Roberto Germán [00:00:01]:
Welcome to Our Classroom. In this space we talk about education which is inclusive of but not limited to what happens in schools. Education is taking place whenever and wherever we are willing to learn. I am your host, Roberto Germán and Our Classroom is officially in session. Welcome back to Our Classroom. Today I'm joined by Sarah Cordova, nationally recognized literacy consultant who supports elementary and middle school educators in implementing engaging standards aligned reading and writing practices. She holds a Master's in education from NYU and previously taught in the Smithtown School District in New York State. Sarah's a passionate advocate for inclusive literature and authentic representation presentation in classrooms.
Roberto Germán [00:01:00]:
Heads are Book the Power of Picture Books in Student Identity Writing Lessons that empower helping educators use books to foster identity, belonging and strong writing. Welcome Sarah.
Sarah Cordova [00:01:15]:
Thanks so much. That was maybe the best, most enthusiastic introduction I've ever had, so thank you for that.
Roberto Germán [00:01:21]:
Well, I am enthusiastic about education and I am enthusiastic about the picture books. I have a couple manuscripts that I'm working on, so this is a learning opportunity.
Sarah Cordova [00:01:34]:
I love it. I love it.
Roberto Germán [00:01:37]:
You know, I'm always just observing and taking notes and trying to figure out like, oh, all right, what do I have to keep in mind as an author educator? And so let's start with why it is that you believe picture books remain powerful tools even for older readers and writers such as myself.
Sarah Cordova [00:02:01]:
Yes, adults as well. I feel like one of my missions in life is to get more picture books into middle school, English, high school classrooms, into households. Most picture books are 32 pages and so they're like this bite sized amount of information that holds tremendous power. I think there's a number of reasons that picture books should be used in all classrooms. One of them is, funny enough, whenever I read a picture book in a middle school or a high school classroom, I think there's a sense of nostalgia that kind of washes over the kids. They're not read to. And so I think they get to kind of go back to this time in their lives when they were read to and they could just kind of sit and breathe and take a moment to just listen to a story instead of analyze it and annotate it and answer questions after. And so I think there's a nostalgic piece for older students that they actually really enjoy.
Sarah Cordova [00:03:05]:
I think one of the biggest pieces, at least for the work that I do, is it really allows students, all students, regardless of their reading levels, to have an entry point that is very accessible. And so, you know, as you move into middle school and high school, the text become more complex. A picture book Even the most sophisticated picture books are going to be comprehensible for all readers, especially if a teacher is reading it aloud and then following it up with a discussion. And so I think picture books, because of that accessibility, really become vehicles for incredible conversations and discussions that maybe students would not feel comfortable having around a more complex text or a text that they just don't understand because of its reading level. I think also for me, one of the biggest things is efficiency. And so because of their length, they save a ton of time. In our classroom, you can talk about theme and language and every possible reading and writing and grammar standard in the world in a really a nice, short, concise amount of time. And so I think it really holds a lot of power, a lot of opportunities in a way that some of our longer texts don't.
Roberto Germán [00:04:30]:
Yeah, that's spot on, you know, and many teachers think of picture books as something just for younger students. But yeah, even as I'm working on my manuscripts and I'm looking at various mentor tags and like, oh, wow, I'm extracting so much information from the text that's written in the book, from the illustrations. Yes, a lot to, to unpack. That is so rich for, for my learning process and certainly for my children as I engage them in analyzing picture books. One thing that stood out to me in your work is the idea that picture books can act as both mirrors and windows. That's something that we talk about here at Multicultural Classroom. We, we even created a curriculum around that during COVID Can you explain what that means and why it matters for students, those who are not familiar with that terminology, that analogy? Maybe you could break it down.
Sarah Cordova [00:05:31]:
Sure. So I think all of us have a story to tell. Every single one of us, regardless if we even think we have a story to tell. One of my favorite kind of, it's a picture book in verse by Janet S. Wong called you have to write. And at the back of the book she says that when she was growing up, she listened to other kids talk about fancy vacations or these really fancy and expensive parties that they used to go to. And she would say that when her teacher would ask her, you know, write about something special in your life. She didn't have those opportunities, she didn't have those events going on in her life.
Sarah Cordova [00:06:12]:
And so she thought that that meant she didn't have anything to say. And she said that as she got older, she realizes that she real that the ordinary moments in her life, these small kind of almost non consequential moments throughout her life, actually would turn into extraordinary stories. And so I think when you're talking about windows and mirrors, the mirrors are, you know, seeing yourself in stories. And when I say yourself, that could be your culture, that could be the makeup of your family, that could be your socioeconomic status, that could be, you know, a. A disability that you carry, either silent or visible. And I think that teachers have such a tremendous influence. It's almost like a silent influence. When we choose a book to read to our class, it's basically saying to all of those students in front of us, whether we say it or not, this person's story is important, this person's story is valued.
Sarah Cordova [00:07:15]:
And so if we're not providing those windows of opportunities for kids in the books that we read, we need to then think about how do we do that. The mirrors kind of reflect our own stories, and then the windows tell us stories that we don't necessarily come into contact with. When I taught, it was a predominantly white, upper class neighborhood out in eastern Long island. And I felt really, really passionate about finding stories that I knew these kids were not going to see in their every lives. And so that, to me, is really what the mirrors and windows analogy means, that we as teachers have this very important power. We hold this incredible power in our hands to make sure that our students are seeing themselves in the books that we choose and read, but also the stories of others that they may not come into contact with on a regular basis.
Roberto Germán [00:08:19]:
Yeah, absolutely. And that certainly aligns with some of my messaging when I'm doing student facing work, when we're doing writing workshops, creative writing workshops, and we're doing some poetry and whatnot. I was telling, you know, your voice matters, your story matters, and you have a responsibility to tell it. And so I love that, you know, I. I really. I would love for all educators to put such a heavy emphasis on that while also coming in there trying to expand their lens. Right.
Sarah Cordova [00:08:48]:
Yes.
Roberto Germán [00:08:49]:
Their world bringing characters and stories and situations that, yeah, perhaps they don't necessarily relate to, but they need to know about, they need to be exposed to, especially if you're not living in proximity to different people groups.
Sarah Cordova [00:09:04]:
Yeah.
Roberto Germán [00:09:04]:
And even as I say, that makes me think about a recent episode in which I interviewed Dr. Jacob on Jeffrey, and we talked about immigration and students of refugee backgrounds. One of the chapters in your book focuses on the immigrants and refugee students who have refugee experiences. Why was it important for you to include these stories in the book? And what can students learn from them beyond literacy skills?
Sarah Cordova [00:09:37]:
Yeah, I think, you know, again, another term that Sometimes I've heard being used for mentor text is a touchstone text, a text that we come back to over and over and over again. One of the things that I think is maybe a misconception about mentor texts is that we should only use it for writing purposes, right? We need a different book to teach reading, a different book to teach social studies, a different book to teach social emotional learning. And for me, each chapter in the book really was trying to kind of triple dip, quadruple dip into all of these different areas. And so for me, you know, all those books in, I think it was chapter five, about the refugee and immigrant experience, tell very different stories. I was trying to be very cognizant in that chapter to tell stories of different types of immigrants and refugee experiences, all from the lens of a child also. So whether they were memoirs or personal narratives, all of the stories in that chapter are about children who have made that journey or children who have immigrated to the United States or other places. And to me, again, it comes back to. I think sometimes it's hard for young children especially to conceptualize what their experience actually is.
Sarah Cordova [00:10:59]:
I don't know that an eight or nine year old can understand the whole kind of concept of being a refugee, of being an immigrant, except for those children who are sitting in our classes, whose families or themselves have gone through it. And so I think just content wise, again in those 32 pages for these brilliant authors and illustrators to say, my audience is a child. How do I get them to understand the story of this particular child? How do I get them to connect in some way to this child's story that may be very different from theirs? And so these incredible authors, you know, find a way to allow conversations for teachers about how are you similar to this child? What are the things that they went through that you may have gone through? Or as that window piece, can you imagine what it must have been like for that child and their family? You know, this, the idea of immigrants and refugees, it is a constant in our world. And so, you know, I think that sometimes teachers have a tendency to shy away from certain topics, especially if they're deemed controversial in the news. This is for me, you know, if something was controversial for me, I was all in. That was the type of teacher I was. But I think it's really important because this is going on in our news, because this is going on our world, we see it in our schools. Instead of just kind of relying on your own knowledge, using someone's book who, you know, the author actually immigrated to this country or their family immigrated to this country.
Sarah Cordova [00:12:52]:
It's very hard for a person who has not experienced that to tell the story. And so I feel like using authors who come from different backgrounds who've had different experiences. That, to me, is that touchstone that we come back to and we say, I'm not exactly sure how to have this conversation, but I read the back flap of Andrea Wang's Watercress, which is one of the most beautiful stories ever, and I love in the back, she says it's both a love letter and an apology to her parents who took her here when she was about 10 from China to the middle of Ohio. I now understand in some small way what Andrea went through, because that's not my experience. So I think relying on authors of different backgrounds and the stories they tell, we can talk about issues like immigration, the refugee experience in a much more kind of confident and just intelligent way instead of kind of pulling things out of the sky, which I think sometimes teachers do, because they're just not sure how to start those conversations.
Roberto Germán [00:14:00]:
Sure, sure. Yeah, I could definitely see that. And this has come up often in the work that we do when we're consulting with different schools and they're talking about some of the challenges that they have with their. The population that they're serving. This is not a foreign concept to a lot of the support that we need to lend. And even as you talk about teachers not knowing what to do, one of the things that also surfaces is teachers feeling under pressure to cover standards and prepare for assessments. So how do picture books help do both rigorous academic work and meaningful identity work at the same time?
Sarah Cordova [00:14:41]:
I think it comes back to something I referenced before. So one is dispelling the notion that these are baby books, because at least the 80 plus books in my professional book are not baby books. Even the ones that I chose for primary grades are extremely bright and smart and well thought out and intentional. And so I think to me, picture books again, that triple dipping, that quadruple dipping where I can teach structure, craft, grammar, you know, there's so many elements that can be taught through a simple sentence in a picture book, through, you know, just how to craft an introduction from a picture book. And again, I come back to that idea that perhaps we've been sold a bill of goods by administrators or by others, that we need different books for everything. If you find a great picture book, and there are a lot of really great picture books out there that read more like poetry. One of my favorite authors is Matt De la Pena.
Roberto Germán [00:15:53]:
We're Familiar with Matt?
Sarah Cordova [00:15:55]:
Yes, I adore him as an author and as a person, but he always says, I'm a poet who writes children's books. And so I think sometimes if you actually immerse yourself in the world of picture books, as you have done, as I have done, you start to recognize that there are so many incredible reading, writing, language opportunities between those 32 pages. I think there's just a misconception about what's in there. People think of board books or books that maybe we were read when we were younger, and the level of quality and sophistication that is being produced in picture books right now is unparalleled. I would put some of Matt's picture books, some of Jacqueline Woodson's picture books, some of Kate Hofler's picture book picture books against tons of short stories that we are sharing in our middle school and ELA classrooms. And so I think there's incredible opportunities with efficiency, you know, when using picture books.
Roberto Germán [00:17:02]:
Absolutely, absolutely. And shout out to Matt de la Pena and Jacqueline Woodson. Incredible, incredible writers. You know, one thing I appreciate about your book is that it doesn't just recommend books, it breaks down actual writing lessons. I think that's helpful for educators, you know, resource. And so what do teachers often misunderstand about the relationship between reading mentor texts and teaching writing?
Sarah Cordova [00:17:28]:
I think that a few things. So one is, I think you have to read the text in its entirety up front to then go back and dissect it as a. As a model for writing. I think sometimes we're pulling pages from text without giving kids the whole context of the entire story. Story. So I'll always say to teachers, read this book as a read aloud first. I use the term read aloud and mentor texts as very different things. And so I think you have to read the text, the picture book or the short story, whatever it is, as a read aloud first, allow kids to digest it, to have conversations about it, to make connections.
Sarah Cordova [00:18:11]:
Then once they have that underlying understanding about it, then I think you go back in and you pull pieces that can be used as a model for writing. Another thing is, just because a book is a great read aloud doesn't mean it's a great mentor text. And so I think you have to think about your audience. If I'm reading a book to third graders that's this gorgeous book that they're going to be able to connect with and have conversations around, it doesn't necessarily mean that when they see the work that the author did, they're going to be able to emulate it. And so sometimes I think we use read alouds that are a little too sophisticated for our younger writers, not recognizing that the book is a wonderful read aloud and we can use it for those purposes, but not necessarily a great writing model for the kids who sit in front of us. I think sometimes we're trying to make two things happen at once. And as much as I would love to double triple dip, I do see sometimes teachers using books that most of the kids, after they say, okay, now it's your turn to try this. They're like, there's no way.
Sarah Cordova [00:19:28]:
There's just eight. That's not happening. So I think, you know, knowing the difference between the two is really, really helpful. And then again, I come back to that idea of, you know, the importance of book selection just in general, that it might be a great writing model. But is it, you know, doing all the other things that we want books in our classrooms to do? Is it connecting with social, emotional, learning? Is it allowing kids to see themselves or others? And so I'm sure you are aware of this, especially as you write manuscripts. Some teachers are holding on to books from 20 years ago because they think it's a great model for writing. And I would implore them to come into this century, into this, you know, even decade, and look at those copyright dates. Think about what has taken place in our world over the last 20 years.
Sarah Cordova [00:20:31]:
And I'm not saying that some of those books that I used in my own classroom at, you know, the turn of the century weren't wonderful, but I don't know that they're still as relevant to the kids that sit in front of us anymore.
Roberto Germán [00:20:44]:
Sure, sure. So if an educator was listening and wants to begin tomorrow, what's one book? What's one picture book? And one strategy.
Sarah Cordova [00:20:56]:
Yeah.
Roberto Germán [00:20:56]:
They could use immediately to help students see themselves as writers.
Sarah Cordova [00:21:01]:
So one of it's a Matt de la Pena book. Obviously, it's Milo Imagines.
Roberto Germán [00:21:06]:
Ah, yes, yes, yes. We are familiar with that book.
Sarah Cordova [00:21:09]:
Love this book. One, because Milo is a writer and he's got the little pencil behind his ear and he has his notebook throughout his whole journey. But I think also because this book, in particular, through Matt's words and Christian Robinson's illustrations, really kind of help kids to understand the idea of perception and perspective and that you don't really know anything about somebody until you kind of have a conversation with them, and then you start to see similar. Milo writes and draws continuously throughout this journey, on the subway ride to this kind of mystery place that we don't know about at the beginning of the book, but I think the fact that Milo understands that things in his head need to be written down to hold those memories is something that, for me, all writers should understand about being a writer. That, you know, ideas that we have will just trail away unless we get them down somewhere. And even if that's for older kids, your cell phone, I'm sure your notes app has tons and tons and tons of ideas that you see and I love, you know, I have a list of just words that I love in my phone, but the idea of if you think of something in your head to get it down in some way, shape, or form, and I think that is an incredible message we can give to all writers, you know, today, tomorrow, at the begin of school, over summer break, whatever it is. So Milo imagines the world plus a million other strategies, you know, is one of my top three books I think of all time.
Roberto Germán [00:22:56]:
Thanks for sharing. And that is an important skill for kids to have, whether they consider themselves writers or not, especially in this day and age.
Sarah Cordova [00:23:06]:
Yes.
Roberto Germán [00:23:07]:
Where there's such heavy reliance on artificial intelligence. Like we have to get the students to engage in the practice of writing down their thoughts and capturing their thoughts, capturing moments, capturing memories.
Sarah Cordova [00:23:22]:
Yes.
Roberto Germán [00:23:23]:
As we prepare to conclude, what do you hope students carry with them after seeing themselves reflected in a book?
Sarah Cordova [00:23:31]:
Oh, that they're important, that they're seen, that they're valued. You know, Matt, I've had a few chances to interview him, and he has this great quote that, you know, all you need is one great adult to kind of make you feel like you're important. And some kids don't have that in their own homes. And so they rely on educators to do that. I think, you know, sharing books with those, those windows and mirrors is critical for any academic success. I really don't believe that we. That we can have our students be academically successful unless they are feeling like a whole valued person. And so, you know, curating lists of books, doing some research as to what.
Sarah Cordova [00:24:29]:
What families am I not representing in my current picture book stash? What books do I need to kind of grab and research? I've been in classrooms where kids will say to me, that looks like me, or that's my family, and the smile on their face is just something that cannot be replicated. That's all it takes for kids to feel seen. And so for me, that really is the essence of all of this.
Roberto Germán [00:24:59]:
Absolutely, absolutely. We want every child to feel valued. We want every child to have that connection with a Trusted adult.
Sarah Cordova [00:25:08]:
Yes.
Roberto Germán [00:25:09]:
Every child to know that they have a champion. Well, Sarah, for folks that want to learn more about your work, they want to connect with you, they want to purchase your book. Where can they do that? They want a copy of the power picture books and student identity writing lessons that empower.
Sarah Cordova [00:25:30]:
So My website is literacy-matters.net. that's one place you can find me and get to know me, my team and check out the book there. And I'm also on Instagram and Twitter / X, @LMReadWrite, LMReadWrite. That is how you can get in touch with me.
Roberto Germán [00:25:54]:
There you have it, peeps. All right. Do your due diligence, follow up, check out the website. Cop the book. All right. Implement the strategies. We want. We want students to really receive the support that they need as they as it relates to their literacy development.
Roberto Germán [00:26:18]:
We also want to put more picture books in the classroom. Okay. And so this has been extremely helpful to me and I have much to process here as I continue doing my own work. But it's great to have this lens on it because it informs me as a writer and informs me as an educator. Like, I keep this in mind as you are writing the book in order to be able to have a greater impact. And so, so we appreciate you, appreciate you being here, Sarah, and salute you for the work that you're doing. Keep pushing forward.
Sarah Cordova [00:26:52]:
Thank you.
Roberto Germán [00:26:53]:
Pleasure as always. Your engagement in Our Classroom is greatly appreciated. Be sure to subscribe, rate the show and write a review. Finally, for resources to help you understand the intersection of race, bias, education in society, go to multiculturalclassroom. Com. Peace and love from your host, Roberto Herman.
