PB3A

              Cinzia Pica-Smith and Timothy A. Poynton’s peer-reviewed journal entry entitled, “Supporting Interethnic and Interracial Friendships Among Youth to Reduce Prejudice and Racism in Schools: The Role of the School Counselor,” focuses on eliminating prejudices that exist even among children in elementary schools and “improving social, emotional, and cultural competence among [these] youth” (Pica-Smith, Poynton). In order to generate two separate genres stemming from this single journal entry, there must be two distinct audiences for which they are intended.

              The first of these audiences is the young children—especially those attending an elementary school—that are the prominent subject of the original article. While it would be inappropriate (and likely far too advanced) to straightforwardly discuss issues of prejudice and racism with young children, they would likely respond well to the detailed pictures of a storybook. Popular children’s books include the Junie B. Jones series, the Charlie and Lola series, the A to Z Mysteries series, and the Clifford, The Big Red Dog series; the covers of each of these are depicted with young, white children as their protagonists. While the young students likely do not pick up on this consciously, “same-race friendship preferences begin in preschool (Fishbein, 1996; Fishbein & Imai, 1993; Rutland, Cameron, Bennett, & Ferrell, 2005), [and] overall, interracial friendships decrease while intra-racial friendships increase as children grow older (Aboud et al., 2003; Kawabata & Crick, 2008)” (Pica-Smith, Poynton). Transforming the basis of Pica-Smith and Poynton’s journal entry into a story in which youthful, relatable characters of multiple races and ethnicities interact, playing outside, learning from each other, and spending time in each other’s homes would relay the anti-prejudice concept to children without them even realizing the situation at hand. These stories must include detailed, applicable pictures and emphasize that regardless of the activity, the children are engaging in it together. Each page will contain no more than a few simple sentences, allowing for the children to understand it. It must, however, contain a sufficiently complex and interesting storyline in order to maintain the interest of the young student.

              The second audience that the new genre must be tailored to appeal to is the teachers, counselors, and other staff members of the elementary school. Holding a workshop or event that each of the faculty members must attend, in which informational handouts pertaining to destroying the gap between students of different races and ethnicities are distributed, would strongly relate to the issue discussed in the scholarly publication. These handouts would include suggestions on how to go about closing this gap, such as, “school counselors must be willing to openly discuss issues of race and racism, prejudice, and discrimination with students and adults in the school community to support the optimal intergroup contact needed to facilitate intergroup friendships” (Pica-Smith, Poynton). They would also include graphs and tables of statistics displaying the results of research, perhaps pertaining to findings that “linked collaborative learning and teaching strategies in the classroom to increases in interracial and interethnic friendship and prejudice reduction” (Zirkel 2008). The handouts will touch on aspects of pathos, in the hopes of convincing faculty members—especially teachers and counselors who deal directly with students—of the reasons WHY they should want to eliminate prejudices; they are the ones that see on a daily basis how the students are impacted by their environments, and they probably do not enjoy observing bullying and hearing racist remarks. The handouts will serve as a reminder that it is the job of the faculty member to take action to prevent these occurrences.