Entry Point

Facilitating Conversations on Difficult Topics in the Classroom: Teachers' Stories of Opening Spaces Using Children's Literature by Mollie Welsh Kruger, Susie Rolander, and Susan Stires
Bank Street Occasional Paper Series #44, November 1, 2020

Inviting educators from Early Childhood to college to speak about how they use children's literature as an entry point to difficult conversations with students, authors Kruger, Rolander, and Stires found a rich response. This issue of Bank Street College of Education’s Occasional Paper Series is intimate, timely, and encouraging. What constitutes "difficult conversations" remained up to each writer and included gender and sexuality, racism, fear, grief, climate change, police brutality, class issues, trauma, family insecurity, and health challenges. For every age and stage, teachers identified those times when it is hard to find starting points that include all, and that may be challenging for students to put into words because of fear, a sense that no one will understand, or the depth of feelings they are experiencing. The authors have identified what literature they used to support students and how they held safe space for conversation. These powerful stories of real-world teachers and students are designed for that space, and each story is worthy of staff discussion or personal reflection. Notably, this is not an outline of one right way to use literature; instead, it calls for boldly acknowledging our own contexts and the harsh conditions that may exist within them for our students. In so doing, it is exactly what living in – and beyond – a time of global pandemic requires.