AMHERST — For two years, Amherst-Pelham school officials have been calling on the publisher of an elementary reading program to make changes to what they say is problematic representations of people of color in the books.
The SuperKids curriculum is used to teach phonics to students in kindergarten and first and second grades in several of the district’s schools. Each grade-level edition features the same group of characters. The main problem comes from a shift in the illustrations from the kindergarten and first-grade versions to the second-grade versions, critics say.
For example, Oswald, who is black, appears with a much lighter skin color and different hair texture in the second-grade books compared to how he appears in the kindergarten and first-grade books.
The book addresses this change: “We’ve grown up a bit – now we’re in second grade and look like this.”
As second-grade teachers prepared to teach the curriculum for the first time, they gathered for a professional development workshop in spring 2015. Following that, a “concerned” then-assistant superintendent Michael Morris and Carole Learned-Miller, the former interim director of teaching and learning, wrote a letter to publisher Zaner-Bloser asking the company to reprint the second-grade materials to address the change in skin tone.
“Countless studies have shown both that students of color are underrepresented in children’s literature as well as the negative implications that come for students of all races from this imbalance,” they wrote.
The school officials continued with a quote from children’s literature expert Rudine Sims Bishop: “Students who do not see any reflections of themselves or who only see distorted or comical ones come to understand that they have little value in society in general and in school in particular.”
The publisher agreed to provide the district with a reprinted version of the materials, which were delivered in spring 2016. That version, which features slightly less-lightened skin tones, proved to be unsatisfactory to many teachers, Morris and other school community members, including the Fort River Social Justice Committee.
“The illustrations depicting the 2nd grade characters reflect a white-washing of their racial identities, along with a stunning loss of their racial facial features and corresponding hair textures,” the committee wrote in a June 13 letter to Fort River administrators. “We recognize that the publisher made promises about fixes in a second printing of materials but the actual changes are minimal and inadequate to address the problems.”
Other areas of concern in the curriculum, they wrote, include “stories that depict successful academic students as mostly white, athletic characters who are predominantly of color and the presentation of men and women as opposites.”
Morris, now acting superintendent, has spoken to representatives from Zaner-Bloser several times in recent weeks regarding a more thorough change.
“From my perspective, everyone agrees the change was minor and needs to be much more than just the color,” Morris said in an interview Thursday. He said problems remain with the representation of characters’ features “that involves re-illustrating the book.”
The publisher plans to release a completely re-illustrated version next spring, Morris said.
“At a district level, our expectation is that the materials look different next year,” he said. Zaner-Bloser officials “expressed to me that they are confident that they will be able to meet that demand.”
He said they did not speak about any specifics about what, if any, cost would be passed on to the district.
In his most recent conversation Monday with Jennifer Harris, Zaner-Bloser’s vice president of product development, Morris said he learned one of the reasons the illustrations are so different in the second grade version.
“The illustrator of the K through first grade series actually tragically passed away,” Morris said.
The books are currently used at Fort River, Crocker Farm and Pelham elementary schools. Morris said that Wildwood School Principal Nick Yaffe opted not to use SuperKids at that school in accordance with the majority opinion of the school’s teachers.
Chris Lindahl can be reached at clindahl@gazettenet.com