The CLA Blog is Back as a Weekly Blog

BY LAUREN AIMONETTE LIANG & XENIA HADJIOANNOU

As the days of August are marching on and the beginning of the 2020-21 school year is approaching, it is becoming increasingly clear that this will be another challenging year for students and educators of all levels. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is still looming large in our daily lives and our plans for working and learning with our students. In the absence of firm solutions for treatment and inoculation from the virus, and in the context of growing numbers of infections across the United States, schools are faced with complex and challenging decisions about how to pursue their mission in safe and academically robust ways. 

Our hope and intention here at the CLA Blog is to offer resources and support to educators as they plan for what is sure to be an extraordinary year of teaching and learning. We aspire to offer helpful ideas for sharing children’s literature with students through various instructional modes, as well as continue to maintain a focus on amplifying diverse voices, highlighting literary works representing diverse perspectives, and supporting an antiracist social justice agenda.

We are grateful to various CLA groups and individual CLA members for volunteering to contribute posts to the CLA Blog over the coming weeks. New posts will be published every Tuesday. We are delighted to announce that in Fall 2020 the blog will feature:

• Posts from individual CLA members and CLA committees on a variety of topics. 
  • If you are interested in contributing a post, please read our Instructions to Authors document and email Lauren Aimonette Liang to sign up for an available date. We are especially interested this fall in highlighting the voices of our elementary and middle school teacher and librarian members. 
    
• Notables in the Classroom: A series of posts by the Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts Award Committee highlighting some of our 2020 Notables.
  
• Biography Clearinghouse: A series of posts from the Biography Clearinghouse team on incorporating biography into the curriculum.

Our thoughts are with you as you expertly handle the many new preparations, alongside frequent and often abrupt changes, to plans for this fall in your classrooms. We value the outstanding work that you do, and hope that you are able to stay safe during this challenging time.

Lauren Aimonette Liang is an associate professor at the University of Utah and the current president of CLA.
Xenia Hadjioannou is an associate professor at Penn State's Harrisburg campus and the webmaster of the CLA website.