Diversity in YA (Assignment #1 b. - LLED 441 96A)

What kind of canon do you need for a classroom with high cultural diversity?

Courtesy of Surrey School District 

While my current classrooms could best be described as containing limited diversity, diversity of canon is something I have been aiming, nevertheless, to provide.  In her book, The Collection Program in Schools - Concepts and Practices, Marcia A. Mardis expresses the idea that a diverse collection of books serves the needs of not only the students who are the primary focus, but also for the entire school community, because it promotes inclusiveness and helps to educate and open all students to the greater world around them.  Although I  have been striving to provide a canon representative of diversity over the past several years, if I were to suddenly find myself with a classroom of high cultural diversity, my classroom cannon would certainly still require adaptation to more accurately respond to the unique mix of students in my classroom community.    

A classroom of high cultural diversity requires the careful selection of books and other resources to adequately reflect the interests and diversity of these students.  If students do not see people like themselves reflected in the pages of the books they read, they will be less likely to identify with the stories.  They may feel less inclined to participate in classroom discussion and feel less engaged in class assignments or projects.  Their sense of belonging may be impacted by resources and pedagogy which does not represent their own cultural backgrounds.  For these reasons, it is important to know your students.  I am using culture very broadly in this reflection to represent not only race and ethnicity, but socio-economic conditions, gender, physical and mental abilities, and sexual orientation.   

While most scholars and teachers agree that diversity should be reflected in classroom literature, there is currently a great deal of discussion as to how this should come about. Not every scholar agrees that a firm canonical tradition even exists in YA fiction. Elysia Liang writes in her article, "Canonical Angst in Young Adult Literature" that when compared with adult literature and children's literature, "the canon of young adult fiction ... is neglected and ignored" (1), whereas in the article "Critiquing and Construction Canons in Middle Grade English Language Arts," Amanda Haertling Thein and Richard Beaches remind the reader that not only does a "classic" literary canon exist in high schools and middle schools (the article names texts such as Romeo and Juliet, The Great Gatsby, and Jane Eyre as examples), "this canon, like all others, has been and continues to be constructed by certain interest groups or critics who judge texts based on their own agendas"(1) The article goes on to argue that teachers should be aware of the forces of canonization in order to become active participants in constructing and critiquing it.  They advocate for a collaborative approach which they say "has the potential to empower rather than limit students as they select and engage with literary tests."  Writing for Harvard Political Review, Darin Black's article "Reconstructing the Canon" describes the current canon as predominately written by "white, heterosexual, dead males" and supports an approach which does not abandon the classics, but rather adds to them: "balancing inclusion of diversity in literature and an ongoing focus on the traditional canon is just that: an "and" not an "or"..... English teachers [...] should teach students to love reading and should provide them with the ability to understand experiences beyond their own."  Echoing this idea, the International Literacy Association in their brief entitled "Expanding the Canon: How Diverse Literature Can Transform Literacy Learning" advocates for a redefining of what makes a classic as "a title that succeeds to an unusual degree in expressing the shared experiences of humanity through an artistically significant creation" (2-3) and suggests a "more expansive approach to literature selection that can redesign and ultimately redefine the narratives that define the classroom library" (2).   

While adding diversity to the traditional canon without taking anything away, as suggested by the a few of these articles, seems an ideal solution, in practice (in my own experience) it is rarely possible.  There is a limit to classroom time and if some texts are added, others, by necessity, must be abandoned.  Over the last several years I have frequently abandoned Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, and William Goldings's The Lord of the Flies to add an array of Indigenous texts and resources. My selections have been influenced, in part, by BC's new curriculum and the current emphasis on the First Peoples Principles of Learning.  Writing this I am reminded of ER Braithwaite's words, "The literary is political," published by The Guardian in a collection of responses by authors reflecting on the debate prompted by student calls for university English literature syllabuses to be decolonized. In my middle school classes I've worked to add titles showcasing protagonists with differing mental and physical abilities, protagonists from differing socio-economic backgrounds, and protagonists who are Indigenous, all the while balancing a wide selection of literary forms, genres, and diverse authors from different countries, both male and female.  This year I invited a LGBTQ author into my classroom to do a reading from his collection of short stories which served as a memoir, although an LGBTQ text has not yet found its way into my classroom canon. I am still on the lookout for a text (or texts) which, as the International Literacy Association proposes, "succeeds to an unusual degree in expressing the shared experiences of humanity through an artistically significant creation."

In a classroom with high cultural diversity one text will not suite all, yet a collection of quality touch stone texts may still be required as examples to hold up to students to model  high-quality word craft and story craft.  How to select these touch stone texts is something I am still puzzling out. Perhaps what is needed, instead, is a somewhat wider collection of high quality texts which offer diversity but still meet the criteria of being literary.  Module 5: Poetics: What Makes Some Literature Literary, outlines this criteria as literature which inspires empathy, provides a new perspective, contains multiple layers of meaning with themes and sub themes, uses language or expression uniquely, and has plots which move through layers of narrative (Delvecchio).  UBC Professor Jennifer Delvecchio writes, "[literature] uses language, plot, character, events, and actions in complex and intricately constructed ways."  Plot, character, events, and actions may be conveyed through the language of images rather than words.  While it is important that any classroom canon be of literary quality, if students are given the freedom to select from an array of diverse literary texts representing diverse characters and written by diverse writers there is potential for these texts to transform students' identities giving then the opportunity "to internalize issues of diversity as part of the human condition, not as adjunct material for certain holidays or topics" (7-8 International Literary Association).  Furthermore, I agree with author Pankai Mishra when he writes,"to decolonize the English syllabus [...] is to expand the imagination of students of literature.  Our experience of the world grows ever more complex; any syllabus, whether of history or literature, has to engage with that complexity" (Guardian).      

Works Cited: 

Black, Devon. "Reconstruction the Canon." Harvard Political Review. 25 April 2018. Web. 16 July 2019. 

Delvecchio, Jennifer. LLED 441 96A. Introduction to Teaching Children's Literature. Canvas. Web. Accessed July 2019.

Falls, Jen. "Photo in Return of Blog - Diversity in YA."  fallsintowriting.com. 25 February 2013. Web. Accessed 16 July 2019.

International Literacy Association. "Literacy Leadership Brief.  Expanding the Canon: How Diverse Literature Can Transform Literacy Learning." 2018. Web. Accessed 16 July 2019. 

Liang, ELysia. "Canonical Angst in Young Adult Literature." Midwayreview.uchicago.edu. Web. Accessed July 2019. 

Mardis, Marcia A. Collection Program in Schools: Concepts and Practices. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited, 2016. Print.

"'Open the doors and let these books in'-what would a truly diverse reading list look like?" The Guardian. 11 November 2019. Web. Accessed 16 July 2019. 
 (Links to an external site.)

Province of Ontario. "Grand Conversations in Primary Classrooms." edu.gov.on.ca, April 2011. Web. Accessed July 2019. 

Thein, A.H., Beach, R., and Fink, L. "Critiquing and Constructing Canons in Middle Grade English Language Arts Classrooms." Voices from the Middle, 2013. 21 (1) 10.