, and it has impacted everything I've done since then.
You tell such a wonderful story of not only your own childhood and upbringing, but then how you brought that to your classroom and the stark mismatch. You know, you telling that story, I can get a vision of that in my mind, you and your gap khakis walking into this room and just feeling entirely underprepared. And while I would say that, I think most teachers, or at least most new teachers I've talked to also feel underprepared. I think you're talking about a whole nother level of feeling underprepared, right feeling like you don't really know how to meet the needs of maybe any of the kids in your room, rather than feeling like maybe there is a segment of your class that you're not able to meet their needs. So I appreciate the way that you paint that picture for us. Because I could definitely relate to those feelings. And also that excitement, right of becoming a new teacher. But then, yeah, it's so exciting. But then the reality, it comes at you very quickly. And I think you realize that there is more I need to know in order to meet the needs of every child in my classroom.
Absolutely, Lindsay and like when I left, I mean, I remember leaving college and excited with my lesson plans and prepared and I mean, I just got a brand new email address, and I was just ready to go and go. But then I realized, like, I wasn't prepared to teach kids with food insecurities. I wasn't prepared for the mobility, the vast amount of mobility going on at that school, I wasn't prepared with language barriers. And I remember one of the first I was so proud of myself, one of the first letters I sent home I had translated into Spanish and English, but then I didn't, I didn't realize that a lot of them didn't read in their first language. And that half of them didn't speak Spanish, they spoke Hatian Creole. And so there was many things that I just was not aware of that was a huge learning curve for me. And knowing that every day you go into teach those children and that feeling like you're missing something was just an eager for me to learn more on how to help navigate them and help me help them.
Yeah, that's so important. And I appreciate that you highlight and put a name to some of those challenges, food insecurity, and so many of our communities, I don't know, if teachers are ever really prepared for the tremendous mobility among students in some of our schools. You know, I think that in many places, teachers can look at their first day class roster. And, you know, by the end of the school year, there could be a 50% difference in you know, the the names that are still remaining on that list, and the new students who are there with them. So the language barriers to I think is such an important thing to name, because I think that they're often very well intentioned teachers who translate a letter into Spanish, because that's what maybe our teacher preparation program told us to do. But then realizing that often that still doesn't meet the needs of families. So I'm really hoping that in response to this next question, you'll help us to understand what we might be able to do about some of those challenges. So AnnMarie, what do you want listeners to know about your work?
I guess I would like teachers and listeners to know that all of my work revolves around supporting teachers, pre service teachers, kids and their families, that being aware of children, you know, through adolescents and adults, culture is important and it impacts achievement and impacts learning. The culture of the school in the classroom are vital. One time, several years ago, I read an article that stated something like the posters, the bulletins, decoration displayed in the classroom, and around the school tells students who is important and valued, but more importantly, it tells students who is not. And I think about that all the time. You know, when you think about the needs, the curriculum, pedagogical needs of children that we that we serve in our schools, we think of all kinds of things, but just starting with what is around what do we see? What kind of culture are we creating, because that impacts achievement, it impacts learning, and impacts motivation, and impacts families comfort, and believing that the school is a place to serve them and welcoming. I always think of, you know, some bishops work of mirrors and windows and thinking about when you walk through a school to children and adults and families feel affirmed, do they feel welcomed? Do they look at the school and say, This is my school? And I can tell because things that relate to me are everywhere. And you know, and then do they have these opportunities? We're preparing global citizens, you know, so did they have the opportunity to learn about Other people just by what we put in our classrooms in the book, then, of course, the books we have. And so there are two projects that I recently worked on that are very different that I thought I'd highlight. One of them is a project that I worked with my colleague, Dr. Bennett on, and Susan and I worked at a prison. And we were we received some state appropriations to design curriculum for incarcerated men. And so we were consistently thinking, what can we do to support adult males who are incarcerated in literacy achievement, that was the goal, raising their their reading level with the goal of the state. And so we designed a program that was kind of a three prong approach. We looked at, you know, some literacy fundamentals, reading and writing connections. And then we really looked specifically at vocabulary development. And then finally, we looked at access to books. And so some of the books and reading materials, these are their all adult manuals were having were basic, like Dick and Jane books, phonics workbooks, really low low level books, and we wanted to get them engaged in their learning. So we made a list and I forget how many books exactly were on the list, but let's just say about 12. And some of them, I mean, they were great. We read them all. There was Trevor Noah's book, there was Michelle Obama's book, there was, can't hurt me autobiography by David Goggins, I believe his name is. And then we get also many other choices, and some are spiritual choices. Some were about self growth. So we had some fiction, we had some nonfiction books. And we asked our students to pick whatever book they want to read. And almost all of them said, I can't read this book, or this is too difficult for me to read. And we had them all digitized. So every one of the students had a book, a physical book, and then they had the an audio version of it. So the students throughout this program had a reading and writing responses. They read the book throughout, you know, our time there. And almost every single one of our students self reported that they gained comprehension that they understood so many more words on a page just by listening to the person we'd, um, there were so many comments about how, how engaging it was, because like Michelle Obama reads her book, Trevor Noah, or reads his book, and how much buy in they had to meeting that author and that person in learning about their experiences. So I think, you know, we really have to think about what truly does motivate and engage students at any level. How do we get them reading as we know, the more people read, the better readers they become? And they need access to books that they can read? And so how can we provide access to books. Another project that more recently I've been working on if at an after school center, local after school center, and this center serves approximately 150 kids, and the majority of the kids come from, it's a neighborhood aftercare center. So a lot of the kids walk home, and the parents walk them there, come get them. And it's a full time center in the summer. And it's really great, because a lot of these children's parents went to this centers, long standing community center, it serves 95%, African American children, and a lot of them are having financial insecurities. And during COVID, this was amplified. So we had been working with this after care center of about a year or two before COVID happened. And as we all know, and COVID happened, everything shifted quickly school shut down, like within two days notice parents jobs. I mean, everyone was worried about money, I mean, worried about everything. And then once you know, week or two, when then we had to realize, okay, we're worried about money, we're worried about food. But now what are kids going to do about school like this is not going away. Many of these families did not have access to internet. And some of the local companies around here actually gave free Wi Fi to families. But what happened was they only provided free Wi Fi to families, if they didn't have many outstanding bills, or you know, now like a late charge, so many of these families didn't have access to Wi Fi. And the school was all virtual. So many of the schools handed out packets, but we wanted these children to have good quality books in our hands. We were fortunate enough to get funding, and we make grade level text sets that were culturally responsive books. So high interest award winners culturally relevant to their lives, and we made book bags and the staff who worked at the center delivered the books to these children's homes. We also included one informational or nonfiction book about germs or wellness just to open up a conversation about COVID So when children returned to the center so we're still in COVID times we had one little girl come right up to my colleague Susan and I an say, who pick these books. And I said well we did with our with our other friend Barbara. Well, they were good and I liked this book and she had something beautiful in her hand and in the book is a has blue clouds and it's a very big picture of a an African American Girl. Big smile and beautiful ponytails and she goes I love this book, because she looks just like me. And Susan and I were just so excited. So she read the book, she held the book, she brought the book into demand, who got this book for her. And the thing that engaged her about it, she didn't say anything about the setting. She didn't say anything about the storyline, the plot, she didn't give us any information information, except this girl looks like me. And I love this book. And that was awesome. What happened later, as we asked the staff assistant, who actually went to PAL, she went to PAL, her children went to PAL. And now she works there. We asked her to call and interview all the parents and ask them about the books and some other questions. And what she said to me was when I was growing up, I never had books like this, these kids are so lucky. And that always sits with me, because I think it's so important for teachers and curriculum specialists. To start with looking at what books do we have does it mirror our nation's population. And because right there, we need to, you know, reflect on that mirrors and Windows opportunity. But also, it means so much to the kids in our classroom, it means so much to the parents who are reading or caregivers who are reading these books with their children. And so I think as a white adult, myself, I never noticed that all the books have white people in them. So it took me years and years of, you know, advanced degrees and working with kids in these, these research studies to realize the kind of a basic starting point is making sure that everyone knows that these public schools and our schools are there to serve the children and their families, and they need to feel welcomed.
I really appreciate you sharing those two studies with us. And what I think I'm hearing throughout everything you've said, AnnMarie is that books are really about so much more than reading. And I think in schools some sometimes we boil books down to just this kind of perfunctory sort of read this word. Now read the next word. Now read the next page, when books have to do with our history, our collective histories, they have to do with our personal identities, they have to do with the the connections in communities. And I think that sometimes a lot of that is lost in translation, whenever it's really just about reading achievement, and reading scores. Because all of that stuff happens when the books matter, right, just like you said, with, with your incarcerated males, reading became a vehicle to learning something new and hearing about the life of someone who is something like them, when they thought they did not have the reading skills to really tackle those texts. So bridging that with audiobooks makes a lot of sense to me that we would then offer that as an opportunity. But what I've seen happen over and over again, is that whenever someone says, oh, I don't think I can read that book on my own, then we just, we kind of abandon that and find another book and when topics are meaningful and relatable, what I've seen happen with children is that sometimes they really stretch their skills in order to continue reading the book that they love, or the book that has a character who looks like them, or who has a life story similar to theirs, or provide some sort of inspiration for them. So I think that you provided some really great illustrations of how that kind of thinking can be operationalized in the world, that it's really not just about books, it's about what they do in our lives and in our hands.
Absolutely, we're coming luckier and luckier, because I feel like we're having more books published with diverse characters, we're having more diverse authors write books, we're publishing companies are now looking more at the we have more award winning books that focus on diverse characters. So I think the conversation is there. And then we need curriculum specialist and school guides and state mandates to also look at these wider range of text.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And, you know, we have movements, like We Need Diverse Books that I think has really put a spotlight on authors from diverse backgrounds. Because I know a few years ago, School Library Journal published results of a study that that showed just how often books are full of white people, basically, or animal characters. And I think they update that study every couple of years to provide a percentage of the new children's books that are published that feature those characters. And yeah, when you when you reflect back on on children's literature, really since the dawn of children's literature, you know, it's really just been a very short period of time that we've had so many great options in diverse books, because it really has all been about animals and white people.
It really has. So I was at LRA years ago, and I'll never forget this presentation. It she was a doctoral student and she was she was presenting about her research, and she was doing literature circles with groups of underachieving, underperforming students who were adolescents, who I believe were what are in a specific program because they were pregnant. And so these were girls in high school, dealing with many issues in their own lives. And she started a book club with them. And they were reading this book, winter. And I read the book, and it is a racy book. And it's very controversial. But she was saying, and her and I could not put the book down, actually. But in her research presentation, she was saying how these girls in her group were circulating books. And one of the girls was running late to class and she walked in and the teacher said, You're late again, why are you late? And the student replied, I'm sorry, I had to give this book to my friend, because it's really good. And she was on the other side of the school. So I ran back in here, and I'm late, and the teacher looked at and goes, you read books. And that was the beginning of this woman's research presentation, which I was totally enthralled in to think about children at all ages. This was an adolescent, read books that interests them. And it is our job as teachers to figure that out.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that also in that story, it shed some light on expectations of our students. Right? If we expect our students not to read if we are shocked when we find out that they do, the librarian in me says, they've never had their hands on the right book before, right? Because I think that inside all of us, there is an avid reader, it's just a matter of what is that reading material look like? What is it all about? And maybe it's not a print book, maybe it is digital books, or audio books, or magazines or comics, you know, that really get somebody going. But I think you're right, as teachers, that is part of our job is to learn what kids like, what our students like, and help them to identify books that may be of interest or value to them.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think everyone's a reader. Sometimes they need some help figuring that out.
Yep. Yep. A great, and sometimes it has nothing to do with reading skills. As we said before, it's it's what we're asking them to read. Yeah. So Anne Marie, given the challenges of today's educational climate, and I think that when it comes to books, there are quite a few challenges right now, what message do you want teachers to hear?
you know, thinking about what I want teachers to hear or thinking about this. And there's so many things, but I think when it comes down to it, I want teachers to hear Keep up the good work. I mean, between equity and pay legal mandates on identity, or curriculum, the mass assault on censoring and challenging books, standardized testing. And these are just like a few things to name that I know classroom teachers are dealing with. But I think all teachers, especially teachers in the K to 12, environment, and educators in the K to 12 environment, they're exhausted. And I think navigating these different landscapes are challenging. And teachers do it every day, over and over, because they believe in their careers, and they believe in the children they serve. I want teachers to know that professors in higher ed, they support their work, they welcome conversations, and want to make available resources for teachers that can inform their moves through pedagogy and practice. And I know that this podcast is so great, because so many resources are being shared. And sometimes I feel there's a disconnect between higher ed and people who are currently teaching are in service teachers, and that sharing of practice, and I think that conversation needs to happen more, especially for me, I know how valuable my master's degree was in everything that I do moving forward. And I also want teachers to know that from all my work with families, that parents and caregivers really care, and they want to be supportive, but often, they just don't know how, but they don't feel welcomed, or they just feel overwhelmed with school and their everything going on in their life. And that puts up a barrier to what they need in the classroom. So I just think teachers need to hear that they're doing a good job.
Yeah. And educators certainly are overworked and under acknowledged for the difficult and necessary work that they're doing every day. And in light of that, I'm hoping you might indulge me in a bonus question. And Marie. Oh, dear. So if you let's say, if you are a teacher listening to this episode, and you want to include culturally diverse children's literature in your classroom library, maybe you're in a place where that's not very popular right now. What kind of advice might you give to a teacher who wants to maintain a culturally diverse classroom collection, in the face of potentially some political tensions around doing that?
There's a lot of political tensions, especially right now in our state of Florida. We've had more book challenges this year than we have in a decade. And I mean, we've also had more challenges now where this is one of the first times from my understanding from the American Library Association, where we're trying to band hold authors or hold collections of books. And so these are some very difficult times. And I think the first place I The advice I would give a classroom teacher, is to read your books, know why you have this book in your library. So well, a media specialist tasked with this would be daunting and overwhelming and not practical at all. But for a classroom teacher, make sure you've read the books that you have in your classroom, I feel like it is a moral obligation to offer a diverse range of books for and we and we need lots of books in our classrooms, we need lots of books in our media centers, we need lots of books in children's homes and adults homes, we need access to print but for a classroom teacher navigating these these turbulent landscapes, read the books and know why. And how in your mind to have a policy. Most media specialists have a policy on how they have booked selections, and a criteria. Ask your media center if you're lucky enough to have one, what it is, and then adopt one for your classroom? And let let your parents know. So these are the books you know, is it award winners that I pick a diverse range of books that you read, all of these books are grade level appropriate. You know, we always know that, especially with our children who are reading above grade level that we have to keep an eye on the books that they have access to in the elementary years, especially, you know, we don't want them having content that is inappropriate. And so I teachers already have their handle on this. But if you have a reason and a policy for why you have books in a classroom, I think that's where you start with parents, most parents, I believe, want to be heard. So I also believe that many of these books that are being challenged that people challenging them to have never read them in their entirety. So having a listening to parents concerns, having a conversation about them. And certainly every parent has a right to know what their child is reading. And to say that they don't want their child to read that. They just don't have a right to tell anyone else with their children can read. And so I think that's important to know.
Thank you for that. And you also mentioned a couple of resources that I want to highlight. You mentioned ALA, the American Library Association, there are lots of great tools there. And there is actually a division of ALA AASL, which is the American Association for school libraries. And there's some additional resources there. The other resource that came to my mind was ILA, the International Literacy Association. Yeah, ILA even has some one pagers and things like that, in fact, the children's right to read comes to mind immediately. And I think that these are really important documents that help help all of us to frame up reading is something that is beyond a skill set for school, right. It's beyond something that we're supposed to master during the school day. Reading is something that should be pervasive in our lives, we should know the ways that that reading texts can help us to learn new things, to grow, to learn about others. And so I think that those are really great resources for our listeners to have at their fingertips. And we'll we'll put links to those organizations websites in the shownotes. For for this episode, will AnnMarie I thank you so much for your time today. And I thank you for your tremendous contributions to the world of education.
Thanks for having me, Lindsay. I really appreciate it. It was fun. Glad to
Thank you.
Dr. AnnMarie Alberton Gunn is known for her work in multicultural education, multicultural literacies and culturally sustaining teaching pedagogies. Specifically, she examines and utilizes multicultural literature for teacher education, investigates the culturally sustaining pedagogy and early childhood education settings and studies the familial impacts of adult males who are incarcerated while developing literacy programs for adult male inmates. Her research explores best pedagogical practices and resources for teaching marginalized students, such as those from immigrant low socio economic and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Her work has appeared in the reading teacher, Journal of Multicultural Education, Journal of Research and Childhood Education, Early Childhood Education Journal, Literacy Practice and Research, Social Studies and the young learner, multicultural perspectives, teacher development, childhood education and other venues. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Florida state appropriations, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg and other local organizations. Dr. Gunn's work has been recognized by the American Educational Research Association before moving to higher education Dr. Gunn taught at title one elementary schools for nearly a decade, including contexts where most of our students were from Puerto Rico, Cuba and Haiti. Dr. AnnMarie Alberton Gunn is an Associate Professor for Reading and Literacy studies in the College of Education at the University of South Florida.
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