Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations

New Educator Resource

Beloved readers,

As we resume teaching and learning for another semester/ season, I have a tremendous new educator resource to share! I have been spending time with Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations: Exalting Home Experiences and Classroom Practices in Collective Care (Stenhouse/ Routledge December 2023) over winter break. It has been such an informative, wisdom filled and heartwarming read that I was moved to reach out to the brilliant author for a written interview (shared below).

I truly hope that after reading this newsletter, you will be moved to study, share and amplify this important work with educators and caregivers in your communities.

With care,

Desi book aunty

About the author:

Nawal Qarooni is a Jersey City-based educator, writer and adjunct professor who supports a holistic approach to literacy instruction and family experiences in schools across the country. Drawing on her work as an inquiry-based leader, mother of four, and proud daughter of immigrants, Nawal’s pedagogy is centered in the rich and authentic learning all families gift their children every day. She and her team of coaches at NQC Literacy work with schools and districts to collectively grow teacher practice and children’s literacy lives. She is the author of Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations: Exalting Home Experiences and Classroom Practices in Collective Care (Stenhouse/ Routledge December 2023). In addition, she is a member of the National Council for Teachers of English Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English; she evaluates manuscripts for Reese Witherspoon’s LitUp program, which platforms historically underrepresented voices in publishing; and she serves on the Library of Congress Literacy Awards Advisory Board, which funds powerful literacy programming across the country. Nawal holds a Bachelor of English from the University of Michigan, a Master of Teaching from Brooklyn College, and a Master of Journalism from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School. She won a New Jersey Press Association Award for her international reporting and transitioned into education as a New York City Teaching Fellow. You can learn more about her and her work at NQCLiteracy.org.

In Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations: Elevating Home Experiences and Classroom Practices for Collective Care, Nawal Qarooni invites us to step beyond school-centric, one-off events and practices to create more authentic, engaging collaborations with caregivers. Instead of asking what families can do to support schools, Qarooni asks how schools can identify and celebrate what families already inherently bring to their children’s literacy learning.

Establishing this work in holistic teaching―a pedagogical mindset that affirms the importance of loving the whole child through compassionate, collective care―Qarooni explores five critical literacy tenets by highlighting opportunities to listen for, honor, connect to, and elevate family strengths while inviting them even further into our shared work and encouraging reflection around:

Recognizing the journey of process,

Celebrating the role collaboration plays within the collective

Using observational literacy to read the world

Advocating for the power of talk to grow ideas and connect with others

Giving children choice to make self-directed decisions

With moments of memoir woven in alongside diverse family examples and classroom stories connected to realistic instructional practices, Qarooni shows how all families contribute meaningfully to their children’s literacy lives. Discover how we can tap into those vast wells to support learning at home and in school while building positive, reciprocal relationships across both settings.

With an afterword by En Comunidad authors, Carla España and Luz Yadira Herrera, Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations is rooted in the simple truth that we cannot separate knowing our students from knowing their home, communities, and the people that they love. This book offers a toolkit for connecting with families and elevating the intrinsic strengths that reside in every child’s home.

Interview:

Please share a bit about your publication journey and what prompted you to create this book.

I had been a longtime writer because of my background in newspaper journalism. As a teacher of literacy, I was always trying to elevate authentic, out-of-classroom literacy practices. But it wasn’t until during the covid pandemic, when I was at home juggling four young children and supporting teachers virtually as a literacy coach, that I understood that families of all kinds were doing the same work that teachers were hoping to accomplish. 

I realized that educating and caregiving were actually quite synonymous; that families, in all of their diverse and nuanced ways, have been storytelling, reading the world, processing information, tackling challenges and building rituals with their children- forever. In all languages. In all sorts of spaces.

At the time, I knew very few people in education publishing. I emailed publishers with my proposal to their general information boxes. When I finally secured a contract, I solidified my ideas in research and practice with Chicago Public Schools, where I was tasked with interviewing stakeholders to determine a framework for family literacy engagement.

The stories in the book start with family strengths, move into classroom application ideas, and toggle back to family connection, so that we - as educators - might communicate more effectively with families in pursuit of the same goals.

You weave memoir in with family examples and classroom stories and connect literacy practices holistically. Would you please share a bit more about your holistic education approach?

The truth is, I believe that literacy teaching is the teaching of what it means to be human (Qarooni page 11). To cultivate in children a sense of community, connectedness, responsibility, and belonging. To give children the tools to communicate effectively in all sorts of settings; to stand up for what’s right; to problem-solve; to be literate in media and on the internet; to ask questions. And perhaps above all, to lead with curiosity, empathy and compassion. A holistic literacy approach, in my scholarship and practice, weaves what we aim to achieve to grow readers, writers and thinkers with foundational skills and every other building block that will support kids in navigating our world. At the heart is love, care and consideration, not only for children, but for their families. We cannot separate knowing the children from knowing their families, and their rich, multilayered identities.

As with all work around identity-building and knowing oneself, this must start with taking a long, hard look at how we ourselves were shaped. Because of the diverse ways we were all raised, we naturally have biases and tendencies that then seep into the ways we communicate with families - and make decisions for their children in our classroom. Holistic literacy practice means taking periodic pauses to reflect and ask oneself if individual children and their processes are at the center of the decision being made. It means ensuring that families of all kinds, and mistake-making, and varied ways of communicating stories, are represented in the texts of a classroom. It means defining text widely, to encompass literacy practices of all sorts.

You are an experienced educator. Please share how these experiences informed your writing and pedagogy. How might you imagine Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations being used by teachers and caregivers alike as a resource?

As both a classroom teacher and a literacy coach, I believe knowing students individually and celebrating each of them on their journey is the most important part of their own learning growth. I always wanted my students to know that I cared for each of them deeply, and that even if I didn’t know the answer to something, we could learn and problem-solve together. When I became a mother, I wanted less for my children to bring home perfectly polished work and 100s, because I knew as a teacher how context-based and imperfect grading practices are, and instead for them to show me their messy thinking all over the page. I wanted them to passionately and excitedly care to learn more about a certain topic, and grow their own interests and hobbies - not forced projects about single topics; no siloed learning about peoples in specific calendar months. All of these desires and understandings from both teaching and mothering show up in this book.

It is my hope that teachers will use the book as a toolkit to communicate more compassionately and empathetically with families. I provide a framework for how to better honor, listen, invite and elevate family experiences in classroom practice – in ways that don’t feel cumbersome or like an add-on. I share the steps for crafting “family labsites,” to invite families into school spaces beyond one-off literacy nights, so that they may observe and take part in shared literacy experiences like map-making, storytelling and reading art together with their children.

For caregivers, I hope they’ll reach for this book to learn a bit more about how literacy classrooms operate these days, helping them reflect on what considerations teachers grapple with when making decisions for children. Many of my non-educator friends have appreciated this book as an eye-opener for the process-oriented and authentic, everyday natural tendencies they have as caregivers to be considered literacy learning. They said they realized that sharing their own expertise around their Maman bozorg’s cake-making, for example, or extending grieving rituals for loved ones a world over, actually amounts to story-telling fodder that their children might tap into and share in a loving, holistic classroom.

And for both educators and caregivers, I hope this book provides plenty of validation and warmth for what we are already getting right.

I can visualize your book being a valuable resource for KidLit creatives and writers for children. How do you see them benefitting from your book as they craft their stories?

I often collaborate with KidLit creatives and know from their own reflection that often, they felt the writing processes in schools were stifling. They were meant to fill out an organizer; they were meant to write in prompted, fill-in-the blank ways. While many of our schools still use these sorts of writing teaching practices, we know that creativity is often stifled. That kids who want to tell stories have secret writing lives. There are parts of my book that share ways to break down writing teaching into more authentic experiences that serve children outside of classroom walls. My book might help to remind KidLit creators about the importance of centering child voice in their own stories and making sure their stories feel like invitations to their readers. Kidlit creators want to nourish and spark kids and this text reminds us of just that.

Praise for the book:

Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations is the book we all need to fuel our practice and feed our souls. Nawal Qarooni has gifted us with a book that truly celebrates the beautiful connections between home and school. We are invited to center love, honor families and the journey of learning, and make connections beyond the classroom walls with our community. Qarooni’s book is inspiring and necessary and I feel like I’ve been waiting for this book for way too long.

―Tiffany Jewell, Author of the #1 New York Times-bestselling book This Book Is Anti-Racist, educator and mama

Nawal’s book is a gift to educators and caregivers alike. Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations is a beautiful reminder and proactive resource to cultivate and sustain family partnerships.

―Liz Sohyeon Kleinrock, Author of Start Here Start Now: A Guide to Antibias and Antiracist Work in Your School Community

Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations is a must-read. Nawal’s practical, insightful, reflective, and honest approach beautifully illustrates how we can embrace the power of collective care in our classrooms.

―Britt Hawthorne, New York Times-bestselling author of Raising Antiracist Children: A Practical Parenting Guide

Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations is a compelling and thought-provoking book. Nawal Qarooni uses her personal experiences as both a parent and an educator to highlight the value of genuine family engagement in promoting the success of students.

―Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Ph.D. Professor and author of Advancing Racial Literacies in Teacher Education: Activism for Equity in Digital Spaces, Teachers College, Columbia University

If educators truly want to embrace families and include them at school, this book offers guidance for building better relationships and challenges biases and misconceptions about what families need and expect for their children.

―Donalyn Miller, Author and teacher

A stirring and brilliant call to action for everyone invested in the well-being of young people―educators, parents, and KidLit writers alike. Qarooni provides a framework for how we can better exalt young people in all of their complexity, braiding together their lived experiences from school to home and everything in between. This book gave me so much to think about as both a parent and as a writer and advocate for young people.

―Jasmine Warga, Author of A Rover’s Story and Other Words for Home

Through a series of deeply personal family stories intertwined with practical tools for reflection and action, Nawal Qarooni challenges educators to recast our conceptions of family literacy engagement and brings to life what truly centering family, community, and relationships can mean for supporting students’ pursuit of advanced literacy.

―Jane Fleming, Coauthor of More Mirrors in the Classroom: Using Urban Children’s Literature to Increase Literacy

This book is both brilliant and artful. Its content, its narrative, and even its gorgeous design bring forward a generous and care-full vision of the relationships between literacy and love, kinship and learning, school and home. What an absolutely stunning treasure.

―Carla Shalaby, Author of Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School

Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations provides a fresh and humanistic perspective into how educators can engage with caregivers in authentic and dynamic ways. This book will warm your educator soul with its beautiful stories and message, inspire you to rethink and reimagine family engagement, and provide practical next steps for application.

―Dr. Cindy Bak, Assistant Director at the Cotsen Foundation for the ART of TEACHING

This book is now available!

Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations: Exalting Home Experiences and Classroom Practices for Collective Care or directly from the publisher, Routledge.