Shout-out to Digital Coach EJ Rodriguez for supporting CPA with implementing Read&Write for all MLE students. EJ hosted trainings for all teachers on Read&Write and helped them access licenses for all MLE students. The work has been so impactful that the CPA Student Council recognized his contribution to the community.

Please reach out to your Digital Coach if you would to roll out Read&Write at your school!

The 2022 Youth Media Awards season is almost here! Check out these ideas for four weeks of programming to introduce students to host your own mock award program!

Need additional copies of books? Check out the Mock Caldecott 2022 and Mock Newbery 2022 Sora eBook collections, or use this form to request a set of eBooks for a book club or entire class.

Do your students know about "The Walter?" The Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children's Literature celebrates the legacy of author Walter Dean Myers and recognizes diverse authors whose work features diverse main characters and address diversity in a meaningful way. To create your own mock Walter award program, invite students to read books published in 2021 from the #DPSTop100 Sora collection of inclusive and culturally responsive titles.

To learn more about awards that celebrate diversity, read author Padma Venkatraman's article "Children's Book Awards that Celebrate Diversity" in the October 2021 issue of School Library Journal.

Denver Public Schools strives to recognize cultures and identities year-round. With equity as our core identity, we aim to celebrate the significant cultural moments of our students and staff, especially those that have not been historically and consistently recognized.

The end of the year is a time of celebration in many different cultures and religions, and the Collection Development team curated this list of recommended Holiday Picture Books and related resources hat encompass both winter holidays and special days celebrated year-round.

Denver Broncos player Bradley Chubb presented Amesse a check for $30,000 that will be used for the tech classroom to buy podcasting equipment and other tech materials for the students. This grant was made possible by the A-Z Fund. Congratulations!

The Latinx Kidlit Book Festival is December 9th-10th! Wondering how to incorporate festival programming into your library or classroom? Below are three ways to bring the excitement of the festival into your school:

Attend the Wednesday Educator’s Night:
In #DISRUPTTEXTS: FINDING LATINX TEXTS THAT FIT YOUR CURRICULUM we’ll discuss questions of voices—authors or characters—that are marginalized or missing in our classrooms, how our biases affect the way we teach and engage with students, how a text perpetuates or subverts dominant power dynamics and ideologies, and how we ask students to wrestle with these tensions. Together, we’ll gain insights and discuss actionable strategies for bringing Latinx texts into your classroom.

Get You Students Involved--Send Us Students' Questions:
Want to give your students a chance to have an author or illustrator answer their questions during a festival panel? Want to win a classroom set of books? Then send us student questions for our authors and illustrators! Ask your students to submit questions for our festival participants. If selected they will be entered into a drawing to win books for their classroom. Video questions will receive priority--and what student wouldn’t want to see their recording in a panel with their favorite author or illustrator? What to know more about our authors before sending in a question? Check out their FlipGrid introductions!

Use A Lesson from Our Festival Educator Guides!
Help guide your students through this virtual field trip by using our Common Core Educator Guides! Bring the festival into the classroom with guided questions, writing prompts, and more, which are suitable for all ages K-12 and tailored to connect with festival programming.
Want to work with your students on elements of writing? These mini-lessons from our award-winning festival authors use their own work as mentor texts and connect with a common core teaching standard, so you will be able to incorporate them seamlessly into your lesson plan--in English and in Spanish!

For more information about the Latinx Kidlit Book Festival, click HERE.

We’d like to recognize the great educators who are meaningfully engaging students with technology integration in the classroom. Help us celebrate these Ed Tech Champions by nominating up to two teachers to receive the Ed Tech Champion award. Nominate an Ed Tech Champion by completing this short form. Please submit your nomination(s) by Friday, January 7th.

The Denver Public Library has once again received the Healthy Food for Denver's Kids (HFDK) grant for 2021-2022. The grant, launched by the Denver Department of Public Health & Environment (DDPHE), aims to support healthy food access and food based education for youth.

We are distributing snacks to youth and healthy food boxes full of fresh produce and pantry items for households with youth 18 and under. For full information, visit https://www.denverlibrary.org/blog/library-events/yduarte/healthy-food-denvers-kids-snack-program