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Resources

On this page, you can find some extra resources curated by yours truly (A.K.A., Dr. Rowe). These are some resources that I think might help you in your process of becoming a teacher and especially in those first few years as a teacher (but might be useful for years to come!). I'll keep adding to this page as I think of things, but if there's ever a kind of resource that you'd like to see, feel free to let me know through the contact form.

Getting Certified

Finding Texts

Getting Connected

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Getting Certified

This section gives you information and resources about getting certified to teach literature in a Texas secondary-school classroom.​ Almost all of this information is taken directly from the state's own public websites and simply curated here for you to quickly and easily peruse.

Certify

Finding Texts

​In this section, you can get ideas about how to find new texts when you're trying to build new classes and just cannot think of just the right text to add to the mix. These are just suggestions for starting places; they are meant to inspire you as you get started, not to be your entire library.

  • The American Library Association is a great resource, in two ways:

    • ​Prizes! The ALA awards several prizes every year in various categories. Looking at these prized books can show you some good books that are coming out. But beware: prizes are given out by groups of human beings who are just as fallible as anyone else. These books are just books that that group of humans just happened to like at that moment in time. The prizes might bring something to your attention, but that doesn't mean those are the only books with merit. Some of their prizes that might be of particular interest:​
      • Newbery, for best children's book​
      • Caldecott, for best picture book
      • Geisel, for best early reader book
      • Belpré, for best representation of Latinx culture
      • Batchelder, for best children's book translated into English
    • Banned books! The ALA collects challenges made against books throughout America every year and releases the list of the most challenged books in America. Looking through these lists is both fun and sad because there are a lot of great books on these lists. It's also a great place to look for ideas of what to teach (just make sure you check to see why they were challenged and are ready in case someone wants to push back on your choice).​
  • In trying to help students with this before, I found this K-12 School Reading List website which actually gives a ton of book suggestions based on grade. Again, these are just jumping off points. What I like about this is if you see a text in a certain grade, it may make you think of another text that you might want to teach that's at a similar level that you hadn't thought of before. Again, this is just a place for getting ideas.
  • You can also check out this list I made of some of my favorite texts to teach and why I love to teach them: Dr. Rowe's Favorite Texts to Teach
Books

Getting Connected

For those of you wanting to find ways to get ideas for your classroom, one of the biggest pieces of advice I can give is this: get connected to other educators on social media. That may seem silly, but I mean it. I follow a ton of educators on Twitter, which is my main form of social media, which means that every time I'm just scrolling on Twitter doing nothing, I'm also getting ideas. Here are a few suggestions I have about how to get connected to educators and start growing that network of educators that will inspire you. All of my examples come from Twitter, but the ideas can be applied to pretty much anything you use.

  • First, a practical matter: consider following the US and Texas Secretary of Education on whatever social media platforms you use (the Texas Secretary doesn't currently have a Twitter, but that doesn't mean he won't always or that the next person won't). These are not necessarily fun, but they're a good way to get a bit of education news every so often and to stay on top of things. Once you have a full-time teaching job, you should also follow local accounts, such as the school board or any political figures that have a large say in what happens to your school. This can just help you avoid unpleasant surprises.

  • Next, use topics and hashtags to find people: 

    • On Twitter, you can follow topics, such as "Education", which will bring people into your timeline that you otherwise wouldn't meet. You can then follow the people you like. You don't always have to follow topics; you can turn it off if it gets to be too much. Still, it's a great way to find people.

    • Same thing with hashtags. If you start seeing hashtags in a bunch of posts that you like, take some time to search those hashtags to go find more people that you want to follow. A great one to start with is #DisruptTexts, which is a hashtag started by K-12 teachers to talk about how and why to teach diverse texts, so it has a lot of great teaching tips and can get you connected to some wonderful teachers.

  • Also, you can just Google phrases like "best Twitter accounts for teachers". I know that sounds silly, but it works. Doing this will start getting you some names of people to connect to, and those people can get you connected to more people. It's a way to start to grow your network. Doing so, I found this and this and this.

  • If you have favorite authors, you might consider following them online. Authors will often give insights into their texts that you can use in class, and some authors even do book give aways through their social media.

  • Finally, I'll talk about the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenges more in the DEI section, but if you do nothing else with those, you should really go through all of the plans and just look at their Connect sections (you can see just one of the Connect sections here) and follow all of the accounts there. That will get you connected with great educators and activists doing important equity and racial justice work.

Connect

Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity

Diversity, inclusion, and equity are important aspects of teaching, ones that are constantly under attack right now from conservative powers-that-be, which, honestly, just makes DEI work all that much more important, for your students of color and your white students alike. In this section, I'm going to offer you a few resources that I find useful, both in my own journey in becoming more aware in these matters and in teaching students about them.

  • Perhaps it is because I am an English teacher, but my first suggestion for you is to get out there and read, especially if you grew up in an area that was predominately one race and/or you grew up reading predominately literature by/about white people. Again, while they are not perfect by any means, a good place to start is some of the awards: the Coretta Scott King Book Award, for best children's or YA book representing African-American culture; the Pura Belpré Award, for best representation of Latinx culture; and the Schneider Family Book Award, for the book that best represents disability for young audiences. And again, Googling to find lists of authors and/or books is okay!

    • I do want to note that Katharine Capshaw warns us from thinking that we can read diverse literature and understand the lived experience of people of color, and I agree. However, you cannot teach diverse literature if you've never read anything but the white canon, so my suggestion is to start by reading things by people of color.​

    • Why does it even matter to diversify your reading? This graphic, created and explained by David Huyck and Sarah Park Dahlen, shows how wide a gap there still is between white children and children of color in representation in children's literature. You may not be able to change that, but you can change what books you choose and so what the gap looks like in your classroom.

    • At the same time, just including diverse books in your classroom isn't enough. This article explains "Why Diverse Texts Are Not Enough" and some ways you can go beyond just the text to make your classroom actually more equitable and inclusive.

  • I highly recommend completing at least one of the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenges. These challenges are each based on a theme (such as education). Whatever challenge you choose, you are given a list of things you can do. Each day for 21 days, you choose one thing to do, whether that's reading an article (short or long), watching a movie, listening to a song, or following someone on Instagram, depending on what you have time and space to do. The idea is to learn more about racial equity but also to build the habit of racial equity into your daily practice so it can become part of your classroom. I highly recommend.

  • One of the most important first steps to teaching equitable classes is to confront your own bias. Often, even if we work to counteract racism, we might still harbor implicit biases that we are unaware of. If you'd like to look more into your own biases in order to counteract them, consider taking this Implicit Bias Test put together by Harvard.

DEI
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