You know that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach? When something happens around you that you know just isn’t right? You want to respond but sometimes you don’t know how. This interview with author and advocate Mia Wenjen is full of tips and insight about how to combat racism in school and in our communities.
All of her advice comes from personal experience, standing up to an anti-Asian play that her local high school chose to perform.
As students, teachers, administrators, parents, and community members, we all have a responsibility to stand up against racism and inequity to make sure our schools are safe and respectful for everyone. Mia tells us how to do just that.
5 Ways to Combat Racism in Schools
1. It is all of our role to stand up against racism we see around us, regardless of whether or not it affects you directly.
2. We all have a way that we can speak out and make a difference. You never know how far the ripple will reach.
You can find a path that fits your personality and abilities. Remember, we all have our own unique roles in the fight against racism. It takes all of us working together to spark change.
You could:
- Write a letter, email, blog post or even books.
- Post on social media.
- Share social media posts.
- Add supportive comments.
- Have a 1-1 conversation with people who hold power and influence.
- Listen an accept any responsibility you may have in the situation.
- Donate to an organization.
- Support an advocate.
- Join the school board, PTO, or local government.
- Attend a march or protest.
- Organize people around an issue.
- Elevate the voices of others.
- Create art.
The list could honestly go on and on. There is truly a role all of us can take to combat racism in school or in our communities.
If you aren’t sure what style of advocacy fits your personality, Rebekah Gienapp has a wonderful quiz that helps you figure out your “anti-bias superpower”.
(I’m a curious connector…can you tell?!?)
3. Just because “we’ve always done it” doesn’t make it right.
Once you realize that something isn’t right (even if it is commonly accepted) it is your responsibility to speak out against it and help others understand why it’s not OK.
4. Be willing to learn and grow from your mistakes.
Listen to feedback. Accept that intent and impact are not always the same and be willing to admit when you were wrong.
5. Teach your kids to stand up for their rights– to be confident advocates for themselves and others.
Mia mentioned doing that through sports, martial arts, and supporting your kids in the things that interest them.
Hai Anh also mentioned the importance of leading by example.
Reflection Questions
I am a firm believer that knowledge is useless unless we put it into practice. Use these questions to help you think of ways you could put Mia’s isnight into practice in your life.
- Is there currently a form of racism you need to fight against in your community, school, or world?
- Have you played a role in this injustice or been an accomplice in any way?
- What is a way that you personally can stand up to this injustice?
- Are there advocates, organizations or individuals, that you can support?
- What is one thing you can do TODAY to work against racism in your school or community?
Full Transcript of the Interview:
“Combat Racism in Your Community” with Mia Wenjen
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Vanessa: Hello and welcome to the Families Embracing Diversity Conference. We are so glad to have you here with us this morning. Today I am here with two special guests. First up we have Hai Anh who is here to tell us about Little Bean’s Toy Chest. Hi, how are you doing this morning?
Hai Anh: Hi, I’m doing great thank you.
Vanessa: And I just have to acknowledge the fact that it’s super early and I greatly appreciate that you are here with us this morning. What time is it for you? 7 A.M?
Hai Anh: It’s 7 A.M yes my kids are still sleeping.
Vanessa: Just for fun if you’re joining live let us know what time it is for you just to
see where everybody’s at around the world. Do you want to take a few minutes to tell us a little bit about yourself and about Little Bean’s Toy Chest?
Hai Anh: Hi, yes. So hello everybody I’m so glad to be in this forum with you all and my name is Hai Anh Vu and I am a mom of two girls who are biracial who are Asian and half American and also the owner of this brand called Little Bean’s Toy Chest.
Our main products are a special kind of toy. It’s a toy book that you can play with and at the same time learn different things for little children. The books are all handmade and featuring different cultures and people from different um from different backgrounds.
The books are all made by people in Vietnam and supporting the social enterprises and people who are in underprivileged situations to help them with their employment and livelihoods.
I was very inspired to make these books at first in order to have more representations of people from different cultures for children to see so these books feature all these little dolls in the books that are multicultural and that helps for children to see that. If they want to have some dolls that look like themselves they can find them in these books so those are the main ideas for our books.
Vanessa: Hai Anh is going to be the co-host of this session so that means that she and Mia will be having a conversation about how to stand up to racism in your community and your schools and I will be off screen in the chat monitoring any questions and popping up any questions you might have throughout the session into the video so I’m going to go ahead and bring Mia in. Hi Mia!
Mia: Hello.
Vanessa: Just for fun, what time is it where you’re at?
Mia: I think I got the the long end of the stick 10 a.m
Vanessa: Me too. I was hoping it wasn’t too early for you. So here we have Mia Wenjen. She is going to share with us about a situation where she was able to stand up to racism in her community and her schools. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about yourself?
Mia: Sure, you’ll notice a theme. So, in 2009 I started blogging. My blog is pragmaticmom.com. It’s on parenting and education but there’s a whole lot of diverse children’s books on it.
About two years after that I started a non-profit. It’s called Read Your World and celebrates Multicultural Children’s Book Day. (We’re rebranding so we’re using our hashtag now.) We basically give away diverse children’s books to readers adults, teachers, librarians, kids. Nowadays we’re really fighting against the whole banned books situation. We also produce resources to help everyone find and use diverse books. So you’ll find classroom kits and lists of lists to find what you need.
I also host a multicultural picture book club and that is the first Thursday of every month. It’s free and virtual and it’s 7 P.M Eastern Standard Time. We have one coming up we’re actually going to be using Holding On by Sophia Lee and Isabel Rojas. May’s Asian Pacific American heritage month and this book is a Filipino themed book but also about memory loss and multi-generational relationships so I’m super excited about that.
After spending all these years working to make the children’s book industry more amenable to making diverse stories available, I sort of pried the door open a little bit and then decided to walk through it so my debut picture book came out in 2019, Sumo Joe.
I had entered the Lee and Low new voices competition and I didn’t win, I always tell kids that. I didn’t win but I got an offer for editorial help and then I wrote a book for Scholastic, also Asian Pacific American Heroes.
And then I decided to do a Kickstarter book. This is very similar but it’s about Asian Pacific American female athletes, Changing the Game: Asian Pacific American Female Athletes.
I have two daughters and one son. My middle daughter in high school said, mom, there’s no Asian-American female athletes at all. I was like Chloe Kim, you like her. She said, ah she’s the only one. I said no, I know there’s more. Of course there are, most of them have Olympic gold medals, but nobody knows about them.
And then I have another, my sophomore picture book, Food for the Future. It is about sustainable farms around the world and it’s published with Barefoot Books. It’s coming out in one month.
Vanessa: That’s amazing! So many exciting things where can people find out about your virtual book club and all of your books? On your website?
Mia: Yeah I’ll have everything on pragmaticmom.com or if you subscribe to my blog, I’m constantly announcing what’s to come.
Vanessa: Okay I will make sure that link is in the chat. I will hop out so you guys can start the conversation!
Hai Anh: Hi Mia! Let’s talk about the time that your high school decided to put on an anti-Asian play. Can you tell us a little bit about the backstory and what you did about it?
Mia: Sure. It was about eight years ago. My oldest was about to enter high school and so I was just at a fundraiser at the high school. They do travel abroad for high school students and they were doing a fundraiser to raise scholarship money for it. I sat at a table with a friend of mine and then a friend of hers who I knew a little bit, but not that well.
She was telling me that her son is half Chinese, half Caucasian. She was saying it’s too bad my son is a theater kid and he sings and he’s a senior. They have this play, a musical, and he’d be perfect for it.
In fact they wanted to give him a main part but he said no I can’t do it because my Chinese grandparents come. If they saw this play they would be so ashamed. It would be embarrassing to them. I can’t put my grandparents through that.
I was like what? Like what’s this play? I’m not like a theater person. She said it’s called Thoroughly Modern Millie and she said you know it’s like those old musicals. A lot of them are super racist.
I was like, did you do anything? And she said oh yeah I wrote a letter to the head of the theater program saying please don’t choose this play. It’s very racist. And you know you know like crickets (she heard nothing back).
She’s a long time theater mom and this play is literally like next week (when I’m hearing about it). So, this play is going on. My high school puts on like 11 to 13 performances a year. We have two theaters and the theater program is very robust. They put on amazing performances. The kids are so talented.
At the time I had pragmaticmom.com, which is my main blog, but I have this micro blog called ilovenewton.com. It’s like this micro blog, just stuff going on in Newton, where I live.
So I I decided I’m gonna put it there. (I start posting) basically that Thoroughly Modern Millie is a super racist play and why are they doing it in Newton, my community, with like an 11% Asian population. So I put it up on this microblog so I don’t really expect much. I’m starting to get responses, like some very strong hate comments, and then some supporting comments.
It’s starting to get a little heated because I lay out all this research of why this is a super racist play. There’s yellow face and I have to explain blackface is not okay so why do you think yellow face is okay? These comments are like yellow face is no big deal and it’s like um excuse me like how do you justify that? Do you think blackface is fine? And they’re like no blackface was not fine. So then why? There’s many many layers of why this play is racist.
I started posting multiple blog posts and putting it all over social media. I ended up devoting like a month, an entire month, every spare minute of free time I had. I was gonna promote why this play was racist. and The play is already going because it’s like two days before opening (when I heard about it). So, I go and I watch the play. I tape part of the racist pieces of it. On social media, I’m tagging Angry Asian Man and he includes it in one of his blog posts round Roundup. I’m tagging every Asian organization. Then, what do you know, a Boston Globe reporter reaches out to me like I’ve been following this. Do you have something to say? Oh I have a lot to say, I respond. So it gets on the front page of the Boston Globe which then gets more reaction and more comments. So, I’m writing more blog posts and then there’s more articles in the Boston Globe. There ends up being like four of them, not all on the front page, and then it sort of ripples and all of a sudden it’s across the pond in their largest newspaper.
So what is the result? The result is that the high school decides to hold a public forum to discuss it. They’re kind of hostile about it, truth be told. It’s weird how just from putting it out there I’m getting support from Chinese-American alumni that went to Newton North and moved away.
What is so weird is that Newton, like Massachusetts, is liberal and Newton is extremely well educated and liberal. We’re sort of the town that came out of Cambridge like 200 years ago. Down the street from me there are houses that are purported to have been stops on the Underground Railroad. Our Newton Museum is showcasing how it was a stop in the Underground Railroad. We have a long history of ethnic diversity. We were the area if you were a middle class freed slave and you escaped slavery and you made it to Boston, then you were fine. Newton was the only place in all of Massachusetts, in all of Boston, if you were an affluent person of color that you were allowed to live. We have this long history but we also have hidden above this sort of shiny surface, we also have racism.
This was eight years ago before Trump was even running for office and it was just under the surface. You didn’t see it, you didn’t notice. For example, going back to the enslavement and how we had this really thriving community in a particular area of Newton when they built the Mass Pike in the 70s, you know how when you build a highway part of it has to be straight because they use it for like a runway in an emergency and then part of it can be curved, and it’s like certain increments straight curved curved. I don’t know who did it but when they planned the Mass Pike they deliberately curved it to wipe out that middle class African-American Community. Some of it remains but it’s abutted right against the Mass Pike.
Anyway, our town had a haiku thing where they asked us to submit haikus and they were gonna put it on signs all over town. So I wrote one about wiping out, which might not have been the Newton people, might have been in Boston. It was not chosen but this whole racism is in our high school…we have a 13% Asian American student population and those kids are being asked, “hey, why are you so upset? What’s the big deal? It’s funny…” So they’re sort of under the spotlight and then my friend’s son who declined to be in the play they’re like, “this all your fault.”
I mean it was sort of like when you bring up racism, what happens… There’s so many defenders of this play saying “lighten up. It’s no big deal.”
Even my own Asian American community, I reached out to people that I know whose kids go to that high school or are in the community that feeds into that high school that are Asian or have biracial kids to say, I’m getting a lot of hate on my blog could you like leave a comment of support,.even anonymously. It was strange to me that I had a lot of support from a complete stranger (the Jewish woman) than my own friends. (My friends said) we’d rather take you out to dinner to say thank you but we can’t leave a comment even, not Invisible, even anonymously because I saw the play at another school and haha I thought it was funny. I said your kids are half Chinese. This is an anti-chinese play. Or because this play has been used in high schools across the country for decades. They will actually use the whole racist hat. Other people would say their kids are in theater they’re like can’t you look at it as comedy? Like the yellow-faced woman, she’s such a villain, isn’t that funny? And I was like no, it’s not. It’s racist. And then other people will be like, we just can’t make waves you know like it might affect my husband’s job. We’d rather take you out to dinner to say thank you. You think the Asians in your community would stand shoulder to shoulder with you. I just assumed, these were my friends, these are my friends, these continue to be my friends.
I think just Asians as a culture we’re trying so hard to assimilate and fit in. To say I’m not okay with this and then have so many other people so aggressively attacking you, white people, that it’s intimidating to put yourself forward. I think it was the Jewish woman, who I’ve never even met, I don’t even know her, coming from a place of I know persecution so I’m going to stand up for you even though this is not my personal battle. I understand it’s like it’s for all of us who’ve ever been persecuted or faced racism. So it was so interesting to me like who comes forward and who steps back. I feel like you just needed one other person to be like no like I I’m standing and like that’s enough.
Takeaway: It is all of our role to stand up against racism we see around us, regardless of whether or not it affects you directly. We all have a way that we can speak out and make a difference. You never know how far the ripple will reach.
Hai Anh: You know yeah, that is such an inspiring story and thank you for being so courageous standing up to that even 10 years ago. That was during Obama time right but the climate was still very different in terms of the thoughts around Asian hate and all that and racism and all that.
Mia: You know, yes. It seemed like okay Obama’s president so racism isn’t a thing. I think there was this whole prevalent idea of Asians as like the model minority. Like why are you complaining? Asians, in my high school Asians get into all the good schools.
It’s interesting because the neighboring town, which is Brookline, it has an even higher percentage of Asians and they actually did the same musical play at basically the same time, because you know they always do musical spring. On their own, without anyone complaining, they decided we’re just gonna rewrite it and we’re gonna take it out of this setting where the two main characters are these two Chinese men who are very subservient in the play. We’re gonna rewrite it completely and we’re gonna set it in the Deep South so like there’s no Asian ethnicity specific or racism, no yellow face, for example, and they just did it on their own.
Whereas my high school when we asked why didn’t you just do what Brooklyn high school did? And they’re like well we would never change the words of a play. We’re musical theater scholars. We would never do that without permission. But then they literally did because they couldn’t cast the two Asian parts. That one my friend’s son, they just assumed he would take it and so when he refused, they went to the Asian American Club on campus and those kids, one they’re not really theater kids, and two they said, um no it’s racist.
So they had to cast a white boy in the part and he’s playing a Chinese character and they’re not putting them in yellow face, although another character is in yellow face. At the very end, they have to rewrite it and they have to make up a new character which is the mother. At the very end she hobbles on stage and says haha you never realized but you were adopted? They totally did rewrite it.
Hai Anh: Your comments are very interesting about having someone to support you, one just one person can support you and make you feel more empowered to keep going.
My question is if we see something uncomfortable like that but do not have such a big platform like you, or you know writing a lot of blogs or doing a lot of things already, what can we do? How should we start addressing the uncomfortable feelings or voicing our concerns and discomfort around racism or things we perceive as not right?
Mia: Yeah… well the first thing I would say is I literally used my micro blog, which has maybe like 30 subscribers. I mean it’s tiny. I would say like you and you don’t even necessarily need a blog because, these days, even eight years later, if someone just put it on nextdoor or even on a Facebook page- I think there’s more ways to have your voice be public. Although you can also, if you’re uncomfortable with that, even just writing in to the school. My friend wrote to the director of the theater and she probably CCed the principal. Just have some paper trail to say I wrote about it and here’s the paper trail so then at least in the future you can say I notified you guys. Why didn’t you do anything? If they say, oh, no one said anything it’s like well here’s the paper trail.
I think it’s just to have some kind of formal complaint, that’s public or private, but something that’s traceable. That’s no small thing because you have to decide I’m gonna make the time to write it and send it and you know worry like maybe there’s repercussions for me.
I’m like we’re not even at this high school. I have three kids and my oldest is about to enter and that could be bad. While she’s not a theater person, the head of creative art is the head of performing arts, and my daughter’s definitely an artist. She’s going there for art and subsequently went to Rhode Island School of Design so there could have been repercussions, you know, to punish the family who’s making the fuss. Those are definitely things to be concerned about. I didn’t suffer from that but I could have and I could see why a parent would be worried about it because that is true that could happen.
I would say there are probably ways that you can find to have your voice heard that fit your comfort level. Whether it’s like a letter that you send anonymously or with your name or posting something publicly with your name or anonymously or even just asking for a meeting with someone because a lot of times just a face-to-face discussion is a better form of communication. In a written format people are interpreting what you are saying, what you mean, what your emotional level is, you know they’re interpreting. So especially like emails, when they go back and forth, the emotion, the tone, can escalate quickly. Just like on my blog with comments the tone can escalate quite rapidly. Whereas face to face it’s a little bit more dramatic when it escalates and there’s a little bit more room to try to come to a common perspective. I’m personally not that good at it. I’m good at saying I’m super pissed off and here’s all the evidence of why I am correct and I am right and you are wrong. That’s not necessarily the best way to go. I’m still learning.
Takeaway: We can all find a way to stand up to racism that fits our personalities and abilities.
Mia: I was reading about the best way to go is actually 45% listening. In the beginning, you let the person say what they want to say and then you repeat it back as like I am hearing you say that you chose this play not thinking it was racist but because it provided a lot of parts. There’s just a lot of parts so you can cast a lot of people because the musical is the most popular show of the year and everyone wants to participate and a lot of the musicals don’t have 30 parts so you were thinking of inclusion because you can have 30 people cast. You were thinking it’s fine because people have been using this play for 50 years and you had no idea there was any controversy. In retrospect, you realize that the vetting system that you have, which is three layers of vetting, has no people of color so maybe that’s where you went wrong, to have diversity in terms of minority representation but there’s no people of color and certainly no Asians and certainly no Chinese Americans.
Takeaway: Just because “we’ve always done it” doesn’t make it right.
Hai Anh: Yeah, I think that’s a great point. A lot of times it’s not like they intentionally are being racist but it’s unknowingly and just out of habit, or out of revering traditions, and things like you say that they didn’t take another perspective. That’s something that we can point out in a more reconciliatory way instead of attacking them as being the bad guy or being malicious in their intent.
Mia: I think that’s definitely the better way. I did not necessarily do that. That’s the better way and in hindsight, I would recommend that but also, I didn’t find out about it until two days before they were to go live and there were other people who were notifying them well before. It’s a combination because sometimes you can do the reconciliatory, nice way and if the machine’s already moving it might. If they’re like it’s too much work or it’s too hard then you have to kick up. What’s so interesting is eight years later, this year for the spring musical they decided to do something for the first time that was only BIPOC.
If you think about it, a lot of these old musicals, the way you have to cast it, all the main parts are white almost- unless you do a different interpretation of it. Unless it was built in like Thoroughly Modern Millie where there are some BIPOC.but it’s like you know it’s written in a racist way but most of them in general the leads are white, or the whole play is white. So they decided they’re going to do all BIPOC and not just BIPOC for the sake of it but like to dive into minority stories in the same way like now in the children’s book we’re trying to dive into minority stories to say they should be mainstream. We’re not just one big chunk. We’re not just one Asian-American group. We all have different stories even within one ethnic group and every story is valid and should be told. So they were sort of coming from that perspective- let’s do this play around stories. They got pushback. I don’t know if it’s necessarily from my community, but they got pushback, public pushback, to say how dare you have a play where white people cannot be the star of it.
So that ended up in a story across the pond as well and and kudos to the principal who is a different principal but he’s also a black principal who does a lot of diversity and inclusion work. He’s literally written books about it and he held firm and they did the play and I’m sure it was amazing.
It’s so interesting that one, even to be thinking about that, the community as a whole, they listened and heard and learned and moved forward and were willing to do something like that so like kudos to them for learning the takeaway.
Takeaway: We can learn and grow from our mistakes.
Mia: Minority stories are important and if you tell all in a racist way it’s not for anybody but then to know that there’s always going to be pushback because it’s it’s kind of like this white mindset is that you know we are the majority even though it’s no longer going to be true and certainly not true in certain states like California. But it’s like this mindset of we can never be excluded. We have always had all the opportunities we have to always be the star or the ability to be the star we won’t tolerate ever being excluded.
Whereas, we don’t mind ever excluding you minority people. That’s the world in which we live but if the tables are ever turned you know, whether it’s in my community or elsewhere, the pushback is quite intense and I think that’s something to be learned from for BIPOCS. When they are not in a position to have the Lion’s Share. We have to be equally front and center and forward to say, hey this is affecting us and we’re not getting that opportunity. I think as a group Asian American, Asian Pacific Americans we haven’t been just because we’ve faced racism in its ugliest form in its most intense historically for hundreds of years of not being allowed to get citizenship as a naturalized citizen, not being allowed to own property, not being allowed jobs.
My mother who’s a Japanese-American citizen born in San Francisco after World War II she became a civil servant and her brother who served in you know the 442nd division in Europe as the Japanese-American infantry unit.
I was never like a civil servant, what’s the big deal, it’s not even that great of a job but no one of color was allowed to be a civil servant until after World War II. If you think about it, now that I’m learning about it, that meant learning to fly a plane as part of the Air Force or becoming a nurse as part of the military and getting that training for free, which otherwise is not available to you. There were definitely middle class opportunities that were denied across the board to anyone of color and it’s not that long ago. Now we have more invisible barriers. It was a law, you’re not allowed to be a civil servant. But if we don’t fight for it people, nobody’s fighting for you, nobody is. That’s a story, that’s a lesson also that we need to teach our children right, how to fight for themselves.
Hai Anh: I would like to ask another question but I don’t know if we are running out of time because I think we have other speakers.
Vanessa: We have about 10 minutes. I think I don’t see any questions in the chat at the moment so I think we can fit that one in and then we will have to call it a day.
Hai Anh: I wanted to ask Mia what actions, how do we prepare our kids to stand up against racism and if they see anything, notice racism at school or elsewhere, how do they take actions? One of the things I take from you is leading by example, right? Your kids I’m sure are very vocal. What are the things that they can do?
Mia: I think they were a little bit embarrassed. They’re like we’re not even at the high school yet mom, like what the hell are you doing. I think it’s really to take a step back and say what kind of kids are we trying to raise?
For me, the one thing I focused on was confident kids. We have to make sure our kids are confident and have good self-esteem because so many things, you can avoid so many problems if your kids are confident and have good self-esteem.
They won’t be victims of bullying for example if you’re a confident child. So you think what makes a kid confident?
For me, I’m all about sports. I feel like kids that do sports, girls that do sports, it’s so important for girls for body image and just for them to know that my body is an athletic machine. It’s not here to be judged on its physical, like the physical presentation. It’s my body. It’s an instrument that accomplishes things.
I guess to support them and their interests and for them to feel like I can do whatever I want. For them to feel like I am enough. I don’t need to be this or that. I don’t need to have lots of play dates. I don’t, you know whatever it is. I know who I am. I pursue things I’m interested in. I know I’m a cool person.
We’ve all done hand-to-hand combat sports for a really long time and I still do that also. It just gives you physical confidence.
My son was really small for his age, like one entire head shorter than all the kids, even though he was among the oldest because of his birthday. He was among the oldest of his cohort for every grade but he was one head, like 12 inches smaller. Because he was literally doing hand-in-hand combat and played a lot of sports when one little kid challenged him to fight, like literally playground fight, he was like okay, let’s go. I was there and I watched but I didn’t even hear him. He was like why wouldn’t I fight this kid Mom? I’ve been training as a boxer for years. I know how to punch and that kid just slunk away as soon as I was like yeah, let’s go.
When he was very little in preschool he was being bullied, unintentionally. This kid didn’t know what he was doing and you know the convention is don’t do anything but we were like no if the kids pushes you, push him back, you know what I mean, because that’s like the playground. That’s not what parents say but like that’s what I say. The kid is pushing, push back but like a little bit harder. So I literally was on deck because I was the parent volunteer and I saw this kid push my son, and they’re literally the same size. Then my son pushed him back. The kid looked surprised because the kid was an only child and then he was like oh yeah no that doesn’t feel good and then they just ran off and played and then there was never any physical bullying after that.
Hai Anh: I wonder if that kind of confidence also helps them to be more courageous in pushing things out of boundaries or pushing themselves into more uncomfortable situations where as you say sometimes when you voice something against racism or against things that you think are unjust you become unpopular or you become a target. I think that as you say, cultivating their confidence will help a lot with helping them to have that courage.
Mia: 100% because it’s how you feel inside you know.
Hai Anh: Thank you, that is beautiful.
Takeaway: Teach your kids to fight for themselves- to be confident advocates for themselves and others.
Vanessa: I hate that we have to end this conversation because there’s so much great advice and just a wealth of knowledge coming from you Mia. Thank you so much for sharing but unfortunately we do have to end so that we can start the next session. If people want to continue the conversation, if they want to keep talking to you about these things, where can they find you? I know you mentioned it in the beginning but there are new people here.
Mia: pragmaticmom.com and if you subscribe to my blog you’ll get all the notifications of the virtual picture book club and any kind of anything else. There’s also Multicultural Children’s Book Day. We are rebranding it to readyourworld.org but it will re-point to Multiculturalchildrensbookday.com so both will work. I also will list when we’re doing stuff. I’ll put it on my blog as well. I’ll give you announcements.
Vanessa: Perfect, and if you want to find more about Little Beans Toy Chest you can go here to find that and all of those links will be in the description of this video.