BY AMINA CHAUDHRI AND MARY ANN CAPPIELLO, ON BEHALF OF THE BIOGRAPHY CLEARINGHOUSE “William Still’s records, and the stories he preserved, reunited families torn apart by slavery. Because that’s what stories can do. Protest injustice. Sooth. Teach. Inspire. Connect. Stories save lives.” - Don Tate, from William Still and His Freedom Stories: The Father of the Underground Railroad  As 2021 begins, we want to acknowledge the continued need to show young people that Black Lives Matter. Part of that responsibility is shifting our curriculum away from a white-centered view of U.S. history and towards a more multifaceted exploration of all of the communities that have lived on this land from prehistory to today. Don Tate’s picturebook biography William Still and His Freedom Stories: The Father of the Underground Railroad, this month’s featured text on The Biography Clearinghouse, is an important text to help make this change in elementary and middle school classrooms. William Still and his Freedom Stories is one of several recent publications that highlights the role of African Americans in the freedom struggle, countering the narrative that freedom from slavery depended on the actions of whites. A precise, linear narrative takes readers through significant events that shaped William Still’s understanding of the world and his role in making it better for African Americans. Readers follow Still from childhood to adulthood, bearing witness to his desire to learn, the grueling labor he endured to earn a living, and eventually, the risks he took to secure freedom for enslaved people and his post-Civil War activism to fight segregation. This deeply-researched and powerfully-illustrated book has layers of curricular potential: as a read aloud, as a mentor text for literacy skill development, as a model of the genre of biography, as an important piece of history, and much more. Operating within the Investigate, Explore, and Create Model of the Biography Clearinghouse, we designed teaching ideas geared toward literacy and content area learning as well as opportunities for socio-emotional learning and strengthening community connections using William Still and His Freedom Stories. Featured here are two teaching ideas inspired by William Still and His Freedom Stories. The first engages students deeply with the text itself - its form and content, and the second extends learning beyond this picturebook to explore multiple sources for inquiry and research.
Advocating for and Learning from 19th Century Black-Authored Texts For far too long, too many students in the U.S. have been taught a white-centered modern history that avoids a close examination of imperialism and the legacy of Europe’s colonial reach. The brutal history of the global slave trade of the 17th - 19th centuries has been marginalized as have the many stories of Black agency, resistance, and liberation. As a consequence, young people - and many adults - have limited knowledge of that history. We need this to change. William Still and His Freedom Stories is one text that helps to make that change. In this teaching idea for middle school students, we leverage the conversations that this book can open with more in-depth research writings of 19th century activists such as William Still and 19th century Black journalists.
Amina Chaudhri is an Associate Professor of Teacher Education at Northeastern Illinois University. She is a reviewer for Booklist and a regular contributor to Book Links. Mary Ann Cappiello teaches courses in children’s literature and literacy methods at Lesley University, blogs about teaching with children’s literature at The Classroom Bookshelf, a School Library Journal blog, and is a former chair of NCTE’s Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction K-8. BY ERIKA THULIN DAWES & MARY ANN CAPPIELLO on behalf of The Biography Clearinghouse  Over the last nine months, many of us feel as if we have had a front row seat to a global scientific conversation. Since the first news reports of a new virus in Wuhan, China in early January, our knowledge and understanding of COVID-19 has been steadily developing. For the first time in history, scientists around the world are working concurrently and urgently on the same challenge: creating viable vaccines and treatments for COVID-19. Early on, scientists did not believe the virus spread from animals to humans. For months, scientists debated whether or not the virus gets transmitted from both droplets and aerosols. Various treatments for the virus have been developed, undergone clinical trials, and been either adopted or rejected. We’ve heard news reports about peer-reviewed publications making announcements about new understandings of the virus. None of the progress that we have made on fighting COVID-19 would be possible without scientists collaborating around the world, sharing information with one another and the public. The world is doing its best to keep its people safe, through collaboration and the scientific process. You can’t look at a newspaper, glance at your phone, or watch the evening news without hearing the latest information that scientists have hypothesized, tested, or concluded. For young people - indeed, for all of us - this overload of information is overwhelming. It’s also fascinating. The amount of information we are receiving is staggering. We are watching “science” happen in real time - the processes and the methods, the dead ends and the real results. How do we make these processes and methods visible in elementary and middle school? What are some of the ways children’s literature can provide our young people with a window into the scientific process so they can better understand what thousands of grown-ups around the world are doing to try and beat this virus? One small way is to explore the scientific process and the collaboration made visible in the picturebook Otis and Will Discover the Deep, written by Barb Rosenstock and illustrated by Katherine Roy. Operating within the Investigate, Explore, and Create Model of the Biography Clearinghouse, we designed teaching ideas geared toward literacy and content area learning as well as opportunities for socio-emotional learning and strengthening community connections.
Artifacts from Barb Rosenstock & Katherine Joy's Creative and Collaborative Process
CREATE with Otis and Will Discover the Deep. Featured here is one of the teaching ideas inspired by Otis and Will Discover the Deep: Unlikely Collaborators: Researching Collaboration When we interviewed Barb Rosenstock about researching and writing, Otis and Will Discover the Deep, we were so surprised to discover that Otis and Will didn’t like each other! Given the incredible teamwork displayed in the book, we were a bit dumbfounded. But as Rosenstock points out, getting a job done does not always require that people like each other. It’s about the commitment to the task at hand and the sharing of talents and information to make it happen. How does teamwork and collaboration happen? Why is it so important?
By investigating biographers’ research and writing processes and connecting people and historical events to our modern lives, we hope to motivate change in how readers engage with biographies, each other, and the larger world. To see more classroom possibilities and helpful resources connected to Will and Otis Discover the Deep: The Record Setting Dive of the Bathysphere, visit the Will and Otis entry at the Biography Clearinghouse. Additionally, we’d love to hear how these interviews and ideas inspired you. Email us at thebiographyclearinghouse@gmail.com with your connections, creations, questions, or comment below if you’re reading this on Twitter or Facebook. If you are interested in receiving notifications when new content is added to the Biography Clearinghouse, you can sign up for new content notices on our website. Erika Thulin Dawes is Professor of Language and Literacy at Lesley University where she teaches courses in children’s literature and early childhood literacy. She blogs about teaching with children’s literature at The Classroom Bookshelf, a School Library Journal blog, and is a former chair of NCTE’s Charlotte Huck Award for Outstanding Fiction for Children. Mary Ann Cappiello teaches courses in children’s literature and literacy methods at Lesley University, blogs about teaching with children’s literature at The Classroom Bookshelf, a School Library Journal blog, and is a former chair of NCTE’s Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction K-8. |
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