Janelle W. Henderson was born and raised and is teaching third grade in Louisville, Kentucky. She's a thirty-five-year-old mama of over twenty-five plants; a lover of Megan the Stallion, Lizzo, and Beyonce; a yogi; a hiker; a writer; and an occasional singer. Pre-COVID, students at her school knew her as the lady with the multicolored hair who runs the two book clubs she founded at the school, Black Girl Magic Book Club and Black Boy Joy Book Club. Both book clubs featured "own voice" texts and provided a space for students, in kindergarten and third grade, to engage with culturally relevant books that affirmed the diversity of the Black experience. She has coauthored articles in Reading Teacher and Urban Education. An alumnus of the National Council of Teachers of English's Professional Dyads and Culturally Relevant Teaching (Cohort 2) and Heinemann Fellows (Cohort 3), Janelle believes in creating an identity-driven, Black-affirming, and centered classroom co-constructed with her Room 112 students and their families.
