RemotEDx, a nonprofit and community-based student learning organization, awarded WOSU Classroom a subgrant to implement its program Belonging Through Books.
WOSU Classroom is a part of WOSU Public Media which offers a variety of professional learning opportunities for all types of educators. Its new program, Belonging Through Books, targets elementary school educators.
The program addresses the need to create diverse and inclusive materials for educators and students through a digital medium. It will feature engaging, digital read-along videos to make it easier for teachers, librarians and other mentors to share these diverse stories in multiple settings.
WOSU classroom will partner with Harper’s Corner, a nonprofit working towards building diversity and inclusion among children at the participating schools, which includes Columbus City Schools, Reynoldsburg City Schools, South-Western City Schools and Whitehall City Schools.
Belonging Through Books will serve 36 elementary schools and 36,000 underserved students, and it will provide training for 360 educators on how to implement it in their curricula.
“We know that our student populations throughout central Ohio are becoming more diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, country of origin, family composition, LGBTQIA+ status and gender expression,” says Amy Palermo, chief content director, WOSU Classroom. “Belonging Through Books strives to create the most inclusive environment for all students.”
Another purpose of the program is to alleviate the challenge of teaching through physical books with hybrid and remote learning. WOSU Classroom aims to make literature accessible to elementary schools in various settings through Belonging Through Books.
“We want to provide educators with diverse literature and learning resources for remote, hybrid and blended learning,” Palermo says. “We strive to better reflect students' lives and faces through representation in literature and educational materials and provide the high-quality curriculum and integration support to bring this vision to life.”
The digital read-along videos will begin to be available to educators in the fall of 2021, while the rest of the program will be developed and implemented in stages over the next year and a half.
Sarah Grace Smith is an editorial assistant. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
