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Francesca Aldrich ’19 wanted to do something special to mark Black History Month. “Not that it shouldn’t be special every year,” she says, “but given everything that’s been going on in our country, with all the tension and social unrest, I believed it was especially important this year.”

A school psychologist at Richard Stockton Elementary School in the Cherry Hill (New Jersey) School District, Aldrich didn’t have to think long before coming up with the idea for a virtual book club.

“My first go to is always books because I love reading and I love writing,” she says proudly. “I think books have a way of teaching empathy and perspective. When you’re reading a book, you’re learning about someone else’s point of view. You’re in the mind of a person who thinks differently and lives differently than you do.”

In setting up the book club, Aldrich wanted to make it turnkey and easy for the teachers in her school to share with their students. “I knew that a lot of my teachers were being stretched thin with remote learning and hybrid learning, so I didn’t want to put a lot on them,” says the graduate of Rider’s Education Specialist (Ed.S.) in School Psychology program. “My goal was to create something that I could just package and give to them.”

To do this, she started her  where each video features her reading a different book. 

She also thought about what she could do to make her videos stand out. “There are hundreds of read-alouds that are already on YouTube,” she says. “I wanted to personalize mine. So before I would read the books, I would talk about the book and connect it to my life.” After finishing the story, she would then present an activity that the teachers could do with their students.

She chose four books, each of which focused on a different aspect of the Black experience. “With Black History Month, the emphasis is often on teaching about historically important figures,” she says. “That’s very important, but my goal was to share stories that could connect with all the kids at Stockton, and open their minds and hearts to people who are different than they are.”

The first book she read was Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry, a story about a man attempting to do his young daughter’s hair for the first time. For the activity, students were asked to think of something they loved about themselves. “The teachers did a great job of morphing the activity to the level of their classes,” Aldrich says. “For example, the kindergartners drew pictures, second graders posted videos of themselves, and fifth graders created Jamboards.” 

For Equality’s Call by Deborah Diesen, a book about voting rights in the United States, Alrich discussed the importance of expressing your beliefs, and asked the students what one thing they would change if they were president. “It really got them thinking about how they could make the world a better place,” she says.

Another book, Carter Reads the Newspaper by Deborah Hopkinson, is the biography of Carter G. Woodson, the founder of Black History Month. Aldrich assigned each grade level a different historical or contemporary figure — including Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou and Chadwick Boseman — and a corresponding activity, such as writing an acrostic poem or creating a trivia game about the subject.

The book club selection that hit closest to home for Aldrich was The Other Side by Jacqueline Wilson, a story about a two girls of different races who become friends despite being separated by a fence that divides their town. 

“I shared an experience of when I was in middle school and girls in my class wouldn’t let me sit with them because I was Black,” she says. “And I said in the video that it made me really sad. I hesitated to tell this story because it is so personal. But I wanted these children to see that this happens to people that they know. If you just hear about something on the news, you can distance yourself from it. But by hearing my story, they might think, ‘This happened to Ms. Aldrich and it hurt her. So if I’m in a similar situation, maybe I’ll be nicer, or be more open minded, or let kids sit with me.’” 

When she began the book club, Aldrich had modest expectations. “There were a handful of teachers who I knew would participate, and I thought that would be it. And I was fine with that. I just saw it as a supplemental activity they could do with their classes.”

She says after she posted the first video for Hair Love, students began approaching her in the halls telling how much they enjoyed it. “I was hearing from boys and girls of all ages and all skin tones. That’s when I knew this could be really special.”

Every teacher in the school ended up incorporating the videos into their lessons, sharing them with Stockton’s approximately 350 students. But the reach has been even greater. 

Teachers in the school district where Aldrich interned while she was a graduate student at Rider have also been using the read-alouds. So have Aldrich’s college friends who went on to become teachers. The book club was even , further spreading the word. “I think it’s really cool that I’m able to have an impact on kids I’ve never met who don’t live anywhere near me,” Aldrich says.

Aldrich’s passion for literature goes beyond the book club. She is the author of Bent, Not Broken, a novel about a woman with mental health issues who goes to live in a treatment facility after attempting to take her own life.

She hopes that the book can de-stigmatize mental health disorders and help young people become more comfortable sharing their own struggles. 

“At the facility in my book, they talk about topics like medication and anxiety and self harm. They are so open about many topics that we as a society tend to shy away from,” she says. “I wanted to create this space where talking about mental health is accepted and it’s not something that you have to feel ashamed of.” 

Aldrich is already working on her next book, which is set in the months leading up to Bent, Not Broken and focuses on one of the secondary characters from the first book. “I love the characters in my book and I’ve thought a lot about their back stories,” she says. “I’ve already written the first few chapters and the epilogue.” 

She’s also still busy with the book club. What started out as a one-month project has turned into something bigger. “Originally I was only planning to do the four books,” she says. “But I had so many people asking me to keep doing it that I kept going. My plan now is to keep finding books for the kids and to keep coming up with fun activities for the teachers to use until I run out of books.”