Chapter Two

Chapter two starts off with a question that I want to answer by myself first, which is, “What is Culture?” To me, culture is about the beliefs your parents and community have taught you about yourself and them. It’s a person’s heritage or past, and it’s what separates us as individuals or puts us into a group. But the book explains it as, “Ways of knowing, believing, valuing, and thinking among a group of people.” I think it’s similar but their answer is more in depth. But I learned different aspects of culture, like deep culture and school culture. See, in all my years of education, this is the first time I have seen it divided up and discussed. The outside community is very important and they way the surrounding community focuses on education. You can come from a good family, but live in a bad community and the community can change a person, especially in adolescence, that’s when they are the most influenced and want to fit in. We need to know our children’s home lives, their communities, and what they value. It is important for us to incorporate all of our children’s different needs and to get their families to cooperate and to get involved. Remember that not everybody is the same! And I think it’s smart for us to acknowledge our own biases, if we group students as the smarter ones, versus the ones who always need help, that’s not good and I know it’s going to happen when we get out there in the real world because I saw it when I was doing education hours for Palo Alto. So basically we have to keep all this in mind and fill our libraries with culturally diverse literature, which should be fun and interesting to do.

"Author Study"

"Stellaluna," by Janell Cannon, is about a bat and her adventerous life as a baby bat. From being chased by an owl, to falling into a nest of baby birds, the story is entertaining and keep your students hanging on to finish the rest of the story. It's an older read, maybe for your 3rd graders and up.

"Evie to the Rescue," by Hermann Moers, is a fictional story about a little girl who inspires a baby lion cub, at the zoo, to go to Africa. The cub shows up at her door and off they go into the land with a Swan, and the journey starts from there. It's nicely illustrated, which is something I look for in all of my books that I select. They have to be appealing to your children.

"Ella, an Elegant Elephant," is about a little shy elephant that has to move and start a new school but at this school there is a bully and she does not like Ella. It's a real good book, especially if you are addressing bully issues between girls.