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How might immigration experiences be complexified and nuanced in elementary settings? This article highlights how fourth-grade students engaged in a picturebook exploration guided by a critical social educator, Kara, centered on immigration and refugee narratives for an integrated social studies and English language arts unit. The unit spanned ten days within the sixty-minute daily literature block. We show how Kara and her 19 students engaged in exploration across 25 justice-oriented picturebooks depicting diverse immigration and refugee experiences. Kara wove various strategies together to encourage students to share their own immigration stories, connect with authors’ stories, and deepen their understanding by noticing themes such as “hard work does not always pay off,” “crossing invisible (linguistic) borders,” and “making new friends.” The students’ engagement led to deepening understandings and connections to a variety of immigration stories. Throughout this article, we illustrate how Kara and her students engaged in theme generation and exploration in ways that moved away from a single narrative of immigration and toward more humanizing, varied conceptions of immigrant experiences.

Purpose Picturebooks can be considered sociopolitical art and, as such, are ideal for inviting children into critical conversations during justice-oriented interactive read-alouds. Therefore, how teachers critically curate their picturebook collections, finding and selecting texts, is important. This paper aims to answer the question: How do primary-grade teachers critically curate their picturebook collections to share in justice-oriented interactive read-alouds? Design/methodology/approach Drawing upon critical literacy theory, this study uses qualitative research methods to examine how primary-grade teachers curate picturebooks for their justice-oriented interactive read-alouds. The data derives from a multiple case study investigating the perspectives and practices of primary-grade teachers sharing diverse children’s literature as part of their justice-oriented approaches to teaching. Findings This paper identifies three themes that emerged from the data. First, the teachers critically engaged with resources and collaborators. Second, the teachers critically analyzed potential picturebooks. Third, they prioritized finding multiple and varied perspectives for their picturebook collections. Originality/value Although the scholarship outlines essential aspects for teachers to consider as they select picturebooks, there are few studies that explore primary-grade teachers’ critical curation processes and practices. This study offers insights into how primary-grade teachers enact a critical stance to find and select picturebooks as their initial step in designing justice-oriented interactive read-alouds.

Reid et al explore critical encounters with linguistically diverse picturebooks in an elementary classroom setting. They illustrate how critical encounters emerged in an elementary classroom through teacher and student discussions about language and identity with linguistically diverse picturebooks.

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to investigate primary teachers’ perspectives about whole-class read-alouds with diverse children’s literature (DCL) and their practices for implementing and conducting them. This multiple and instrumental case study drew from critical sociocultural perspectives. Five primary teachers (grades K-3) participated in semi-structured interviews and journal writing, as well as sharing classroom artifacts related to their read-alouds with DCL. Data analysis included open and axial coding, constant-comparative analysis, and within- and cross-case analysis.Findings from the study indicate that the teachers had to negotiate their school contexts to hold read-alouds with DCL, even in schools that worked toward diversity, equity, and inclusion. Additionally, teachers viewed their read-alouds with DCL as a space where students could (re)shape their identities and social understandings. Findings also indicate that the teachers constructed read-alouds with DCL to foster identity building and recognition, including developing a sense of community identity. Teachers also had an open format for their read-alouds that encouraged their students to enact their power and agency to make meaning with the text and their peers. Implications for future research, primary teachers, administrators, and early childhood/elementary teacher education faculty are provided.

Why: C'est magnifique! You'll have no regrets about seeing Olivier Dahan's deliciously melodramatic, cleverly fractured biopic about the turbulent life of the tiny, legendary French singer who rose from the gutter to become the cultural superstar known as \"the little sparrow\" despite battling demons from alcohol to drug addiction. Marion Cotillard's astonishing embodiment of the temperamental chanteuse is spellbinding, and combined with that glorious music is reason enough to see this lavishly produced portrait. -- Michael D. Reid

The Inter Cultural Association's FolkFest represents different things to different people. For participants like this year's honorary FolkFest mayor, Georges Murr of the Christian Lebanese Association, it's a chance to showcase their culture. For the rest of us, FolkFest is food. In a recent interview, [Rose Carr] came to the centre's phone while her volunteers finished up 3,000 cheese blintzes to be frozen until FolkFest. By then, 57 of the estimated 70 \"Awesome\" chocolate cakes needed had been made and frozen. Last to do before the start of FolkFest were more than 1,000 potato kugl to be refrigerated until needed. The kiosk expects to sell about 3,000 hot-dogs. Eating Ethiopian at the FolkFest was my first encounter with injera, the country's traditional flat-bread. Apparently, injera is to Ethiopia what French fries are to North America -- an omnipresent food staple. The FolkFest injera tastes like a rubbery sourdough pancake. Yeah, I know, I know -- but it's actually much more appetizing than it sounds.

The κ-opioid receptor (KOR) has emerged as an attractive drug target for pain management without addiction, and biased signaling through particular pathways of KOR may be key to maintaining this benefit while minimizing side-effect liabilities. As for most G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), however, the molecular mechanisms of ligand-specific signaling at KOR have remained unclear. To better understand the molecular determinants of KOR signaling bias, we apply structure determination, atomic-level molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, and functional assays. We determine a crystal structure of KOR bound to the G protein-biased agonist nalfurafine, the first approved KOR-targeting drug. We also identify an arrestin-biased KOR agonist, WMS-X600. Using MD simulations of KOR bound to nalfurafine, WMS-X600, and a balanced agonist U50,488, we identify three active-state receptor conformations, including one that appears to favor arrestin signaling over G protein signaling and another that appears to favor G protein signaling over arrestin signaling. These results, combined with mutagenesis validation, provide a molecular explanation of how agonists achieve biased signaling at KOR. Biased signaling in κ-opiod receptors (KOR) offer an attractive strategy for pain management. Here the authors identify determinants of KOR signaling bias using structural methods in combination with molecular dynamics simulations.

Why: If you're in the mood (and if it's done properly), The Caretaker can be devastatingly funny. British playwright Harold Pinter experienced his first true box office success in 1960 with this play. Mick, Aston and Davies are three mutts who natter away in a surreal way now known to be \"Pinteresque.\" Theatre Inconnu, with a reputation for staging interesting work, is reviving The Caretaker with artistic director Clayton Jevne playing one of the down-and- outers.

Why: Josh Lane has garnered raves across Canada and the U.S. for his solo harp repertoire. He has recorded three CDs of solo harp music, and his 2006 composition Passages was selected for the Sonic Boom festival of new music in Vancouver. Joined by Michelle Cox on flue and Toshiko Tampo on piano Layne will perform Passages, Mozart's Flute and Harp Concerto, Debussy's Danses Sacree et Profane, and Victoria composer Sylvia Rickard's Rarescale. Why: Conductor-in-residence, Giuseppe Pietraroia, leads the last of the new and popular Royal Tea Concerts. The short and light afternoon program features host John Krich taking the audience on a musical journey to the Czech Republic with music by Bedrich Smetana, Julius Fucik, and Leos Janacek, and then to Austria with Franz Lehar's Gold and Silver Waltz, as well as music by Johannes Brahms and Franz von Suppe.