New Direction

While I was in a content area meeting today, it hit me.  I think I know what will sustain my interest and be applicable to real world research.  I want to see if school libraries take into account their student body when selecting books for the book collection.  I am very interested in mulitculturalism in schools.  I think that it is very important for educators to not only be aware of the different cultures found in the school but how do we celebrate, recognize and teach students of different cultural background.  Over the summer I was able to take two Materials classes in which we read and analyzed several books.  In the Young Adult Materials class, it was centered around reading 7 books from 7 different cultural backgrounds.  We read articles about incorporating cultures that I didn't even think of such as the GLBT group.  When I was in school it was stressed to be aware of and learn how to teach students of different cultural backgrounds.  I then began to wonder about the books that libraries supplies to these students.  If the student is our customer are we (educators) providing the correct resources for their needs?  I also remember in the class I took over the summer that majority of the Newberry Award winners had white males or females as the protagonist.  I never would have put the two together but I found that intriguing in that with all the advancements we've made as an American society, there are some areas were improvement is greatly needed.  Anyway, I guess this was my way of explaining how I got to this topic of multiculturalism and school library book collection.  I've already had a classmate to suggest and note that librarians can do a quick inventory of books they have so I am already brainstorming how to collect data.  I hope I can still with this topic.  I don't have a lot of time to change it again. ;-)