Being a future educator having the right tools is key. You can have a district that provides you with everything, or you have to develop all your resources. Whichever the case, you should have the resources to help your classroom and students, be aware of global activities and education.

With the Global Educator Toolkit comes tons of resources for every grade. The one I liked the best for grades K-8 was the Center for the Study of Multicultural Children’s Literature, or CSMSL. Their website tells you they are among the leading research center for multicultural literature. Our classrooms should reflect our students and include a variety of cultures. I want books with every culture in my classroom so each child feels represented and included. CSMSL provides recent and historically significant multicultural children’s books.

A few multicultural books from CSMCL’s collection.

On CSMCL’s website, you can find “Best Books of” from 2013 to current. This year, 2023 hasn’t been posted yet. You can click on any of the years you like, scroll through the book covers and look at the books that pique your interest. You can click on individual books and the CSMCL website will bring you to another website, Goodreads where you will have the option to go to more sites to purchase the book or download a kindle version.

It is a lot of steps to purchase a book to read, but I really like this as a resource in the classroom. I’m a big reader, and I will encourage my students to do the same. I hope to have many of these books on my shelves available so my students can browse online here and then check them out in person. The other option is that if my students see a book they are interested in or want to learn about, I can always see if I can get that book for my class.

Including global resources as an educator is so important. What steps will you be taking so your students are more globally aware? Share your ideas so we can grow together!