On Monday, Feb. 17, a Book Tasting event was held in the Campus Center in room 203. This event was the culmination of the project Diversifying the Education Bookshelves, which was started by Trina Trotter Nussbaum, director of the Center for Interfaith Engagement, and Erika Lopez, a senior education major. The two started the project through the Inclusive Excellence Grant, the DEI grant through EMU, as a way to diversify the Teacher Education department bookshelves. Then, while Lopez is busy student teaching, junior Miranda Beidler stepped up to help get the project the rest of the way to the finish line. The event drew a crowd of excited and curious students and staff members, ready to peruse the selection of 100+ new books for the EMU shelves. From disability representation, to different cultures, to LGBTQ+ representation, there were many books laid out for people to explore in loose categories.
At the event, Lopez introduced the project explaining that she had noticed a distinct lack of diversity in many of the books that were originally on the shelves, so between that and she and Nussbaum noticing that in the education sphere there is a lot of pushback right now, including Rockingham County Schools banning 57 books. Recognizing that climate and things going on in the world, the two wanted to diversify the bookshelves so that the preservice teachers at EMU would have access to them to use for their practicum placements, tutoring, and to introduce books that they could have in their own classrooms when they are finally out into the teaching world. The books also act as a resource for people who take classes that aren’t exclusive to education majors, such as Children’s Literature, showing the importance of having diverse children’s books and how it affects everyone to have these books, not just those who are in education. “Trina and I spent a really long time cross referencing websites, talking to people, just really making sure that we got as much diversity as we could think of just to have all these different books for everyone to look at, to recognize the beauty in all of this, the beauty in diversity and to just have these resources for everyone to use,” Lopez said as a final explanation for the project.
The books are available to be checked out from the Education library in Campus Center 203, and will hopefully make their way onto actual shelves soon. After spring break, there is a plan for an Engage Breakout Session about banned books, as many of the books that were purchased would not be allowed in Rockingham County Schools, as well as other counties in Virginia. There is also talk of an author event, as the author of one of the books that was purchased is in Northern Virginia, so stay tuned for that.
