Great Teachers Inspire the World
June 2006During the week of May 1st, Salina Bookshelf attended the 51st Annual International Reading Association (IRA) Conference in Chicago. The theme of this year’s conference was “Great Teachers Inspire the World,” and many of the sessions and presentations were geared toward showing just how essential teachers are in shaping the world of the future.
At the Salina Bookshelf booth, teachers had the opportunity of picking up a free poster of the 2006 Children's Choices book, Little Woman Warrior Who Came Home. The posters were signed by the author, Evangeline Parsons Yazzie, and featured the cover of the book which shows the main character, Dzáníbaa’, as she walks from her home to her captivity at Fort Sumner. These posters were in high demand, as the Children's Book Council, the organization that co-sponsors the Children's Choices with IRA, announced all the choices at the conference and were showcasing all the selected books at their booth. Nearly 1,000 posters were given out during the course of the conference, and the supply ran out long before the conference was over.
Salina Bookshelf displayed their books in one of the enormous exhibitor halls within the McCormick Place Convention Center. Hundreds of reading teachers and other educators came by their booth to browse through the collection of bilingual books, ask questions about the Navajo language, and learn how Salina Bookshelf's titles could be used in classrooms all across the country. Several conference attendees, initially uncertain as to how Salina's titles could be used because they didn't have any Native American students in their school district, were delighted to learn how the books could be used in social studies lessons and as cultural learning resources.
Conference attendees were also given the first opportunity to view Salina Bookshelf's new releases, among them Frog Bring Rain, Proud to be a Blacksheep, Keeping the Rope Straight: Annie Dodge Wauneka’s Life of Service to the Navajo, and The Navajo Year, Walk Through Many Seasons. Many teachers commented on the beautiful artwork in the books, which set Salina's titles apart from so many other picture books. Others pointed out the value of preserving Navajo as a written language, and stated their concern over how so many other indigenous languages are disappearing.
In addition to talking to people at the booth, Editor Jessie Ruffenach attended several sessions during the conference, among them the opening General Session with Jonathan Kozol. His animated talk covered the inequities he has witnessed in the public school system and the rebound in racially isolated schools. He spoke of the glaring disparities in funding and educational quality between inner-city schools with a high minority student body and schools in more affluent, predominately white neighborhoods. Afterwards, Kozol signed his latest book, The Shame of the Nation, which is based on his visits to nearly 60 public schools in 30 different districts in 11 states.
The IRA conference was a great experience and a wonderful opportunity to meet with educators from all across the United States and internationally.