Welcome! Southern Breeze is a region of wonderfully diverse creators and translators. Like SCBWI, our region strives to create an environment where all of us are welcomed and supported to create Kid Lit that accurately reflects the world we live in. Click image below to learn more about our mission and goals.
SCBWI’s Equity and Inclusion page is jam packed with information, so please check it out here.
**NEW**
Please check out Book Reviews and Recommendations by our team here.
New Feature: E & I Theater!
Our first video is from one of our Equity and Inclusion team members offering tips on how to interact with a guide dog for visually impaired people you’ll encounter. Click the link below to watch!
How To Interact with a Guide Dog
Claudia, Tonya, and Ashlee wrote this month’s piece and the rest of the Team made suggestions.
LISTENING
| Listening requires focus and attention. Learning to hear what someone else is saying and understanding their meaning can be difficult. Many times a listener is quick to jump into a conversation and finish another person’s sentence or add comments that don’t pertain to the discussion. Instead, make the effort to concentrate on the conversation by remaining silent.
How comfortable are we with being silent, with focusing on what someone else has to say and letting them say it? Sometimes this requires attentive patience, as when a person has apraxia, stutters or has other difficulty speaking English. Even if we are trying to be helpful, by interrupting and speaking for them we may communicate that in our group they are not empowered to speak for themselves.
Sometimes it takes humility, our silence becoming a confirmation that we believe the story they bring to our community needs to be told and they are the right person to tell it.
Listening silently, neither attempting to prompt others with our suggestions nor join them in telling their stories, provides us a rich opportunity to learn while simultaneously expressing our respect for the unique perspectives they offer our group.
The next time you are in a group meeting with people and you’re tempted to blurt a comment, take a breath and listen first. We are all different in various ways, but you’ll be surprised at how much you can learn and grow if you practice listening more. Want to practice your listening skills? Search for topics on an online social platform. That offers a degree of anonymity and an opportunity to listen without responding. |
The Southern Breeze Equity and Inclusion team strives to bring you resources you will find useful and insightful as creators of children’s literature. Click the image below for a list of resources and links:
Suggestions?
The Southern Breeze E & I Team would love to hear your ideas! We welcome you to join our team, suggest links to resources you’ve personally found helpful, or any ideas you feel would make the region even more inclusive and welcoming to all creators.
Please reach out to us at southern-breeze@scbwi.org and a member of our team will get back to you.