{"id":5792,"date":"2026-02-12T08:09:42","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T16:09:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/osuteaching\/?p=5792"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:19:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:19:11","slug":"the-learning-lab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/osuteaching\/2026\/02\/12\/the-learning-lab\/","title":{"rendered":"The Learning Lab"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Rachel Satter, OSU College of Education <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My love of reading dates back to my childhood. I come from a family of voracious readers, and some of my favorite early memories are of going to the library each week to pick out new books. That love followed me into my career as an elementary teacher, where reading aloud to students was always one of the highlights of my day. Those early memories stayed with me as I moved through my doctoral program and into teacher education, shaping how I thought about the relationship between books, identity, and learning in K\u201312 classrooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward to 2021, when I was a TA for a writing methods course during my doctoral work in Connecticut. The professor\u2014who was also my mentor\u2014and I often talked about how teacher candidates didn\u2019t yet have a strong frame of reference for high-quality children\u2019s literature, or for how books could be used to model far more than just writing skills and strategies. That\u2019s when I began imagining what it might look like for a teacher preparation program to have something called The Learning Lab<\/em>. (I\u2019ve always loved alliteration!) The Learning Lab would be a space filled with culturally responsive children\u2019s books that OSU teacher candidates and Department of Educational Practice and Research (DEPR) faculty could use both in coursework and in K\u201312 classrooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A core idea in culturally responsive teaching is that classrooms should provide students with windows, mirrors, and doors (Bishop, 1990). In other words, students should be able to see themselves\u2014and others\u2014reflected in the learning materials around them. One of the most powerful ways to make that happen is through the books we place in children\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBooks are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined\u2026 these windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination\u2026 When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror.\u201d (Bishop, 1990)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As my work in teacher education deepened and eventually led me to Oregon State University, those early questions about books and belonging in K\u201312 classrooms only became more urgent. In Spring 2025, a CTL mini-grant allowed my colleague Dr. Amanda Kibler and me to begin bringing the Learning Lab to life in OSU\u2019s College of Education (CoEd). The project aligned with Principle 1 of the OSU Quality Teaching Framework\u2014\u201cChampion a culture of diverse, equitable, and inclusive learning\u201d\u2014as well as recent statewide policies on social-emotional learning and early literacy, and the College of Education\u2019s mission to \u201cprepare educators as change agents in diverse communities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Fall 2025 began, we knew that for the Learning Lab to truly serve CoEd faculty and students, they needed a voice in what it would contain. Emails were sent to DEPR faculty in October 2025 and again in January inviting them to suggest titles via a shared Google Doc. We asked them to think about the courses they teach and the kinds of assignments where children\u2019s literature might play a meaningful role. I also reached out to our senior cohort, recognizing that their time student teaching gave them insight into which students and communities are often underrepresented in classroom libraries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final book list drew from multiple high-quality, award-winning sources, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n