Recently, I found myself in Barnes and Noble, captivated by a “Read with Pride” display in the young adult section. With several new books in hand, I was taken back to my high school years, a time before smartphones and social media, when I would cautiously approach the gay and lesbian section of my local bookstore.
Each visit was an act of anxious but challenging self-discovery as I sought validation and visibility in the pages of books I selected for myself. Here, titles like “Giovanni's room,” “Zami: A new spelling of my name,” and “In swimming, two boys“They were instrumental in changing my perspective and made me think more about who I was, who I was becoming, and who I wanted to be.
Looking back, taking refuge in my own chosen literature was probably the strangest and most radical thing I could do at the time. At the time, my reading experiences in school crippled my understanding of my emerging queer identity and limited my knowledge of other people who might have shared my experiences. I never fully saw that part of the person I was becoming reflected in me.
In “Mirrors, windows and sliding glass doors” Rudine Sims Bishop proposes that educators consider the relationship between reader and texts as potential “mirrors” and “windows,” highlighting readers’ identities and experiences through critical discovery. Specifically, she wrote that:
Today, at a time when attempts to book censorship and Curricular challengesThe bishop’s words remind me of one of the reasons I entered the teaching profession: to nurture the kind of English class my high school self needed by building a community with students where they have space to explore and engage with literature that validates and affirms their identities; moving from a place of survival where LGBTQ+ youth are denied their humanity to one of thriving where they are affirmed and celebrated is a critical and necessary shift.
Creating mirrors and windows
In my English class, I strive to offer texts that serve as mirrors and windows for my students, empowering them to see their own lives reflected in the narratives we read and to gain insights into the experiences of others. Over the past five years, I built a dual-enrollment English language arts program, incorporating the critical work of Tricia Ebarvia, Lorena German, Kimberly Parker and Julia Torresthe team of educators behind #InterruptedTexts.
During this program, I invite my students to complete a reflective survey, focusing on previous experiences in their English courses and identifying perceived gaps. I then ask them the following questions:
- Who writes the stories?
- Who is missing from the stories?
- Who benefits from stories?
This exercise is meant to help you reflect on and articulate the missing parts of your reading experiences in school, name the issues directly, and engage in conversations that frame our inquiry together. We then use these responses to consolidate the course syllabus as a living document that prioritizes the voices and narratives missing from your previous experiences in the English department.
Each year, student responses reveal that they are concerned about the absence of reading materials in school that reflect and include marginalized groups, including LGBTQ+ books and authors. In the weeks and months that follow, I prepare reading lists for students based on their survey responses. In this way, I strengthen and personalize our reading purpose and allow students to chart their own learning path in more critical and creative ways.
As students engage with these texts, we return to Dr. Bishop’s framework to explore how mirrors and windows appear to them and reflect on the selected literature. At times, they encounter clear and accurate representations, and note that they have never read anything that reveals those parts of themselves or their experiences. Most significant was the role of windows, where students developed language to make sense of their own experiences and identities, as well as those of others.
By the end of the year, thoughtful conversations and college-level projects emerged in our classroom community. Students explored important aspects of the author’s genre and work and made connections to other literary and media texts. They also raised persistent and emerging questions and identified critical connections to current social, cultural, and political realities.
As a culminating experience at the end of the course, students design a two-week unit of study to address further gaps and silences through mirrors and windows in literature. Drawing from primary and secondary sources, students select a project to integrate into the curriculum of students entering the following year.
These English classroom learning experiences not only give students meaningful agency in their book choices, but they also cultivate deeper intellectual and emotional practices. They learn to engage critically, embrace curiosity and wonder, and imagine new possibilities for themselves, their peers, and their communities.
Affirming identities through literature
Given the wide range of texts available today, students’ identities must be validated through interaction with meaningful mirrors and windows of their choosing. Providing an abundance of mirrors and windows means that teachers understand the importance of students having access points in the curriculum to see themselves and understand others, thus fostering a more inclusive and affirming learning community.
That afternoon, as I browsed the shelves of Barnes and Noble, I remembered my students by remembering myself. My journey from anxiously visiting bookstores in high school to becoming an educator advocating for more inclusive literature underscores the importance of culturally sensitive teaching.
These experiences continue to shape my classroom commitments, emphasizing that teachers must recognize the full humanity of their students. By prioritizing literature that reflects a full spectrum of identities, students are empowered to embrace their most authentic selves and imagine life-affirming possibilities through the transformative power of stories.