-: Hi, my name is Alicia D. Williams,
and I'm the author of "Genesis Begins Again",
a middle grade novel
and I just had a new picture book biography that came out
"Jump At The Sun: The True Life Tale
"of Unstoppable Storycatcher Zora Neale Hurston".
"Genesis Begins Again" is a story
about acceptance, about self hate, internalized racism
and learning to love yourself and accept yourself
is about a 13 year old girl named Genesis Anderson.
She hates herself.
She believes is she becomes a beautiful light
light-skinned mom with beautiful long luxurious hair
then that will love her and want to do right by the family.
So she takes this all on herself to heal her family.
And it has so many other things
in here besides the beauty standards and colorism.
And colorism is the distinction of privilege
between light skin and dark skin people
and within that same community.
So you have colorism, a beauty standards
bullying, mental health, addictions, poverty,
a lot of things that are in this story.
Now, if I was to teach the story as a mouse study
perhaps there are some things that I would love to pull out
some of the serious things.
Like one thing I love to do is emotional journaling.
Emotional journaling is allowing your students to take
from anywhere from one minute to three minutes
to even five or 10, depending on the level that they are in
but allow them to write freely where they're not worried
about grammar or punctuation spelling.
These emotional journals could be timed
and they could come with a prompt or without a prompt.
The benefits of emotional journaling will allow students
to get in touch with themselves
and to assess how they're really feeling emotionally.
They will allow you to clear that space
from what happened prior to your classroom.
Something could have happened on lunch
and they come in with this energy of being upset
because Susan said something smart and they can work it out
in that journal and clear up head space for the lesson
or it could be just one of those things that will be used
as a tool to get them to later with the practice
of developing more description and details in their writing
and the writing gets grown just
by the practice of writing itself.
So emotional journaling for Genesis could be with prompts
and with Genesis being a social justice book
I would suggest using those things that are in it.
You know, when was the last time you felt
like you were bullied
or have you ever seen someone that was bullied?
Did you ever do anything?
Were you ever afraid?
Tell me about a time when you were afraid or colorism
how does Genesis feel?
And they can assess how they feel even
by what the character tailoring the props for the character.
Tell me about a time that you identified with Genesis.
Tell me what beauty meant for Genesis and why.
So coming up with different prompts
and the important thing is to not just your writing
don't ever judge their writing.
If you write a comment and if you decide to allow them
to let you read it, don't make a comment on correction.
Just say that's a good thought
or even tell them to go deeper.
This is interesting.
Why do you say that?
I really wonder what you were thinking when you meant this.
So really to push them to go deeper in that.
And there's some great other things about this, friendship.
I remember my students wondering
why was it so difficult to make friends.
Exploring the theme of friendship
and self-acceptance and what is meant to be normal
or be a part of the popular group,
is that really what friendship is?
Bullying.
Again, I think that is something
that all students are dealing with.
I go to numerous schools when school was open
and students would share they're dealing
with depression and anxiety and lack of self-confidence.
So pulling these themes out and having deeper discussions.
Colorism is a big thing.
And I go to a lot of schools and they say
our children are dealing with this, or teachers say
I didn't know this existed.
So having this talk
of what it means to have a standard of beauty
that means if you're lighter
or more European than you're more beautiful
and challenging your students to challenge
what the beauty status is and who set these standards.
I would love for those conversations to take place.
Poverty.
What it looks like or addictions really delving into those.
I do something fun as well because I love history.
I would make a list of songs.
There such a big theme of songs
in this story and make a list.
Have you students make a playlist.
What represents them and why?
What speaks to them, or even delve into the history
of some of these journals, like the Motown general rhythm
and blues or blues itself or jazz.
It really go and have fun with that.
There's so many things to do with Genesis
and I bet you can have fun just pulling them out.
Now, with "Jump At The Sun"
I have had teachers who from high school
who are studying Zora Neale Hurston,
their eyes were watching God
they were reading this with their high schoolers.
I know teachers who teach the middle schoolers
through picture books,
and one of the teachers was sharing
that it's not that the text is easier.
It's easier to decode perhaps because the layout
of it on the page where they feel unintimidated
and it gives them confidence to approach the subject.
And it gives them confidence
in a starting place to go research more
for the projects that they have.
So giving students a book a day, or I know that is a thing
with reading picture books to older students
I think it opens up a door
of giving them more literacy skills and storytelling.
And we all know that oral storytelling studies show
builds the brand.
Now specifically with "Jump At The Sun"
there's so much to tease out
not just about Zora Neale Hurston, although she is very
very fabulous and exciting to learn about
because as a child, she loved Thor
and the Gulliver's travels
and all these wonderful knit tidbits of information
to find out about her, but was in the book
just teasing those things out would be fabulous.
Zora was the anthropologist.
What does that mean?
And that's an underrated career, don't you think?
And to see what does that study?
Are there other anthropologists?
What do they find?
She was a folklorist finding out
what folklore and folktales meant.
The history of it, pulling these and even examining some
of the stories and having students learn a story
and recall it specifically African-American children
their reading scores, and a comprehension scores
and literacy scores shot up the roof
with this whole tradition of oral storytelling.
Perhaps it's because of the history that we carry with it.
Information in here so much the dance, the Charleston.
I remember teaching my children, the Charleston dance
during the great depression when we went
through that whole era of history
but it's in here, the dance of Charleston.
What was it like?
And getting your students up and moving
when we get back into the classroom.
The Harlem Renaissance, this big creative bang
studying the poetry of Langston Hughes, that's a big deal.
And really finding out what that movement meant,
The Great Migration.
There was so many people who moved from Harlem
to Harlem and New York and all these other Northern cities
from the South sharecropping or tilling land
as we talked about
and the story is caught telling Lana about sharecropping.
What that meant during a history movie,
why were people Black Americans sharecropping
and what it looked like and how hard that life wasn't
why mom wanted her to move forward?
The power of mantras, mom always said to "Jump At The Sun".
What is the interesting fact is the hats
that Jacquelyn puts in here, because our father said
stop trying to wear those big old hats
but mom wants her to dream big
because he was trying to tell Zora not to dream big.
There's plenty of art things to do.
I have an art teacher who printed out a picture of Zora
and kids got to draw the hat and what that hat represents
and what that dreaming big and jumping
at the sun means in the form of a hat.
There are other so many, the folklore and creating
and puppetry to go with it.
I'd love to just sit in and do so much
but there is so much that we can do.
And the stories like "John Henry" or "Chance"
and how important that is
to the stories that Zora collected.
There's a wonderful things.
And I hope, hope, hope you have already added
or plan to add "Genesis Begins Again"
and "Jump At The Sun" to your classroom collection.
Thank you so much.