Diversify Your Classroom Library Program at Linden Lanes School

Through a partnership with The Critical Thinking Consortium, Indigo Love of Reading (ILOR) and Facing History & Ourselves organizations, the Grade 1 Jarosz Class at Linden Lanes School was selected as a recipient of $2500 to purchase books for their classroom library to help create more inclusive classroom resource collections that are reflective of the diverse identities, stories, and voices within our school and surrounding community.  

In Grade 1, we have been exploring the books that we have purchased so far. Students have had the opportunity to take a book of their choice home to share with their families, and to talk about things such as their favorite part of the book, favorite illustration and even to talk about why their book is important. Students have created their own book that is all about the diversity book they chose. 

As a class we sat down to talk about our books, share about our books and then engaged in conversation around each of the books. Students have stated ideas about how everyone is different, but each have their own special talents and things they are good at, to love the skin you are in, that it’s important to include others and that everyone is different and everyone is beautiful. These conversations have been very engaging, and the students loved the opportunity to dive into different books that have different subjects and perspectives, but are also engaging. Through this grant I feel that the conversations we have had as a class are much richer and even how the students select books has changed. Plus the students are just loving all the new books!