Teaching Social issues

[Paula Daubert]

I recently watched an interesting professional development video about teaching social issues to students. While this video was primarily for classroom teachers (aren't they all?) it did suggest teaching a social issue lesson (i.e. dealing with conflicts, anger issues, etc.) about once a month. For us, who only see our students 4 times a month at most, it would be less frequent. My question is -- have any of you tried to incorporate such lessons into your library schedule? I think I would like to try it, but I don't know where to begin.

 

[Allison Williams]

To me such a discussion should be organic; that is arising from the book you are sharing with the class. There are so many great stories with social themes, it should not be difficult to find one as a discussion starter. I'm thinking of books by Kevin Henkes or Rosemary Wells or The Honest-to-Goodness Truth or The Recess Queen.

[Diane Falconer]

I agree.  Many children's books deal with social issues.  You can get the children to look beyond the cute characters or anthropomorphized animal ones to discuss feelings, touchy situations, what-ifs, why did he act the way he did?, what would you do if...

 

A technique I tried was called "freezing." A couple of students act out an illustration or scene from the story, "freezing" while classmates discuss their actions, expressions on their faces, body language, etc.  Might also show different ways some interpreted a part of a story.

 

You could also connect books to current news events of a social nature.