Banned Books Week Webinar: Navigating Threats to Academic Freedom

For Banned Books Week, Sage hosted a webinar on Wednesday, October 4th, “Navigating Threats to Academic Freedom: Experiences and Needs.” Scholars and researchers shared insights about banned books, academic censorship, and how to support faculty and students alike across the United States.

The webinar, moderated by Meredith Schwartz, featured Pengfei Zhao, Dr. Renee Rice Moran, and Natalia Ward, who shared research on Tennessee's Age-Appropriate Materials Act. Find their research below.

For more about Sage’s efforts to support academic freedom, please visit this webpage.

Transcript

Meredith Schwartz: Hello, everyone and welcome to our Banned Books Week panel navigating threats to academic freedom. We're just going to wait a few more moments so everyone can join the webinar.

Hi, if you're just joining us, you're in the right place. I'm just waiting a few more minutes because I see more people still joining. And then we'll get going.

All right, I do want to get started, even though I see those numbers still ticking up, because we've got a lot to talk about today. So thank you again, welcome to our Banned Books Week panel navigating threats to academic freedom. Thank you for joining us. I got a few housekeeping points to run through quickly, before we get into the content proper. The webinar will be recorded and it'll be shared with everyone who registered. So if you had a colleague who can't make it, you can still pass this on to them, they haven't lost their chance. And if you can come then I don't know why I'm talking to you. We'll also have time at the end for audience questions. We're going to try to leave about 15 minutes for that. But you can submit your questions at any time during the q&a box at the bottom of the screen. You don't have to wait till the end to ask you can ask what you think about it. And we'll just surface it at the end. We have turned off the chat because there's so many people coming that it would just be a flood, so ask your questions to us and we'll address them online. We would however love your feedback. Also afterwards, there'll be a form to submit your feedback and it'll come in the follow up email after the webinar. So I'm Meredith Schwartz. I'll be your moderator today. I'm the managing editor of CQ Researcher which if you don't know we publish weekly reports on issues in the news. We've unfortunately our politicization of Education report isn't quite out yet, but I do think you might enjoy it if you check it out when it does publish in November. Before that, I was editor in chief of Library Journal so I've been following this book band situation for some time. And now I'm delighted to introduce today's panelists of Pengfei Zhao, Renee Rice Moran and Natalia Ward. Pengei, would you like to introduce yourself?

Pengfei Zhao: Sure, thank you, Meredeith for having me here today. My name is Pengfei Zhao, and right now I'm an assistant professor in the Department of Integrated Studies of education at McGill University Canada. Well, I actually just moved here this past summer. Before that I was an assistant professor of research methodology at the University of Florida, and I stayed in Florida for four years before I moved here. Very honored to be part of this panel. Yes. I look forward to the conversation.

Meredith: Thank you. Renee, can you introduce yourself?

Renee Moran: Sure. Hi, everyone. I'm Renee Moran, and I'm an associate professor of literacy at East Tennessee State University. Prior to that, I was an elementary teacher in San Diego, California and in Asheville, North Carolina, in elementary school. So and I'm very happy to be here with you all today.

Meredith: Thank you for that. Natalia, can you introduce yourself?

Natalia Ward: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for having me with this wonderful bunch of folks today. I'm Natalia Ward. I teach literacy and English as a Second Language Education courses, and the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at ETSU. I teach with Renee. Prior to that I was an English as a Second Language teacher working with elementary bilingual children.

Meredith: Great, thank you so much. So we're gonna kick things off with a presentation from Rene and Natalia.

Renee: Ok everybody, I'm just sharing my screen here. All right, Natalia is going to start us off.

Natalia: Sure. All right. When Renee and I were preparing for the webinar, we thought as we engage in today's discussion, we wanted to ground our contribution within a specific piece of legislation representative in our view of the issue at hand, and that works to create a context conducive to censorship and book challenges. So the age appropriate materials act of 2022 requires schools to maintain a current list of the materials in the school's library collection. The list must be available to the members of the public. And the school governing body such as a school board, for example, must establish a process for developing and reviewing school, and actually also classroom library collections. Given that school libraries and classrooms often have similar procedures in place already, we as researchers and teacher educators wanted to try and understand the purpose of the law, and its impact on new and experienced teachers in our state.

Renee: My apologies, so it's doing something weird. There we go. Sorry, all don't know why it's doing that to me. Here we go. I probably pressed the wrong button. Okay, so here on this slide, you can see a graph of our project. And piggybacking on what Natalia said, this led us to design a project to examine not only the policy itself and its path through legislation, which we were interested in, but also to understand how this app finds its ways to teachers and impacts their professional lives and their daily experiences with the children they teach. So far, we have completed the first two steps of this project. So you can see step stage one is the analysis of legislative session videos and bills. And we actually videoed and analyzed the sessions in which this bill was discussed and approved. And we are currently in stage two where we're collecting and qualitatively analyzing teacher interviews. All right, so I'm going to talk a little more about sorry, I don't know why this is messing up on me guys. I'm really sorry. All right. So this slide talks about the stage one legislative sessions and bills. So when attending to the language of policy is written and discussed and the legislative meeting, we noticed that the policy revolved around three overarching questions. What can children read? Who gets to decide and check, and how do things get done? The policy itself states that a library collection at each school must be, in quotes, appropriate for the age and maturity levels of the students who may access the materials, and the material is suitable for and consistent with the educational mission of the school. Basically, each school gets to establish a procedure for material review or removal based on concerns that can come from either a student from a student's parent or guardian or from a school employee. But one of the things we noted is that the language of the policy itself really leaves a lot of room for interpretation, because the terms age appropriate or educational mission of the schools and others like them are really not well defined in the context of the law. In the legislative sessions, the policy was presented in two very different ways. On one hand, it was presented as a process oriented procedure that would allow for community input, would provide flexibility for teachers in schools, and would place local control and decision making in the hands of local schools. For example, one lawmaker noted, there's nothing in this bill that bans any books. On the other hand, the law was presented as a new and burdensome, they use the words administrative regime, that will require a tremendous amount of time and is served the authority of librarians and teachers and professionals and decision makers. One legislator commented, this is in quotes, I'm truly concerned about what we're doing, limiting the information and access to knowledge and resources for our children to get a full and appropriate education in our schools. And another said, I think we're going to look back and realize that our already overly burdened schools really were not assisted by this new administrative regime that you're asking us to create. In the end, a large majority of the chamber voted in favor of the bill.

Natalia: As we engaged in the second stage of our project and began interviewing teachers, similar themes were brought to the fore. Teachers overwhelmingly expressed their increased concern regarding the corrosion of trust between schools and communities, imposed by this barrage of top-down laws and regulations. They also discussed the lack of autonomy they feel and materials selection in their classrooms, while at the same time highlighting the importance of representation of all children, and the books they have available to them. When teachers shared a concern with keeping the sense of community in the classroom, and fear of making the wrong choice when it comes to novel studies, or supplementary reading selection. Yet, other interview participants took a more agentive stance when discussing the kinds of books that they have in their classrooms. One teacher for example, shared, I carefully select the books that I have, and I stand by those selections. Overall, the interviews highlight the corrosive impact of this law that creates a sense of fear and anxiety on the part of educators. Several reported classroom library books being removed altogether, or units of study being revised to avoid topics that may cause a challenge. One teacher made the decision to just read from the textbook and only use the materials the state provides it. Teachers also lament that the new law neglects the power of books as windows and mirrors for students’ lives, a powerful concept developed by Bishop, as well as the power of books and igniting a lifelong love of reading. Some of the challenge books are actually the ones that get students interested in reading in the first place.

Renee: Again, sorry. So in our interviews with teachers, we've heard about challenges to a number of books, including these that you see on the slide. While the scope of our project doesn't include a content analysis of the books that were removed, however, we might look into that later, we did as teachers, which books were considered divisive. In many cases, the vagueness of the law lifts teachers wondering what fell under the umbrella of divisive texts. There were different answers across a variety of districts. Teachers that we interviewed shared that the books were most frequently challenged, that were most frequently challenged focused on the topics of race, gender, centered LGBTQ plus characters or had magic or mythology. For example, one teacher reported that Percy Jackson had been a beloved favorite in her classroom for years. She noted that the book inspired her students to read and that she even caught them sneaking to read that book during other subjects. And lots of them were asking, Can I have the second one? Can I have the third one? Unfortunately, she ended up having to remove those books because of one parent complaint. And that that's the end of our share there.

Meredith: Thank you so much for your patience as I convinced them to let me unmute. So now that we've had that, to orient us, I did want to briefly address a question that came in this law is specific to Tennessee. But this problem is not specific to Tennessee, there are different laws that are similar to this and use similar mechanisms and cause similar effects in other places. Renee and Natalia understandably wanted to speak to their own research and the context that they have. But this is absolutely applicable across the country, and possibly into Canada also, but I don't I don't want to overstate. I'll let Pengfei speak to that.

So the first question I wanted to talk about is what kind of book banning and more broadly academic censorship policies have you seen in your research or in your academic careers? And how is that translating into the classroom?

Renee: Yeah, I can start with that, you know, in our state, as we mentioned, and you were right, Meredith, about that being specific to Tennessee, but we do see very similar policies in many states. And ours it is, it has been titled the age appropriate materials act and what we're seeing in our preliminary findings, we're seeing indications that there are lots of variations in how the laws been enacted and various districts, but in general, we've seen a range of translations from classroom libraries being removed completely to teachers who vow to close their doors and continue using their books. Teachers have noticed this is a very time-consuming process of cataloguing those books, especially some teachers have hundreds or 1000s of books. So we're hearing teachers express fear about the consequences of not following the law and in general move towards scripted curricula, as a replacement for teacher selected materials, taking that choice away. In many environments, veering from that selected, state selected curriculum is not being allowed.

Meredith: Pengfei, did you want to speak to this issue?

Pengfei: Yeah, I'm just trying to unmute myself. So I think, as Meredith and Natalia, you mentioned, this is not an issue that's specific to one state. And as most of the audience perhaps are aware, Florida has passed also several controversial state bills that have been met with pushback from both both nationally and locally. So what I can do is I can speak from my previous experience as higher education professional University professor, you mentioned teaching and research and your practice? Well, I was in Florida. So Renee and Natalia have given us like an example from the state of Tennessee. But you know, the several controversial state bills passed in Florida. I think one of the examples I will give is the perhaps, you know, widely reported by the public media as well is the Florida House Bill seven in 2022, or HB seven, also known as the stop woke act, and the bill prohibits the discussion of several concepts regarding race, color, national or national origin, and sexual orientation, university training and instruction. So later, the federal judge blocked the bill from taking effect in public higher education institutions, for its violation of the First Amendment. But before it being blocked, because of the bill, if enforced, would directly impact the teaching and training practice. In my then institution, the University of Florida, my colleagues and I, we had to engage in lengthy conversations in deciphering the legally worded regulation to decide what would be the best teaching practice and the researcher circumstance. And this bill is just a one of the examples that pose a threat to the academic freedom that we discussed today here. So there are some other state legislative moves that raise wide concerns among university instructors. For instance, another bill, House Bill 233, also called the Florida intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity bill requires all public university faculty, staff and students to take a political beliefs survey. And this survey is claimed to be anonymous. But faculty members really questioned the anonymity of the survey as quite some identifiable information of public university faculty members, are public record in Florida. So the reason the implementation, also of the post tenure review for all tenured faculty members in state universities, has further made faculty members more vulnerable. And putting this together my experience with higher education is that the concerns and the threats are systematic and multi dimensional, including but not limited to the attempt or to directly censoring what can and cannot be taught in university classrooms. But it also deliberate moves to make the individual faculty members more vulnerable and your higher education institutions less autonomous.

Natalia: I'll add one more thing that's alright with you guys. As I was listening to Rene and Pengfei talk, I started thinking about that we all have to be mindful about the impact of these laws, you know, such as Tennessee's age appropriate materials Act, and the laws that are happening all around the country, and teacher preparation curricula, and what happens in higher education classes. I'll give you an example from my work as a literacy professor. In literacy courses, we often discuss reading motivation, and engagement, we often talk about the power of representation and access to books that allowed children to pursue their individual intellectual goals. So both school and classroom libraries offer a very democratic and leveled space, if you will, that allows for that, and contributes so much to igniting student's love of reading, which in turn leads to higher frequency and volume of reading, which in turn leads to becoming a better reader overall, right. So in the current context of the censorship policies and book challenges that we see, however, we also now introduce our teacher candidates to this new legislation, and offer them an opportunity to critically engage with its content, and to consider how creating a diverse classroom library, on the one hand may be a powerful motivator for students, but on the other hand, an opportunity for potential challenges. So this has been an interesting change for us, how we connect our students to policies.

Meredith: Thank you, Natalia. And I do want to briefly note, before we move on to my next question that while we've been very focused on classroom teachers. This is definitely also affecting school librarians and their collections. And it's also even spreading now to public libraries. Not this particular act, but but this movement in general. So my next question is, what reaction has there been from parents in K12 schools to both this legislation and the district's attempts to grapple with this legislation.

Renee: I can get us started on that one. Something that's really interesting to think about is that in our interviews, teachers are telling us some of them who've been teaching for 20 to 30 years that prior to this legislation, they rarely ever had a complaint from parents about the books in their classrooms. So and we're hearing that again, and again, one teacher who did receive a complaint in past years noted that most schools already had a policy in place when a parent had an issue. And generally that involved providing that student with an alternate text or some other activity. But what we're really seeing that is a key difference in what's happening now, is that in this environment, one parent can impact the removal of the book from an entire classroom or entire school, that and we did hear examples from parents while we didn't talk directly to parents, teachers shared with us stories about parents, you know, books being removed based on one complaint. So that's, that's a pretty big shift. That's troublesome.

Natalia: Yeah, it's really interesting to hear the perspective of the teachers, you know, talking about what they see from parents and like Renee said, in our interviews with the teachers, we've we've heard about different reactions from parents, right, with some parents having quite strong feelings about certain books in their either school library or classroom library, or literally anywhere that where the children can access the materials. Several teachers mentioned that books exploring issues of race, gender, even mythology and magic, were often on the chopping block. However, just like Renee said, teachers also reported that book challenges came from a very small fraction of parents in their classrooms, but the majority of families had no concerns related to the kinds of texts their children get to read in class.

Meredith: One of the things we talked about ahead of time was that some of the challenges are coming from people who are not parents at all or not parents of school aged children or parents in other districts. Can you talk about who these challenges are coming from if it's not when it's not parents?

Natalia: I think I'll dance around your question a little bit. And say that sometimes perhaps folks with a particular agenda or ideology, really feel strongly about what is happening in the schools, and would like to impose their one perspective on everyone. You know, and sometimes, like you said, it may not be a parent of an actual child and maybe a community member, very concerned community member. What's really interesting and a little bit concerning, actually, is that sometimes the challenges come from folks who never even read the books in their entirety. So they assume a certain fault with the book, and they pursue the challenge without really carefully reading the book, analyzing it and trying to understand why would anyone want to use it? You know, it's, it's interesting, Renee and I were talking about how different organizations, for example, NCTE, provided lots of resources for teachers to justify, provide rationales for why they’re using certain books. And while I think it's wonderful, I also think that if we challenge certain books, we really need to understand why we're challenging them and read the book in its entirety.

Meredith: Great, thank you very much. So one large concern that we've heard about is self-censorship, both in K12 and higher ed, driven either by fear of retribution or by vague language, where people can't figure out what actually is forbidden and are erring on the side of caution. Can you speak to how that's happening? And what can be done about it?

Renee: Yeah, Meredith, that's something we are seeing quite a bit in our findings, and we do attribute it in some part to how vaguely worded the policy is. And we're hearing a lot of confusion amongst teachers. There's not necessarily a clear path, there are some schools that are being given specific lists and others who were just trying to, you know, figure out what does this mean, what does divisive mean? And what rights do they have in terms of text choice, and a portion of our interviewees did report to us that they're not allowed to bring in any supplementary books. And for many of them, those are books that have existed in their classroom library for years and years. And they have to strictly adhere to the books that has been or the curriculum that has been approved by the state in the district. Some teachers express it, this did feel like a mechanism of protection. Because if I only use this state approved curriculum and the materials that went with it, the blame can’t be placed, you know, on me as a teacher, because there's a lot fear about what will happen to them, they have read about and seen teachers in our state and other places who have lost their jobs or been really attacked in the media. So this is being voiced as a way to protect themselves. One teacher told us that her students were still allowed to self-select books from the library that includes some of these divisive concepts. But she was not allowed to read aloud those books or include them in a lesson at all. We did hear some teachers who had gotten rid of their classroom libraries all together. And some of that was self-censorship related, some of it was directive was a directive, but a lot of times, they said, well, there's no clear guidance, this is the only way we can protect ourselves is to just get rid of these books altogether. The teachers talked about, you know, donating their books or, you know, sending them home with kids who, who would need them.

Meredith: Thank you. Pengfei, can you speak to that?

Pengfei: Yeah, I was going to, I was going to say that I have seen or experienced similar concerns from the higher ed institution, as well. So I really resonated with what the teachers like teacher, researcher participants that Renee just mentioned, what they said about this vulnerability, but also this sense of like, you know, we want to do our job well. Like we really want to do our best to support our students. And this is like, the goal of the profession and this is why we commit ourselves to this profession. We commit ourselves to this profession, not because we want to expose them to any radical or like any sort of like, you know, discriminatory statements. We committed ourselves to this profession, because we really love to do this, and we want to support them well. I think before like, in my own experience, because I cannot speak on behalf of others, before even this fear sets in, there is this sense of like, confusion. And the confusion mostly is derived from this unclear, weirdly worded policy documents like about, you know, what it is, what these bills exactly want from us? Like, what, how does this bill want to, like shape or impact our teaching practice? So, in order to really, you know, get a good interpretation of what is expected from this bill, I as you know, as an instructor, really, like invested quite some time, just into, you know, understanding what's going on there. And the time is like, sometimes I feel like I could really have used this time more effectively, in supporting my students, and all of us are so heavily overworked. And you know, this time could really have been used in a wiser way. But also there is this unclear, unclear procedure about what would happen, if there was a student report, for example, because in the context of Florida, students is allowed to report their instructors classroom activity, just because, you know, this activity may trigger some, you know, uncomfortable feelings on the students said, on the student side. So there will also like the consensus about what kind of procedures or discipline or disciplinary like consequences there might be, if there would be like the students who report? Yeah, so I think it's similar like sentiments here.

Meredith: Thank you. We've talked about the impact on teachers and scholars and librarians. What do you think is the impact of these acts on the children?

Natalia: I can get started on this one, if that's alright. As you know, literacy folks and language education folks, I think one of the areas that need to really be attended to in this discussion is the implications for curriculum publishers, especially if they compete for adoption, textbook adoption in a state with censorship laws on the books. So we know that existing publishers of literacy materials specifically are quite aware of and tend to adhere to the requirements of the state law. So to me, the ripple effect of such legislation may be seen, for example, in revised units of study, in response to censorship, to exclude more risky books, you know, a term used by one of our participants, and replace them with something a little bit more tepid.

Renee: And I can just add to that, in terms of the impact on students, you know, I'm going back to Natalia mentioned, Bishop’s research on the idea of windows and mirrors and we really teach that in our classes and try to promote that, that books can be a window into the world and to other cultures and a mirror to see ourselves and, and so I think we have to ask ourselves, what happens when a child doesn't see someone in a book who looks like them, speaks like them, shares their culture? And one of the things we know is that motivation, connections to texts can really be hindered. And I think we have to especially consider this on diverse learners and think about their sense of self and their reading identity, which we know forms really early. Who am I as a reader? Natalia mentioned, you know, that joy and peace we want kids to connect to books and to experience this joy so that they will be lifelong readers. And so I think that's something that our that we worry about impacting kids when they can't see themselves in those texts.

Pengfei: And maybe I can just talk a little bit about the indirect impacts. As you know, like my most of my focus versus my main focus is the higher education sector, which in which we don't really directly work with children or youth. But I have been working in my own teaching, I have been working primarily with students from the College of Education, who will be future teachers, or who will be future or like, who will be in the process of becoming educational researchers, and whose work will impact our teaching and learning significantly. So I think I have seen a lot of like passion from my students, to support teachers, and support students in this challenging situation. But I mean, some of them would love to do research on this topic, just as what Renee and not Natalia has have been doing. But they have like, so, they need they need to grapple with so many challenges, especially in relation to research ethics. Because, you know, like, for example, if they want to work with local school librarians, and media, when they come in here as specialists, right. One of the challenges is, it's getting harder for them to recruit research participants who are willing to share their experience because of these chilling effects. Another challenge is that they understand that, you know, the research participants, even they are willing to share, they are in a much more vulnerable situation right now. So it's a researchers ethical responsibility to really better understand their participants’ position, and to really protect them from being harmed, just because of like, participating in a research like this. So there are quite some changes in terms of like how, you know, educational researchers participate, engage in this type of work.

Meredith: Thank you. I know, you've also have done some research on identity formation and reading, and I wondered if you could speak to possibly what would happen if people are not able to access these books based on your research?

Pengfei: Yeah, I think one of the things that I'd really loved to emphasize here is this impact on their self understanding, and they are becoming like self formation process, in terms of not being able to see themselves in the readings, in terms of like, if, you know, all the images and the stories, they are presented in the readings, about, you know, like, some mainstream images. And then I think there is this, this is a process of being othered in this society. And this will really impact how they conceive of themselves, and what they think they could do, for example, in their future career choice in their future study, or in their future learning of, you know, some of the examples might be how they can, they could be confidently engaged in STEM careers, for example.

Meredith: Great, thank you. So another question is, are you seeing, any of you not just Pengfei, students or parents who are not in favor of these restrictions pushing back?

Natalia: I can start us off. I think I think that, you know, the impact of all of this on students in particular is quite interesting. And I'll talk about the K12 students, if that's all right. I think it's difficult to speak to all students in all places. But what I'll do, I'll share a couple of examples that I think are really interesting, of students pushing back in their own way that we heard from our study participants. So these are real children and real schools. One teacher, for example, told us about a student she has who made it her goal to read as many banned books as possible as her response to the increase in book challenges in her area. So in a way, becoming the spokesperson for banned books in her school, and she's very proud of her goal and shares at widely. So that's one, you know, individual response of a pushback. We, but we also know that in contexts where we teach, public libraries, schools and classrooms are sometimes the only places where students can get access to books. So with the faucet of access closing, due to the increase in book challenges, some children, especially children who live in remote rural areas, may be further disadvantaged. So with this in mind, we have seen high school students in some counties speaking out against book banning of local school board meetings or in other communities spaces. So they're really becoming at a very young age advocates, not only for their teachers as professionals, but also for the freedom of access to books they want to read.

Meredith: Does anybody else want to jump in?

Pengfei: Yeah, I think I just want to say I am very moved by how motivated my students are in engaging in this type of work and advocating for teachers or advocating ways teachers and students. So they are the future researchers or future teachers and I think their passion really moved me along and motivated me a lot in engaging in such a topic.

Meredith: Great, thank you. So what does the public school systems and what do higher ed need now in terms of support and what kind of support is forthcoming?

Natalia: I can get started and offer a couple of ideas. To me, to me, and, you know, I, perhaps you all will disagree, but I think one of the most important factors for coping with laws that maybe ambiguous or constraining is the support of administration, and their guidance and clarity in how potential challenges would be handled. I think it's critical to create a culture of care and support for academic freedom and access to information and materials that serve all students. So that's one. And in addition to that, you know, a number of professional organizations and grass roots groups offer a lot of resources online, to support the efforts of those folks who want to elevate their voices for access and equity. So ensuring that those resources are available, easily accessible, and free, can be essential and supporting educators and teacher educators like us.

Renee: I can add to that. You know, one of the things that's really coming through with our data collection analysis is that, you know, teachers just feel a lack of support, in general, they feel a lack of support from the legislators who are passing this bill, but also just from the media, from communities, not so much their specific classroom. But sometimes they even use this word, we're often portrayed as villains. And there's a lot of emotional weight from that. And along with that fear that comes along with it, but they express, you know, being the ones that they feel like they're bearing a lot of the weight when it comes to reading achievement. And one of the things that I think about is just how important it is for the community and those of us who can, to really show that respect and regard for teachers in any way we can, and to find ways to advocate for teacher voice and teacher for professionalism. And we've heard that a lot from them. As you know, just you know, “I've I have an undergraduate degree, I have a master's degree I've taught for this many years, and yet, I don't have a voice.” So finding places I think where teachers can express their voices can be really, really helpful in terms of community support, thinking about policy enactment assessment choices, having that voice there. And I think if we can bolster this teacher respect and autonomy, we can lobby policymakers, it could really be a means of empowering teachers to be able to rely on this professional expertise and to have autonomy around the text selection and curriculum choices that It really can impact our students.

Pengfei: I agree with what Natalia and Renee said, and I want to add, based on my own experience, I think some of the specific things that I found particularly helpful for me, one thing is I found some legal consultation, legal supports, like legal experts, legal professionals who provide professional interpretations of those weakly-framed bills and laws, were very helpful in time of like, you know, when these bills were just out, and every one was trying to, you know, decipher it, what that meant, you know, to our practice. So, and I want to acknowledge that now, this is now available for all the teachers in from from, from P to 16. We were privileged that in the sense that we had some experts among our colleagues, so we really benefited from this expertise. But this is this is something that I think could benefit, larger, like, group of teachers. Other things that I found helpful, I found the support from senior colleagues, I found the support from other administrators would be very helpful in challenging times like that. I was fortunate to have such a support from my senior mentors. But again, I think it's not always the case, it really depends. So that says, the significant, the importance of cultivate, cultivating this caring culture and so that, you know, we have this collegial relationship. Some other things I found helpful. Let's see, I also find, you know, from like, viewing this larger picture, and reading some of the questions posed to us by our audience, I think it's very important to do more research on this as a research methodology. So here, I really would love to advocate advocate for that. And for us to understand the challenges and, you know, like the challenges and difficulties for researchers to engage in maybe, you know, some of the term we would use to call a research topic like this would be like, politically sensitive topic. And I think the, the importance of doing that, is, lies in that, you know, we need the larger picture, we need the voices from, you know, teachers and students, to really understand what's going on here. And to really better, to better advocate and to, you know, maybe to influence the policies. So yeah, that's some of the things that have been in my mind.

Meredith: Great, thank you. So one, I'm going to switch over to q&a. I do want to say briefly, one of the questions that's come in is what organizations or groups are helping to advocate and what are the sources of support. I've put together a list of links. It's far from comprehensive, but it is pretty long, of a whole bunch of organizations that are doing this work, the American Library Association, the National Coalition against censorship, PEN America, many, many others have, so one of my colleagues will share that link out to you all, and feel free to suggest others in the follow up survey. So let me get to some of the questions.

You mentioned in one case, a book was removed from the classroom because one parent complained. Was this in line with the legislation or was this an interpretation of the requirements by the teacher? And basically, the question is, you know, how much power can one person have?

Renee: I can speak to that. And, you know, we, we do use a lot of examples here of particular cases, because the point of the research we're in leads us to these just preliminary findings, and our hope is, as we, our next stage when we plan to administer the survey, we'll be able to take it much broader across the state and then nationwide, but yeah, we are hearing for now some specific cases and my, what, what I'm, what we're seeing a lot, is that because of the vagueness of the law, this can really vary from district to district. So, yes, in some places in some schools, that can be taken away, those books can be taken away, because the decision by administration, teachers is a, you know, a way to, you know, squash some of the things that they're hearing from a small group of parents. The law does not specifically say that, but what we're seeing as that fear that's being breeded, and also hearing of places where teachers are being removed, because they did this book, is making teachers take some of these self-censorship steps, or they're being directed from their administrators. But I would say, in terms of the law, no, but it is much more complicated and messier than that in terms of what's actually happening.

Meredith: Does anybody else want to weigh in? Or should I go to the next question?

All right, I'll go to the next question. Because you just teed it up, which is you said teachers have been removed. And another question was, what are the consequences for teachers and librarians as a result of this law, you know, what, what are the penalties?

Renee: And I can continue on with that, that conversation. Again, we're seeing such a variety of things happening, we are seeing some districts where, you know, a couple people have been removed or put on leave while it's being investigated. We are seeing teachers having to wait to use books, while they're waiting on this very long, cumbersome process of having this book analyzed and a decision being made. That's why some of these libraries we see being pulled are were they're waiting for somebody to tell them. Other things are just, I think creating a lot of angst and lack of community in the classroom is very stressful. We had one teacher who, who talked a little bit about that. So I think it really varies. Some teachers reported having a very supportive administration or district and they felt very protected. In other places, they felt very exposed, and that that possibility of some kind of retribution was a strong possibility. So I think it varies.

Meredith: And I'll briefly add, there are even laws in some places that have threatened criminal prosecution of libertarians. Nobody that I know of has yet been prosecuted. There have been people who've been sued in civil cases. Those laws are specifically talking about obscenity, but using an extremely broad definition of what's obscene, not, not what has been settled case law of the past. So another question is, are these laws having negative impacts on people who are might be interested in pursuing a career as a teacher or librarian?

Natalia: I can speak to that a little bit. I think one of the elements that we didn't bring up yet, to the degree it deserves to be discussed, and maybe that's a different webinar, is the role of media and social media in this conversation. I think that in our study, we haven't addressed that question and really haven't heard anything from teachers. And from my experience, I haven't noticed any changes. But I do think there's a bigger issue of how teachers are viewed in society in general. And whether or not this is a worthy profession to pursue, or, you know, a lot of our students come with wonderful aspirations and they want to become teachers because they love children, and they want to instill the love of learning and create a community. So when negative discourses around who is to be trusted with decision making and classroom happen, and, and in a very public way, I'm sure it gives some folks a pause in terms of engaging in that context. But speaking about in-service teachers, teachers who already are in schools, I will say that it has a huge impact, I believe on teacher retention. One of the, one of the teachers that I spoke to said my teacher lanyard is getting heavier every year and it's such a, it's such a powerful metaphor to the pressure and the sort of an interesting time, I guess we live in for teachers. So all of that taken together, you know, I'm sure it gives some folks a pause, and they reconsider whether they want to be a teacher.

Meredith: Thank you. Pengfei, anything from your students, in terms of how this is affecting their?

Pengfei: I think I haven't seen any systematic discussion on this topic. That's why I feel like you know, there are so many things related to this topic that needs a deeper, you know, investigation.

Meredith: Thank you. We only have five minutes left, but I think we can do at least one more question. And it's a big one, who should decide which books are appropriate for a certain age? In five minutes, go.

Pengfei: At this, I mean, I just want to get us started with some interesting background on this topic, because I have been thinking about this question for a while. And it just to put us into this comparative perspective, you know, there are different ways to do, like, so censorship has existed for a long time, right? It's not something unique to our society today. But you know, there are different ways of like censoring, say, books,. For example, an interesting comparison point is that, if you think about the censorship again, you know, authoritarian states, like in China, like there are a lot of censorship going on, on in China's internet, for example, but there is no clearly stated list of censoring words. So it's like, you know, we know something's going on there. But we don't know what exactly is censored. There is no list keeping in that censorship practice. But here like, I think there is this very interesting practice of clearly listing, what is now allowed. Yeah, which I’ll stop here.

Meredith: Natalia or Renee do you want to weigh in?

Renee: Sure I can, I can talk a little bit about this and Natalia may have something she wants to say as well after me. But I believe, you know, of course, you know, parents have a role in thinking about selections in their home, and even in school. And I think, you know, we're hearing from teachers that that previous, that previous way of doing it, when we could just say, “Hey, I don't want my child to read this book,” it seemed to be working pretty well, according to the teachers we're talking to, and, you know, I'm just really an advocate for in terms of schools, teaching, treating teachers as professionals, and letting them make these appropriate decisions. You know, they have this, the children right there in front of them. And, you know, I really advocate for getting to know a child, their background, what's their prior knowledge, what's their interests, you know, I think it's really fun to dig and dig for that book that's just going to spark that joy. And so in terms of that, you know, I do worry about just single individuals, either parents or from the community being able to make these decisions for larger groups of people. And I'm just really an advocate for teacher professionalism and autonomy. And library, as well.

Meredith: I'm sorry to cut you off Natalia but we have to wrap up. So thank you, everyone, for coming. That's all we have time for today. Thank you to all of our panelists for the great insights and discussion. Thank you to everybody for your questions. I'm sorry, we didn't get to all of them. We would have needed a whole extra hour. And we'll send a follow up email that has both the recording and the resources that we've mentioned. So thank you again to everybody. I learned a lot I hope you did too.