Just Don't Break Your Hammer with Caroline Mickey
Caroline Mickey says “reading builds empathy” and as an elementary school librarian she practices this mantra every day when she interacts with students and works to develop literacy skills. But sometimes doing your job as a librarian can lead to controversy. In this conversation she shares her story about how a Mother’s Day lesson became the target of a small fringe organization and how the larger community rallied support for Caroline and her work.
Outline of conversation
The controversy
There are many types of family structures
How the community supported Caroline
Policy issues and advice for other educators
Links
Here and Now on NPR news story about lesson cancellation
Website for Miriam Schiffer, author of Stella Brings the Family
Website for Ryan T Higgins, author of Mother Bruce
Website for Bryan Young, author of Healer of the Water Monster
Transcript
Scott Lee: Greetings friends and colleagues, welcome to The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast the professional educator’s thought partner-a service of Oncourse Education Solutions. I am Scott Lee. In this episode we’ll listen to a conversation I had recently with Coroline Mickey about her experiences following the cancellation of a Mother’s Day lesson she planned. The lesson was cancelled following an organized campaign that misrepresented lesson content. Caroline is an elementary school librarian, holding master’s degrees in English Literature and Information Science. She's been awarded Librarian of the Month twice by the Southeast Region of the TN Association of School Librarians, and she is a big advocate for students' rights in reading. I’d also like to note that we recorded our conversation in person, outdoors and there are a couple of places where I was not able to edit out a nearby dog barking.
Scott Lee: Welcome to the Thoughtful Teacher Podcast, Caroline.
Caroline Mickey: Thank you for having me. I'm excited.
Scott Lee: Well, great. Glad to have you. Could you tell us a little bit about your current role and why did you choose to become a librarian in the first
Caroline Mickey: place? I am an elementary school librarian.
I work at a, at a K 5 school and this answer is really cheesy. I became a librarian because of my husband. , I was working , at a trucking company and I wasn't happy and my husband said, well, if we just had the money and you didn't have to work, what would you be doing? And I said, well, I would probably go.
and volunteer at the library. Books have always been my happy place, and I love putting them in order. I think it just presses that serotonin button in my ADHD brain. And he said, okay, well then you should go do that. And I said, quit my job and go volunteer at the library? And he said, "no, like you should go be a librarian."
And so we sort of looked around and realized that we could afford to do it, with the help of some family members. So, that was, I think, in April or May. I applied to the Information Science program at UTK and I started in August.
I chose to get certified to be an elementary school librarian because something they tell you a lot in school is be ready to move because there's not always a lot of library jobs available. I knew that I was going to have to be as employable as possible. So if I had just gone as a public librarian, then I would have had to go back to get certified to teach in schools.
Whereas if I went for schools and I could easily transition to public librarian. And then I interviewed at my school and I got the job and I was very nervous about it. And it turned out I was really good at it. Which was surprising, because I never thought I would be somebody who had a career.
I was just gonna go to work, and then I was gonna go home. It turns out like I love being silly. I love reading picture books. I love matching kids to the right, to the right book at the right time. And I just like getting kids excited about reading, because you know, elementary school, that's when you do it.
That's when you plant the seed of reading for pleasure, because middle school and high school they Don't do as good of a job as keeping that there
Scott Lee: You mentioned matching The right kid with the right book. Yeah and That kind of maybe caused a little bit of trouble you got involved in a controversy as I believe last school year and right now, this is the fall of 2023 so this would have been In the spring of 2023.
Could you tell us just a little bit about that?
Caroline Mickey: Yeah. And in May, when we're sort of wrapping up the school year, Mother's Day is right there. So it's kind of built in for educators to do a Mother's Day lesson or a Mother's Day project. If not a lesson, then, you know, they'll read a book and then you make a thing for your mom.
And one thing that I really think about a lot is, okay, but who's being left out? , any educator who. knows, their students know that not every kid has a mom. There might be a kid whose mom passed away, a kid whose mom left, a kid who's being raised by a stepmom or a grandparent, and especially in the last several years, ever since marriage equality happened finally, , there are students who have two dads, two moms, whatever.
And so I Was trying to think okay, how can we talk about the role that moms have without talking only about moms? So I chose to do a lesson where the learning objective was not everyone has a mom but everyone has someone who loves them in a motherly way and I have this book called Stella Brings the Family which is about a girl who they're getting ready to have a Mother's Day celebration at her school, and she doesn't have anybody to bring with her because she has two dads, and it causes her an incredible amount of anxiety.
She, can't pay attention when she's at recess. She has, trouble doing her schoolwork. She, doesn't have an appetite. And her classmates have questions. They say things like, you know, well, who tucks you into bed at night? And who makes your lunches? Who kisses you when you get hurt? And she has answers for all those questions.
But it's, her aunt or, her uncle Bruno, which I, like, really wanted to do something with, Brun Uncle Bruno is a big thing right now, it was, especially in May. And then, I was like, okay, like, that can be kind of a heavy story of, like, talking about all the roles that moms have. So what do I have that will sort of make that fun as well.
So I typed in "mother" Into my catalog and the first thing that popped up was Mother Bruce and I was like done! Mother Bruce is hilarious it fits the theme because It's an adoption story and I was like cool! My district has a policy that if you're gonna do anything that could be considered controversial that you had to give parents the option to opt out and I know where I am.
I'm in southern Tennessee. I read the news and so I said " I have a story that has two dads in it. We're talking about mothers and that can be for reasons unrelated to, two dads talking about mothers can be triggering for especially young kids who have lost their mom or don't have that person."
And so it was for that reason and for the two dads and Stella that we sent the note home and then that note got handed off to a local now, at the time they were not, but a local hate group and They posted it along with my work email on their Facebook page And it kind of took off from there and it resulted in the lesson being canceled
Scott Lee: And did any parent actually complain?
Caroline Mickey: Well complain. No I had to to me. No I had Emails from parents who opted out of the lesson, which was the point, which is the,
Scott Lee: which is the policy anyway
Caroline Mickey: which was the point and then, sort of once it was posted and kind of gained traction with a certain crowd, it kind of took off from there.
I still don't know the full extent of everything, because my front office staff. are the people who were fielding the calls. And they didn't slash won't tell me how many people called in support or against the things that were said about me. And all of that, so I don't, I don't know exactly how high the controversy got, because I was sort of protected from it, and so like a lot of the complaints were about Stella, and the other one was, the one that surprised me was the one of Mother Bruce, because I picked that one because it's fun,
what I was accused of doing was putting men in the role of mothers, because Stella has two dads and Bruce is a male bear. So that was one, and then the other one was, I was pushing a trans agenda with Mother Bruce, because at one point it talks about how when the goslings in this book hatch, they see Bruce and they assume that he is their mother, because whenever birds hatch, Whatever they see first is their mom and the line in the book is even if she is a he and he is a bear and it really threw me because Okay, the people who are accusing me of this clearly don't understand what being trans means because Bruce does not try to portray himself as female.
He does not try to gender himself as female and so It's you know, some somebody who's creating something out of nothing and just finding a reason to be upset as opposed to having a legitimate reason
Scott Lee: Yeah, and I was really surprised when I heard about that originally because I don't know the Stella book, but I do know Mother Bruce.
It's a, it's a fun book. It's hilarious. My, my wife and I both have read it to our grandkids. I've got the book at home, which is why
Caroline Mickey: I picked it. It's well known. The kids knew, I mean, the kids would know what they were getting into. I've read it before the, the bear looks up gourmet recipes on the internet, which alone is hilarious.
He finds the, the geese eggs and then Realizes he's missing ingredients. When he comes back, they've hatched and he like tries to get rid of them, but they follow him back home and then he raises them, which is like this incredible adoption story of like, yes, like he's doing it to try to get them to leave, but he also could just not.
So like he makes sure that they eat and he teaches them how to fly and they have this really great like photo spread of where they go from geese to like angsty teenage geese. Which I love so much. And then when he tries to get them to fly and they're like, no, like we're not going to migrate.
That's not who we are. Then he goes with them. It's this sort of this wonderful like begrudging. parenthood that I just thought would be really funny to talk about maybe your mom isn't happy all the time with the choices that you make, but she still makes sure that you eat and she still makes sure that you are ready for gymnastics practice.
And she still makes sure that you are ready for school in the morning. Like I, I just, it was going to be such a fun conversation to talk about. The amount of work that moms do for people and the amount of people, like with Stella, like she ends up bringing five or six people to her Mother's Day party and that was gonna be the thing.
Like it took six people for one mom. but yeah, that didn't happen. Yeah.
Scott Lee: Yeah. , it just still amazes me. Thinking about all of it and, having worked with kids in foster care. Working with, you know, kids that we knew didn't have, traditional families and traditional homes.
We could do a whole another podcast episode on multi-generational families or, non-nuclear families,
Caroline Mickey: I mean, that's where I came from. I mean, I have a, I have a mom, a dad and a stepdad and even depending on how clear that people want to get with that traditional family definition, I technically don't even fit that because my husband and I.
He's a stay at home dad and I work. So even that's not a traditional family model depending on how far you want to go back. But even then that idea of a nuclear family was like a 10, a 10 year span in the fifties. Like it's not even like a real, a real.
Scott Lee: Yeah, a sociologist, that I know, pointed out very clearly and, and had this timeline, when the nuclear family started and it was something like 1880 and, it coincided with Sears and Montgomery Ward, doing mail order catalogs, they realized, and of course this is not the only thing, but they realized, oh, hey, in rural areas where you've got.
Grandparents living next door to parents, raising kids. There's several homes where, people who are related, Oh, we can sell whatever it is we want to sell to each of these addresses now, and that much of that starts, in that period.
For folks that listen to this podcast a lot, check out the Larry Brendtro, and we talk about, indigenous, family structures. I just
Caroline Mickey: finished a really great book about that. Oh,
Scott Lee: what's the book?
Caroline Mickey: It's, it's a, it's actually a second in a series, but it's called Heroes of the Water Monster.
And it's by Brian Young, who is a Navajo writer. I think he's a documentary filmmaker as well. He says the Diné. I think is the correct pronunciation and he tells the story of the ancestors and how they were removed from their from their land and how the the soldiers tried to separate families because Of the western idea of , once you don't have your family You're kind of unmoored, but they didn't really grasp that this was a clan And so, for a lot of the adults who lost their children and a lot of the children who became orphans, they were able to form new family groups because they were of the same clan.
That was sort of key to the survival Of their culture and their stories and their language and, oh, so beautiful , each of the chapters were pronounced in Dine' language and I, I listened to it and it was, oh, so good. It makes me want to read the first one is called Healer of the Water Monster.
And so this one is the second one. , just in time for Indigenous Peoples Day, I finished this really beautiful Indigenous, middle grades novel.
Scott Lee: And we do happen to be recording the day after Indigenous Peoples Day, back to the topic at hand, obviously we're not going to discuss,
specific personnel issues. Beyond to say that, you did not lose your job or anything or anything like that over this. This story did become public, we're not going to rehash, , news stories, but there is a link on the Thoughtful Teacher podcast to a story that you did with, NPRs Here and Now.
For context, a couple of things that happened is that, there were, a
small number of complaints, but a large amount of support. Yeah. Could you tell us a little bit about what... Those numbers were and kind of what happened, obviously round numbers.
Caroline Mickey: Yeah. I would say probably for every negative thing I received, I, I received somewhere between five and ten positive things.
And that, those were as small as, a parent and, and car line saying, Oh, they're full of crap. They didn't say crap, but they're, they're full of crap, Miss Mickey. And it's okay, we can say crap. There's
Scott Lee: another, there's another word, a similar word that we can't say,
Caroline Mickey: it was, little things like that Just people saying like, we support you.
There was somebody on the street to my school that says, we, we support our librarian. And they didn't even have, students. They were just people in the community who were following the story. I got emails from all over the country. From people who were, being supportive of people who said the work that I was doing was important, that had they experienced a Mother's Day lesson like that when they were in school, it would have helped immensely because, their mom left at an age and so they were always sort of set twiddling their thumbs creating Mother's Day projects.
I had a, another person who was actually a graduate of my school system who said that they were raised Southern Baptist and they were also, LGBTQIA plus. And , they grew up with a very intense hatred of themselves and it's something they've been working on as an adult and that they were so grateful that there were educators like me who were trying, to just show that, having two dads is normal because it is.
And. It was a lot of really wonderful, powerful things like that. There's a local organization in Chattanooga called the Chattanooga Moms for Social Justice. And they started a change. org petition. I think it got up to 1700 signatures, I think was the where it stopped to have the lesson reinstated. There were four people who went and spoke at the school board meeting that happened the following week after the lesson was canceled.
Three of the four who spoke in support of the lesson were parents from my school. I had a student.
Send me an email. , they had watched their parent speak at the school board meeting, and they wrote their own speech as if they were going to speak before the school board, and in it they said that they couldn't imagine my school without me there, and that I was the reason that they loved to read, because I took the time to figure out what they wanted to read.
If I talk too much more about it, I'll cry. I've cried pretty much every time I talk about it, I mean, that's what you want, right? As a teacher, like, that's what you want as an educator, I don't feel like I did anything special with that student. They told me what they wanted, and I took my professional knowledge and said, okay, well, have you looked at this, or have you looked at this, and I handed them the book, and , I had their parents come to me and say like, I really need you to know that they like to read now because of you.
Full stop. We tried, we did everything that we, that we could, but it was you. And so just to know that, that speech, I have a copy of it. that's something I'm going to carry forever. I had people from Maine, people from California, people from Kentucky, people from Florida telling me all of these incredible, beautiful stories that they shared with me about this lesson.
It was very surreal to know that, I teach, my school is small. I teach 300 ish students every year and to know that I was going to read these two books about how people have. Motherly figures, and it, and it touched this many people. It was really, at first it was very disheartening to experience that kind of attention.
And then once sort of all of these beautiful letters and messages of support started pouring in, it reminded me why I, I do what I do. Just to, because books, books have that power. And I just. And I love that. Don't get me talking too much about it. I could talk forever about mirrors and windows and sliding glass doors and the power of literature.
Scott Lee: Two things I'm curious about. First off, has this changed? Your thought process or your decision making process, and also for other educators out there, what advice would you offer when they're thinking about, some kind of content that might be controversial?
Caroline Mickey: I, I don't think I've personally changed. I know that policies have sort of been changing around me, not necessarily distinctly because of what happened, but just sort of the state of Tennessee right now. I don't think that I've done anything that changed because the books are still in the library.
They just might not be a part of a lesson now, but I still have them. That sort of leads into my advice is just follow the policy because that's what I did. I, I followed the policy. I did everything I was supposed to do. And, you know, unfortunately it didn't go the way that I wanted.
But, that's also part of the reason why I still have my job. Is because I did what I was supposed to do. I did my due diligence. I let people know. I gave them the option to opt out. I listed what I was going to be reading. And I gave what I thought was the appropriate amount of time, which at the time was what was in the policy, an appropriate amount of time, I think was the exact words.
It's now been changed to a, I think two weeks now, it says in the policy two weeks. So, personally, no, I haven't changed. I'm definitely a little bit more cynical now about, The community that I live in which is I think something that happens just with age in general, but also just going through being on the national stage, when it comes to anything that you're worried that might be controversial is like make sure that it has educational value and follow the policy because if you do those two things If everybody else follows the rules, then you should be fine
Scott Lee: It does open a can of worms. Do you ever worry that that policies like this are going to just make it easier? I mean, I think about it, when I was, a middle and high school social studies teacher, sometimes. I might be within that two week window on a potentially controversial issue or content, and having been a social studies teacher, controversial content is part of the job.
Caroline Mickey: It's very, a very vague description as well.
Scott Lee: Do you worry in general that that is going to keep people, is that going to
And of course, and not talking about these things probably is
Caroline Mickey: not good for students. Right. When it comes to classroom teachers, they have the added protection of the curriculum being available. So at any point, they can say, this is the curriculum. This is what we will be studying. When it comes to, especially like related art stuff, we don't have a set curriculum.
Librarians have standards created by the American Association of School Librarians, and we try to align those as best we can with state standards. And we have the skills that we want to teach. Libraries sort of exist outside of that classroom curriculum dynamic.
With classroom teachers, they sort of have that. Added protection, but I worry all the time about the direction that policies seem to be, to be going, when they pass the age appropriateness bill and in all of it's very vague language, it's all, it's all couched in protecting children, but the, the books that are being singled out because of these laws and policies, I think really tell the truth.
Of what people are trying to do because when you say that a book that has LGBTQIA plus characters when you say is inappropriate or when you, when you say that a book that is written, by a BIPOC author or is about a BIPOC character and you're saying that it's, it's explicit, it's inappropriate, it's, , pornographic is a word that is thrown around a lot.
What you were saying about that experience is that it's not a valid experience. It needs to be pushed aside. It's not, it's not appropriate to learn about. So therefore, it is not appropriate to know about. Where, in fact, these people exist. Their stories exist. They're being silenced.
They're trying to tell their stories. And they're trying to say, this is what's happening. And people are saying, well, that's inappropriate. It's not inappropriate. It's reality. And the, the conversation always comes back to, especially with LGBTQIA plus books is that kids don't need to be learning about sex.
And a book like Stella Brings the Family, everyone is fully clothed the whole time. And it's said that the kids don't need to be learning about this because they're too young. I've been married all eight years that I have been an elementary school librarian. I have been pregnant twice. And... It was never an issue.
You know, I talk about my husband all the time. I talk about my kids all the time. , if the problem is that I say, if I were to say my wife instead of my husband, then the issue is not who I choose to spend my personal time with. The issue is that you're uncomfortable talking to somebody else or that you think that this kind of...
quote unquote lifestyle, not a lifestyle is wrong. I veered off. I do that. The, the policies, they're, they're very targeted and they're trying to not be targeted because these people don't want to be called homophobic. They don't want to be called transphobic. And so they always bring it back to, you know, you're a pervert, you're a pedophile.
They use all of these very harsh words, and the words that they use are very intentional. They use the word child when the majority of these books are for young adults, they're for teenagers, for 15, 16, 17, , teens on the cusp of being adults who are fully capable of understanding, who are trying to learn, who they are in the world.
But they use the word child because then you think of a six year old or seven year old.
Scott Lee: What do you think about the role of educator professional organizations?
I'm thinking both, unions, but also, professional organizations like, ALA, and state affiliates. And also, content area organizations. So I'm thinking when I say professional organizations, I'm, I'm talking about the widest range.
What do you see as their role in helping support, educators like you who have potentially, run into, problems, in the community, what do you see as their role? Do you think they're doing a good enough job?
Caroline Mickey: I think, I think that's, it's, it's sort of multifaceted. So at the, at the very base of it, it's just support, our, The HCEA rep for my area, he reached out to me.
And that's the local affiliate of the National Education Association. Right, yeah. And so when, he reached out to me almost immediately. And said, you know, how are you doing? I can come in and talk with you. He was the first one to ask me, did you clear this with your principal?
I said yes. He said, then you're fine. He said, everything else is just going to be a lot of, a lot of talk, but if at any point you were called into a meeting that you feel is any way going to be disciplinary, call me. So I think at their very base, it's just support. And so I'm a member of ALA and the Tennessee Library Association.
I'm a member of the American Association of School Librarians and its state, affiliate. Tennessee Association of School Librarians, for me, it was mostly just emotional and moral support. I had people reaching out to me, asking how I was doing, if I needed anything. If you need something like we can connect you to resources that you need , if this becomes an official complaint Turn it in to the American Library Association so they can track, book bans and, and, book challenges.
I think a lot of those organizations are doing the best that they can. Because especially Tennessee Association of School Librarians or TASL, it's entirely volunteer run. Every single person who is a part of that organization is also a school librarian. And they have a full time job
I don't exactly know how that works for, like, the National Education Association and the one for my county as well. But... They still take the time and they're the ones who are showing up. I go to all the school board meetings now and they're there as well to speak up to talk about, the memorandum of understanding with our district.
They're the ones who are showing up and they're trying to get people involved. I think it's hard in, especially in the South, because people hear the word union and they tend to sort of back away from it. It's sort of been ingrained in us, right, to not trust unions because we're not taught that unions are responsible for the five day work week and for weekends and for the 40 hour work week and no child, and child labor laws and we, we're not taught that, which is a whole other conversation, I think they're doing the best that they can, especially with more and more sort of rules and regulations coming their way, and, and teachers don't make a whole lot of money.
So I think to be a member of my professional organization it's expensive. And so that's hard to like, look at that number and say, okay, is it worth it? But my answer to that question is always going to be yes, because regardless of what you're doing, if you're a preschool art teacher all the way up to a 12th grade science teacher, you need your people.
And because I had my people in a variety of places, I had people to turn to when it became overwhelming.
Scott Lee: It's interesting to me that you're discussing, advocacy and professional advocacy. With a self care component to it, because we don't always discuss that when we talk about advocacy, a topic we have on this podcast a lot, and yet we've never discussed advocacy in terms of.
Self care and, and professional care, , for others in the profession. Yeah,
Caroline Mickey: I had a sort of kismet. I had a meeting with my therapist sort of when, when things were kind of at their height, I just happened. She was like, so how are you doing? And I'm like, You're about to earn it today. And so I was telling her everything that had happened and how the lesson had been cancelled and how I felt like I'd lost and , these terrible people won and they got what they wanted and I just, I just felt so terrible.
And she said, Do you think that Rosa Parks, when she got arrested, felt that she had won? And in no way am I comparing myself to the incredible things that sparked. after Rosa Parks chose to sit. But it was a very good reminder of, okay, yes, my lesson was canceled. That's a loss. But now all these people are talking about it.
And completely independent of me, it was on The View. I mean, I, I spoke to the Washington Post, I had an interview with them. But The View picked it up, they didn't say my name, they said my school, and then they gave everybody in the audience Mother Bruce and Stella Brings the Family. One of the, oh gosh, I can't remember her name, but
. One of the, one of the women on The View called what this group was doing, "a paper genocide" because of the books that they were targeting and I was like, okay.
All I did was want to read a story about a girl with two dads on Mother's Day and now I have somebody on a national stage hearing the words paper genocide and what's happening. And so, after that, I was able to sort of calm down a little bit. My therapist said to me, when you have these big civil rights things that are happening, they don't happen all at once.
It happens, a chip at a time. You're breaking down the wall a chip at a time. And she said, just don't, just don't break your hammer. And, I told her later that that's been like my, my rallying cry basically now when I talk to other librarians about, about doing this work and she goes, I don't even remember saying that and I was like, do you realize how good of a therapist you are that you give me like this life changing advice and you don't even remember saying it like, but yeah, so that's been my new thing is like, don't break your hammer, you can only care about so many things in a day and so maybe today you care about your advocacy.
Maybe tomorrow you care about, That you eat a really good dinner and so finding that balance if it doesn't have to be all the things all the time Because especially as educators We really tend to pick up a lot of baggage that other people drop and it can be hard to put that down And remember that we're worthy of care as well
Scott Lee: Any other advice or what kind of resources would you suggest for somebody who finds themselves in a similar situation?
Caroline Mickey: Remember that a lot of the hate comes from a small, very, very loud minority that has very good marketing. That was something that I sort of kept going back to because I did the thing you're not supposed to do, I went and read the comments, but,
but a lot of those comments were positive, it was a lot of people who were defending, a lot of people who were standing up for the lesson, for me, for minority groups in general, and go to your school board meetings. , I, I can verify that they are not the most riveting way to spend an evening, but I'm also much more aware of what's happening in my district, and I'm starting to get recognized because I'm there.
It's unfortunate that the accessibility to some meetings isn't great, especially for public educators, but in being physically present, I am now in the room. I'm not at the table, but I'm in the room and whenever I go to some sort of event that is in any way school related.
I look for the people in charge. So like if the superintendent's there, I go up and I say, thank you for being here. I don't introduce myself. I don't make it about me. I just say, thank you for being here. I appreciate it. And I'll do that. If the school board members are there, if the principals are there, , the County commissioners, anybody who's there that is making those decisions, any chance that you can get to remind them that what they do affects.
what you're trying to do in your building. So their decisions, they just sort of get to make them and then go home. Whereas teachers, we're the ones that are holding the buildings up. We're the ones that are making what we can out of what other people decide. And so going to your school board meetings, being known to your to your school board, being known to your county commissioners, just being known.
I mean, that was something that I was told a lot when I was in library school was, make sure that you're known. Show up to the PTA meetings, let people know what you're doing because if, if you don't tell the story, somebody else is going to tell the story and they're going to get it wrong.
Even with the best intentions, they're going to get it wrong because especially school librarians. We're the only ones in the building. There might be, , two or three second grade teachers. There might be, like 15 kindergartens.
But there's still only one school librarian. Maybe they have an assistant to help, but we're sort of solo people. And so we know what we're talking about because we experience it. Yeah. So just say stuff. But also just be comfortable in knowing that like showing up to work is. Advocacy in itself, like that's, that's approach.
There’s a librarian in Georgia Cicely Lewis. She's the founder of the Read-woke Challenge and somebody was asking her, you know, like, why are you out marching in the streets? And she said, because I'm 40 and I'm tired, but also my existence is. Is a protest. The fact that I am continuing to teach after I received all this backlash like that in itself feels like a protest that I still show up that I still do interviews that I still talk about it.
That alone feels like a protest. I'm also on Instagram, where I post randomly. I'll post things related to school, yesterday I posted, Heroes of the Water Monster as a book recommendation. So if you want random memes and elementary school things, you can follow me on @heylibraryteacher on Instagram, cause that's what kids call me anyway.
So now, I used to get really annoyed when people would say, hey library teacher, but now every time I hear it I'm like, I made the right choice. That one's really fun. And then pretty much any advice that I've ever gotten on, on being more aware is, you know, follow writers of color, follow, LGBTQIA plus authors, read the books.
Everything that I think I've ever learned ranging from how to appropriately talk about. The trans experience when it is not mine, to how to help neurodivergent people to the history of indigenous cultures. I've learned from books, from fiction books, from historical fiction books, from nonfiction books.
Reading builds empathy and I think that's one reason why people are so scared of it. Is because when you start to build empathy and you start to see people who are different from you as human beings, it becomes a lot more difficult to dehumanize them. And it becomes a lot more difficult to take away the things that are their humanity.
Cause , that's something that really drives me forward is that , if I enjoy all of the freedoms that come with being a straight white cis, Married woman, but I don't want those same freedoms for everyone else. Then, what I'm enjoying is not freedom. What I'm enjoying is privilege and I can't abide that.
Scott Lee: Thank you very much for joining us today on the Thoughtful Teacher podcast.
Caroline Mickey: Thank you. This was, it was a lot of fun. I had a good time. Cool.
Scott Lee: The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is brought to you as a service of Oncourse Education Solutions. If you would like to learn more about how we partner with schools and youth organizations strengthening learning cultures and developing more resilient youth, please visit our website at w w w dot oncoursesolutions dot net.
This has been episode 11 of the 2023 season. If you enjoy this podcast, please tell your friends and colleagues about us, in person and on social media. We also greatly appreciate positive reviews on your favorite podcast app. The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is a production of Oncourse Education Solutions LLC, Scott Lee executive producer, in partnership with Chattanooga Podcast Studios. We encourage diverse opinions, however, opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of producer, partners or underwriters. Guest was not compensated for appearance, nor did guest pay to appear. Episode notes, links and transcripts are available at our website www.thoughtfulteacherpodcast.com. Theme music is composed and performed by Audio Coffee. Please follow me on social media, my handle on Instagram and Twitter is @drrscottlee and on Mastodon @drrscottlee@universedon.com
