Introduction to TE 448

Hello! My name is Trisha Keenoy and I am an Elementary Education major at Michigan State University. I am currently enrolled in a Children's and Adolescent Literature course that focuses on introducing a more diverse selection to students. The reason that I chose to enroll in this class is because I have always been an avid reader and as I have gotten older I have realized more and more that there are differences within our society that were not always celebrated within the literature that I had access to. The books that I read and the characters that I related to were those who looked like me, talked like me and normally lived in a community that was close in composition. I am hoping that will this class I will become able to seek out works that offer a different look at the world in which we live so that more readers have the chance to find the characters that have the qualities they can admire or see themselves as--I know that for a shy child there is comfort to be found in books and characters that survive when they are just like you because I was that child. The only questions that I bring with me as I embark on this course is how to determine what is a good piece of diverse literature--is it a book with characters that are not like those who make up my classroom, is it a book that is focused on a different country or religion that is not popularly represented within the community in which I teach in and finally, I would like to know how to properly defend my choice if or when they come under attack from other faculty and parents? I look forward to this investigation and look forward to further understanding the nature of blogs!
~Trish