* Creating a recording of reading aloud a published work is subject to copyright law. Sharing copyright-protected work via a public platform and/or monetizing your recording is not allowed. Sharing a read-aloud via a Drive link you post only to your own classes is generally allowable under Educational Fair Use. However, posting to something like YouTube (which is by default indexed and potentially searchable) is not. The story Publishers Adapt Policies To Help Educators published in the School Library Journal (SLJ, March, 2020) offers some helpful guidance as to how children’s publishers have temporarily altered some of their policies to support teaching in the context of COVID-19

Before becoming a teacher educator, I taught in elementary public schools for twelve years. The affordances of technology – particularly in connection to literacy and literature – have long been an interest of mine. While I’ve always aimed to stay current with what’s available and to consider increasingly innovative, meaningful, and critical use, I have gleaned much from countless others who are generously sharing resources via social media and other networks…particularly during these past few days and weeks with shifts in instruction due to COVID-19. While an abundance of online children’s literature resources is available – and resources continue to grow from educators, librarians, authors, illustrators, and publishers – Epic! has been particularly helpful in my work teaching a children’s literature course for pre-service teachers at Oklahoma State University.

Adam Crawley is Assistant Professor of Literacy Education at Oklahoma State University. He is also Co-chair of CLA's 2021 Master Class.

The children’s literature course that I teach at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA is a survey course titled Literature for Children, Tweens, and Teens in a Diverse Society. Typically, when I introduce the idea of author/illustrator studies to the students in this class, I present groups of students with stacks of books to browse along with a curated collection of weblinks to explore. In the context of this survey course, this activity is framed as a teaching strategy and our class time is organized to introduce the goals and elements of an Author/Illustrator study and to provide a ‘tasting’ of what it is like to experience such a study. I’m careful to note that to experience the work of an author/illustrator in depth would take more time and more intensive study. When I learned I would be teaching this class ‘remotely’ from our Blackboard site, I wondered what the options were to replicate the book browsing element of this in-class activity.

Whether they are our preschoolers or our graduate students or anywhere in-between, we miss them right now. We miss getting to know them better as individuals, and we miss the rush of an amazing class discussion. We miss watching their faces light up with understanding; we miss the shared experience of reading a book together.

This is a challenging time for teachers everywhere. For many of us, we have abruptly moved into teaching in an online context for the first time, and in a world that changes every day. Worried for our students, and perhaps unsure of how this new classroom environment will work, we are doing the best we can. However, incorporating literature into an online class that may not have easy access to certain books we typically use, or even to any titles at all, is particularly hard.

CLA hopes to help and support our members and the greater education community who are using children’s literature in their newly online or remote settings. We will be posting new blog entries on Tuesdays at Noon EST and Thursdays at Noon EST. Each entry will either highlight a great online resource available for teachers at this time and how it might be effectively utilized, or will offer a description of a short lesson using children’s literature that educators might be able to use in their newly located classes.

Please visit this blog and check out the posts every Tuesday and Thursday. Share it with your peer educators, colleagues, and friends, and consider volunteering to contribute a post as well.

On behalf of CLA, I hope that you and your families are safe during this time. My heart is filled with gratitude and awe for you—the amazing teachers who are overcoming extreme hurdles in order to continue serving their students in all possible ways. Thank you.

Lauren Aimonette Liang
CLA President, 2019-2020