CMAC strives to adopt curriculum materials that celebrate diversity, honor authenticity, and value equity. These materials, and accompanied teaching strategies, should represent “windows and mirrors” for students in and beyond the classroom. This tool serves to help educators think about the key concepts, themes, and character interactions within a text and how they can be age-appropriately discussed through an anti-biased lens with students.
The words “diverse” and “diversity” consistently appear in this form, so the “Intersectional Diversity Flower” below is included to prompt educators to think about the various forms of diversity. In the Flower, race is a consistent intersecting factor with, between, and across each petal; so, in thinking about the diverse characters and communities within a text, we ask that educators think about 1) the ways that race intersects with the identities represented on each petal and 2) the intersectionality that occurs within and across each identity petal. The Key Terms Glossary below will be helpful in completing the questions in the following section.
Key Terms Glossary (link to definitions)
- Diverse identities
- Stereotypes
- Tokenism
- Deficit-framing
- Identity-based, Derogatory Slurs
- Individuality
- Authenticity
- Strengths-based Framing
- Power And Positionality
- Power Hierarchical Or Shared
- Oppressive themes
- Multicultural themes
- Justice-driven themes
- Culturally responsive practice
- Teach against oppressive components and/or compliment multicultural or justice-driven components