Literature for Children: Homelessness and Poverty

According to the National Center on Children in Poverty (http://www.nccp.org/) more than 10 million adolescents live in low-income households, over 5 million of those youth below the poverty line. As probably heard before, poverty is a children's issue. with this said, what has been written for children about this, the current economic crisis and issues of homelessness. What books best humanize for children the homeless experience and the challenges of living in poverty in the United States? In my search for these books, I uncovered the following:

Fly Away Home by Eve Bunting

Recommended by my mother, one of the best elementary reading specialist's in the world (I have no bias), this book tells the story of a family living in an airport. From the perspective of a very young boy, this picture book quickly develops empathetic and remarkably realistic characters that can be great jumping off points for facilitated discussion with young (and older) children.

Pitch Black by Youme Landowne and Anthony Horton

While this is not appropriate for kids younger than high school, I wanted to share this one as well. This is a graphic novel about a young man --discarded by society-- who now lives in the New York subway system. He meet a female artist on the streets and they spend their time sharing stories of art and life. The story is simple as are the grey and black watercolors that accompany it, yet I found this book captivating.

Favorite Kid websites

best government pages for kids:

www.kids.gov : Good place for getting facts on American presidents.

https://www.cia.gov/kids-page/index.html : the CIA kids' page is fun but don't discount the CIA world factbook for all those world studies projects.

www.bam.gov: "Body and Mind" the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's children's website. Try the activity calendar, know your body, and dining decisions.

Smithsonian Education: Everything Art http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/students/explore_by_topic/everything_art.html

funbrain.com Good educational games to keep kids occupied while you get done all that other stuff.

pbskids.org/games The pre-k classes love pbskids.org more than anyother game or website on the library computers. Its filled with their favorite characters including curious george, Calliou, etc.

This week at my library...

During last week's pre-k story-time we read Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type. This was a perfect book for four year olds: humor, onamanapea, lots of animals. This week we are our story-time theme is: Away We Go, Planes Trains and Buses. This will include one of my favorite pre-k story books Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus.

In my second and third grade class we are in the middle of our "journey through the genres." Each week we concentrate on a different genre of literature. The 2nd-3rd grade class is all girls this year which is both a pleasure and a serious challenge. This week we are embarking on biographies and I am seeking out a great American woman for each girl to read about.

The Kindergarten and First grade classes share their library time with me. Starting this week, we will highlight a different author. I have a few kindergarteners who are absolutely obsessed with Dr. Seuss, so will start there. The following weeks will include Mo Willems, Ezra Jack Keats, and Eric Carle.

Check out our library website!

I have created a website for my students and parents that includes the student book reviews my second and third graders are writing weekly as part of our "journey through the genres...". The site is for sure a work in progress but I must plug it here.

http://www.library.claschool.org

Previous Community Development and Youth Enrichment Projects

Prevention Coordinator at theMental Health Center of Champaign County I worked with hundreds of youth 7-17 in schools and youth organizations providing after-school social and emotional learning skills, and classroom-based prevention education. I enjoyed creating relationships between a community-based service organization and the schools and other groups serving youth. Working under a block grant enhanced my skills in evaluation methods, implementation practices and assessment of programming.

Champaign County Operation Snowball

Beginning late summer of 2008 I volunteered my Tuesday evenings to a local teen support group called, “Operation Snowball.” This has been one of my most fulfilling experiences in youth development. Snowball teens build self-awareness, strong social and emotional skills and learn how to effectively communicate difficult emotions. Twice a year, teens and adult staff participate in a weekend retreat full of games, sharing and bonding activities, and plenty of good time outdoors.

East Saint Louis Action Research Project

My relationship with the East Saint Louis Action Research Project (ESLARP) goes back many years. As a high school student, I participated in Alternative Spring Breaks to East Saint Louis through ESLARP. As an undergraduate, I chose East Saint Louis for my senior project: Saturday playwriting and theatre workshops for middle school girls at the East Saint Louis Clark Middle School. In graduate school, I was hired as an ESLARP research assistant, first for the Community Technology program of Prairienet and second as ESLARP’s Outreach Weekend Logistics Coordinator. All of these experiences have better shaped my understanding of neighborhood action and community development. ESLARP is one of the most influential forces in choosing my career path. The skills built through ESLARP work are diverse and multi-faceted. One weekend I could be helping a landscape class in building a walking trail for an elderly neighborhood, the next week I could be hanging sheet rock in a community theatre. As a technology liaison in the CTC program, I worked with so many enthusiastic community partners in building community technology centers (public computer labs) in their churches, shelters and other public buildings. Over eight years, this program (partnered with a service-learning class in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science) established over 40 public access labs in St. Clair County, significantly impacting the issues of computer access in area. Then there was my work as Outreach Weekend Coordinator. It strengthened my attention to detail, confidence organizing large groups and taught me a lot about tools and lawn equipment. Two to three weekends each semester, ESLARP organizes campus-wide outreach weekends. Comprised of faculty, students enrolled in service-learning courses and volunteers-at-large, participants work on any one of several neighborhood development projects. These weekends generally ranged anywhere from 50-150 participants and the Outreach Weekend Coordinator needed to plan for meals, lodging, orientation, tools, transportation, work sites, and even debriefing and facilitated discussion. After this job, I have such a great understanding of what goes into events planning and program organizing, that I don’t shy away from implementing new projects!

Library School

My favorite courses from library school

Community Information Systems: This class was taught at the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Humboldt Park, Chicago. After attending the symposium, “Community as Intellectual Space,” students (including myself) were introduced to how this particular community creates and applies knowledge to the issues impacting them most. My three papers for this class were devoted to the following topics: the impact of gentrification on community informatics, environmental justice, and the digital divide.

Introduction to Network Systems: Hands-on introduction to technology systems for use in information environments. Learned to install and manage computer hardware and operating systems, as well as network hardware and software. Included service-learning component of building and networking a computer lab for a nonprofit of public space.

Community Informatics Corps: this course provided structured practical engagement experiences in community informatics, the field devoted to understanding how communities create and apply knowledge, and use information and communication technologies (such as art and culture, health, environmental protection and education.) On top of my readings and discussion sessions, I used my practical engagement hours to offer HTML web design classes to an experimental school for African-American middle school boys.

Literature and Resources for Children: After a brief introduction into childhood development and learning, this course taught evaluation, selection and use of books for children (ages 0-14) in public libraries and other settings.

Ethics of Collections: Cross-listed in archeology and art history, this course broadened my concept of cultural artifacts, collections and cultural propriety. My final paper for this course was on the Cultural Destruction of print documents in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Youth Librarianship: Theory and techniques in planning, implementing and evaluating programs and services for youth (0-18) in libraries and media centers.

Information Sources and Services for the Social Sciences:

Overview of information needs of researchers, practitioners and the general public. Advanced training in addressing reference questions and research problems in the social sciences. My final project was a comprehensive annotated resource guide for Urban Anthropology.

Administration and Use of Archival Materials

Theoretical principles and archival practices. Looked at legal and ethical issues, public programming and advocacy, technologies for preservation and access. This course contained a service-learning component with the Katherine Dunham Archiving Project.

Maps!

One of the things we work on in library education for elementary students is map skills. I want to make this as engaging and enjoyable as possible so I use a lot of online tools along with the atlas, globe and other maps. We use google earth, google maps and several great websites for kids:
http://printables.kaboose.com/world-printables.html

PBS kids has some great map skills games: http://pbskids.org/arthur/games/gogeorgego/index.html

If you like maps, this is a very fascinating blog : http://cartophilia.com/blog/ a man documents his love affair with maps. there are maps of everything on this website: baseball affinities, bicycle races, middle earth, the internet. I love maps too! One of the things I really love in fantasy novels is when they contain a map of the world at the beginning of the book. I will sit reading that, imagining that for awhile.

I also like mapping of silly concepts like the http://www.xkcd.com/ map of online communities. pretty great. (http://store.xkcd.com/xkcd/#OnlineCommunitiesPoster)