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I first heard about First Chapter Friday, while listening to The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. It can be challenging to get students to take the first step in choosing a book to read independently, try out new authors or genres, or to get excited about new books in the library. Betsy, from Spark Creativity, says whether you call it First Chapter Friday, Meet a Book Monday, Too Many Books Tuesday, We Love Reading Wednesday, or Thoroughly Into Books Thursday the premise remains the same: introduce students to a variety of different books for independent or self-selected reading.

I always loved reading the first of a series with students in my class. I would carefully choose books I loved, read the books with students and watch with joy when I saw them reading the next books in the series. I now realize that I introduced them to books I loved, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, Among the Hidden, The Wild Robot, Princess in Black etc. Most of them featured similar characters and exciting adventures, but I know now that something else was missing: student voice and choice, a variety of identities and topics, different themes, etc. Maybe I, too, should have taken part in First Chapter Fridays for educators!

To prepare for this activity, choose a variety of books from your classroom or school library. In my experience, librarians always have a great list of new titles and authors and love the opportunity to co-plan with classroom teachers. Some school boards have a central lending library where you can borrow a box of different books for three or four weeks with a variety of titles or themes as an option. Then, ask yourself a few questions when choosing books to share.

Do I have books from a variety of genres? I didn’t realize my love of exciting adventure books was factoring into what I thought made a good read for the students in my class. When I looked around at the books students were reading independently, I saw that they loved comedy – Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Dear Dumb Diary, Dog Man, etc. Be sure to include something similar to what they are already drawn to as well as some new genres and authors they might not have met yet.

Is the language and content accessible for students at this grade level? Have a peek through the book yourself, look up suggested age range levels, or find familiar authors you know in order to make some informed choice about reading levels and content. We definitely want students to try new stories, but we also want them to feel successful and excited about reading! Ensure that during your activity, you are offering books at reading levels that everyone can access.

Do these books offer an opportunity for students to learn about themselves and others? Are there a variety of identities and experiences represented? I suggest checking to ensure that the author is writing from a place of ‘own voice’ or is, at least, working with a member of that community to tell a story or build characters. If you’re not sure which identities to look for, try looking at the different heritage months or days of significance that are celebrated here in Ontario and Canada as a place to start. Find out the identities of the students and families in your school community. Seek out student voice: who or what events the students are interested in learning about.

Once you’ve chosen a few books to highlight, get ready for reading! Plan to read the first chapter of each book out loud to the students and while they are listening, they may be sketching or writing some of the key points of the book or story so that they can keep track of the details for each book. Remember, it’s not an assignment, it’s practice for students to use as a possible way to track their thinking. I like to think of this as another way for students to engage with reading and for them to find the method (sketching, jot notes, drawings, lists) that works best to express their ideas.

What I love about First Chapter Friday is that it reminds me of the importance of connecting students with reading and using it as a practice of interacting with text. When the educator reads the text aloud, it allows all students access to the story and opens the lines of discussion as a whole class as opposed to reading being an isolating activity. Thinking about the texts with students helps to build community and model curiosity and a love of reading. Whichever day you choose, introducing students to new books and new worlds can help build a community of readers.

When we think of culturally responsive teaching, outdoor learning may not be the first area that comes to mind. How do you connect nature with culture and student identity? The answer is not straightforward. However, making nature relevant to students from culturally diverse communities is important, especially when we consider the importance of environmental stewardship and the historical underrepresentation of diverse communities in outdoor culture.

Spending time outdoors is one of the most high-impact, easy, and cost-efficient ways we can support the well being of all students. Outdoor play lowers anxiety, enables students to explore difficult emotions, experience awe and wonder, and disconnect from digital spaces.

It is important to keep in mind that culturally and linguistically diverse students may interpret and engage with the outdoors in ways that do not reflect what we see in dominant, Western representations of outdoor culture. One of the most interesting discrepancies I have noticed between typical Westernized representations of the outdoors and my own lived experiences is the ideal of the “empty wilderness”.

Many representations of the outdoors reflect an aesthetic of stillness and solitude: the empty dock, the barren mountainside, or the endless fields. Indeed, I have personally taken such photos, adjusting the camera so that I or the subject of my photos appear alone.

While I think this type of image taking is largely done to avoid having background distractions in the photo, I can’t help but connect it to the Canadian fascination with solitude in the outdoors, rooted in the romanticized concept of the explorer: Europeans who arrived in Canada and “discovered” a wealth of land and natural resources to exploit. Of course, we know that Turtle Island was far from being uninhabited – and we are just starting to see and hear Indigenous perspectives in our educational landscape – but I believe this reverence for emptied out natural spaces is tied to this piece of history.

Exploring Incongruent Experiences of the Outdoors

The dissonance between the way we idealize nature from a Western perspective and the ways different communities actually engage with nature becomes clear to me every spring when the trees start to blossom.

I’m very fortunate to live near High Park in Toronto, and I try to visit the park when its famous cherry blossoms are in full bloom. Droves of people across the city do as well, and as a result, the park is filled with crowds of people of all backgrounds taking photos and gazing into the beautiful pink canopy that forms in different areas throughout the park.

This year when I visited I noticed that the crowds were largely people of East, Southeast, and South Asian descent. I could hear so many different languages, but perhaps what was most amazing was the sound of joy and excitement at seeing the blossoms.

It occurred to me how amazing and wonderful it was to be in the masses of people enjoying something special in nature. I also wondered why we stay so fixated on this concept of nature as a lonely and empty place. I caught myself trying to capture photos of my family as though they were in an empty space, realizing how futile and pointless it was, and also questioning my own impulse to have a photo that did not reflect the environment I was actually in.

As wonderful as it is to see so many people outdoors enjoying the park, there always seems to be negative sentiments about the Cherry Blossom crowds. Perhaps unsurprisingly, complaints about traffic and the selfie-snapping crowds start to resound in online comments or conversations in the community. To be perfectly clear, I too have made some complaints as a resident who despises sitting in traffic while cars line up to get to the park. But I notice much darker sentiments of anger and irritation pervade comment threads about High Park and other popular places to visit, such as Niagara Falls or “cottage country” in the summer.

I remember reading a news post about Niagara Falls on social media a few years back and reading complaint after complaint in the comments about the high proportion of South Asian visitors who were picnicking instead of “supporting the local business.” Racism and xenophobia similarly echo in complaints about large, culturally and linguistically diverse groups that flock to beaches to enjoy the summer weather.

Why do so many people detest seeing others enjoy nature? Is it part of the collective fascination for an empty “wilderness”? Racism and xenophobia? A mix of both?

Connecting Back to Outdoor Learning

For me, outdoor time has always been strongly connected to being in large groups, being part of large potluck gatherings with family, sharing a cottage rental, or joining droves of tourists that gravitate toward an awe-inspiring sight like Cherry Blossoms. These are activities that, at least in my view, are rather broad in appeal to most people in Canada. I find it upsetting when certain groups are stigmatized for enjoying the outdoors in this way. And I can’t help but feel a tinge of shame and self-consciousness when I am part of a group of “too many” or “so many” Asians.

These feelings of being “othered” in outdoor spaces can be difficult to talk about, but I think it is important to name them because internalization of colonial values have such detrimental impacts on mental well-being, especially for those of us who grow up in Canada learning colonizer mythologies. As culturally responsive educators, we especially need to be mindful of when we may be sharing such narratives to students.

In part 2 of this blog, I will present a framework of cultural responsiveness we can use to start breaking away from harmful and inaccurate historical narratives.

There are some memories about school that are crystal clear in my mind. One such memory is when I was in first grade with a friend of mine (I’ll call her Beth). The most prominent memory I have of us is when we were reading with the teacher. She told us that we would be able to choose our own books from what I now understand was the levelled reading room . We went down the hall together and when she opened the doors it was like a bright light that shone in our eyes and a choir singing in the background. We saw so many BOOKS. These were different books than you would find in the library in the primary section – there were chapter books, picture books, and long books and books with lots of different characters in them. We could choose and exchange any books we wanted to read from this special room.

In retrospect, I know there wasn’t theme music or bright lights (unless it was the sun coming through the window). The books probably would be boring by today’s standards and were likely more dusty than I remember, but it remains a defining moment for me. I am still a voracious reader. I love a good story and I aim to develop a love of reading with students.

I think there’s something to be said for building a love of reading. When I was young I read books that were fun. As I grew older, I went through all the genres; scary books, romance books, literary canons, non-fiction, etc. I discovered what I love most about reading is the way I can learn about the world and the people who live in it.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that despite the fact that I learned to read in school, it isn’t the phonics worksheets that developed me into a reader. It wasn’t the focus on sounding out the alphabet and consonant blends that made me want to visit the local library and get the newest book from a favourite author. Of course, all of those things are important in the science of reading; developing decoding skills and a knowledge of words, but today there’s so much more opportunity for students to gain experience in developing these skills. Using audiobooks, thinking about text images to introduce vocabulary and ideas before engaging in print, technology, videos, and even music are all helpful in allowing so many students access to reading and language development. What I loved most, as a student, is the books coming alive. I remember my grade one teacher reading aloud to us and having us imagine (then vocalise) the sound effects for the stories she read to us. We would make knocking sounds when someone knocked on the door or big sighs when we saw a character’s emotions on their faces. This interactive way of engaging with reading helped me to understand that reading is also important because of the way we make sense of texts and ideas.

It was also the autonomy to choose books that meant something to me, ones that I thought were interesting or fascinating. I could spend time learning about myself and what I liked to read. It was the opportunity to talk about things that were interesting to me with my teachers. It was finding a voice and learning the words to express ideas and emotions and thoughts in a small reading group when I was painfully shy to raise my hand in class.

One of the main goals of the revised language curriculum is “to encourage students to experience the joy and possibility that literacy learning can ignite.” It sounds like such a beautiful learning experience. What if we made sure to create joyful literacy moments for every student? What possibilities would they dream of? What would inspire them to become readers and to love reading a good text – whether it be books or movies or an instructional manual – or to love creating one? Think about the possibilities that literacy learning blocks can bring when we consider learning to read and reading to learn a purposeful partnership. Maybe those are the core memories of joy and possibility we can cultivate for students.

I recently read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer with a book club of people across Canada. We were amazed by the numerous messages throughout the book. The author is a Potawatomi woman and mother as well as a botanist. She encourages readers to use two-eyed seeing, meaning to see the world through an Indigenous lens as well as a scientific one.

This leads me to thinking about the medicine wheel and the teachings of the sunrise, the East, the beginning of life and the season of spring. Although I am Irish-Canadian, these teachings resonate with me more than the idea of a new year in January. The natural world is bustling with energy as buds burst into leaves and blossoms form on flowers. Birds are singing out and the bunnies are appearing in my neighbourhood. 

This energy transfers into our classrooms as well and we may need to re-establish routines that change as wet weather brings muddy shoes and cool frosty mornings bring layers of sweaters and jackets one day and then t-shirt weather the next. Spring is a natural time for all of us to review the goals we wish to reach before the end of the school year.

Personally, I am building an understanding of the theme of reciprocity from Braiding Sweetgrass. Kimmerer explains it as “Nature gives us so much; the only thing one can do in the face of such profound generosity is to turn around and do the same.”

My choices at the grocery store impact the planet’s health as well as my own. I know I cannot always buy organic or local food but I’m doing it more often than I was. I’m also adding native pollinator plants to my garden to help the ecosystem where I live. It’s a start.

Professionally, I’m working on how to develop rapport with students quickly as an occasional teacher. I enter their classroom community as a guest teacher hoping they will feel safe and respected. Some strategies I’ve adopted include quickly learning their names, using a seating plan, giving the safety talk and interspersing mindfulness activities throughout the day.

If you are reviewing your goals this spring, I encourage you to be gentle with yourself. Be realistic about what can be achieved in the next two months. 

One suggestion for student goal setting is to include daily goal setting in your morning meeting time and take time to reflect on previous goals. A wonderful picture book to illustrate this point is The Bad Seed by Jori John. One year I had a student identify with the main character and then he set goals for self-improvement. It was very inspiring to see him do the work needed to make positive changes in his life.

Whatever happens with you this spring, I hope you enjoy this incredible season of renewal!