- Hi, my name is Patricia Krijgsman Wentzel, and I'm a teacher-librarian at a model school in the Toronto district school board. Today, I will be talking about equity in the classroom library. Diversity is a fact in Canada. Therefore, the choice to move to equity for our students must be led through our classroom literacy programs. When this is a reality in our classrooms, the goal of equity in society can become our lived reality. Educators interested in achieving literacy equity for their students should think about what is missing and how we structure education today. We know that North American education privileges certain types of worldviews. What can we learn from history to reframe how we think about teaching literacy today? We know our system of education and how literacy is taught is profoundly assimilative. We only need to look at Canada's history of residential institutions to prove this fact. Knowing this, think about what is absent from the standards and frameworks needed to achieve literacy equity among students. You don't need the curriculum to set your goals. You need equity. Literacy instruction, including what titles are offered and read aloud in your classroom, have the power of doing if you're willing to have the difficult conversations with your classroom community. Educators must be willing and eager to have the conversations with their students that will give them equitable agency. This is how we affect change as teachers. Educators must be doing this work in their classrooms because we know that systemic top-down change won't happen within the timeframe of a school year. We must work to meet that change from the bottom up, so it is expedited. Through your circles with your students, conversations about equity and equal representation will become normal. It is my belief that to truly achieve classroom literacy equity, educators need to look at how they will repay the greatest historical literacy debts to both black and indigenous students. Move your classroom library and your literacy teaching practices to support these underserved populations. How does your teaching repay these literacy debts? Repayment is made each time your literacy teachings are culture-focused and equitable. As long as a single form of oppression is present in your literacy practice and teachings with your resources and stories, students cannot name or question injustice. And if your students cannot name or question it, then you as an educator are complicit in their continued oppression. We can look to Gholdy Muhammad's resource "Cultivating Genius" to help us answer the following question. Is your literacy teaching culturally and equitably responsive to your students? Think about what stories are being told in your classroom. If equitable representation isn't present, you need to change it. Educational teachings rooted in equity lead to educated and equitable change.