In the last five years, only 10% of children’s books published were about people of color despite the fact that 37% of the U.S. population are people of color. Rush Limbaugh found out that Teaching for Change is trying to challenge this disparity and he is hopping mad. Limbaugh devoted a long segment of his […]

By Amy Rothschild In March, Walter Dean Myers and his son Christopher Myers brought national attention to a question often asked by frustrated parents, teachers, librarians, and youth: where are the people of color in children’s books? The two authors wrote must-read op-eds featured on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Review. […]

By Amy Rothschild, early childhood educator Banned Book week provides us the chance to reflect on what is and what isn’t available for us to read at different moments in history and different places.  We think of Orwell, and we think of more recent events, like the banning of the Mexican American Studies program in […]

By Amy Rothschild, pre-school teacher and Teaching for Change volunteer I teach in a preschool program at a public school, and while my teaching team and I have ample freedom to follow the children’s interests in our planning, our school does place a high value on the teaching of nursery rhymes. Nursery rhymes are to […]

By Louise Derman-Sparks with Merrie Najimy What messages are you hearing from the mainstream media about the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt? What about the fighting in Libya or the government crackdowns in Syria and Bahrain? If the messages and images of Arabs and their countries are confusing to you, imagine what children are picking […]

In 1986, poet/activist June Jordan published a brilliant essay titled “The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America: Something Like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley.”  I taught this essay in my course on black women writers; I revisit it often and especially when I am feeling disheartened and demoralized by the publishing industry.  Unlike some, […]