Something came up today in one of the tunings that reminded me of our ABAR trainings and conversations - I mentioned using the Love Languages framework for the third grade project on Self Love, and someone else said that the creator of the Love Languages framework is severely homophobic. I asked, perhaps that means we don't use the love languages framework at all, or perhaps we can use a modification or alternative to the framework that is more inclusive. Then someone else chimed in and said that because the creator was homophobic, we should not use his work with children for the same reason that we would not use a resource from someone who was anti-Black.
This was a bigger/tricky conversation and we didn't dig all the way into it in the moment to respect time. I did follow up in an email with resources that included the original "Love Languages" quiz for children, as well as two articles that critically analyzed and modified the love languages framework to make it more inclusive.
The exchange we had raised a really interesting question for me - how as ABAR educators do we select materials to use with students? Under what conditions do we avoid problematic resources, or modify them to make them more aligned to our values, or teach into them and offer alternatives that are more inclusive and accurate while explaining this process transparently with our students, thus modeling critical literacy and consciousness? I would love to continue this conversation and learn more about how other teachers think about this problem of practice.
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