Carole Boston Weatherford: Using Black Music & Children's Literature To Teach Social Justice

2018 NAME Philip C. Chinn Book Award Winner! This much-needed book will help schools and, by extension, society to better understand and identify the promise, potential, and possibilities of Black boys. Drawing from their wealth of experience in early childhood education, the authors present an asset- and strengths-based view of educating Black boys. This positive approach enables practitioners and school leaders to recognize, understand, and cultivate the diversity of social skills of Black boys in the early grades (pre-K-3rd grade). Each chapter begins with a vignette to illustrate what is lost when Black boys are prevented from participating freely in boyhood, having to instead attend to adult and peer interactions and attitudes that view them as "bad boys" and "troublemakers." This accessible book provides teachers with classroom strategies to help young Black boys achieve their highest potential, along with other resources for supporting their social-emotional development, such as a reading list of authentic multicultural children's books with Black boys as protagonists. Book Features: Challenges deficit views of Black boys in order to transform the way schools and society think, talk, and write about them. Provides culturally responsive strategies for engaging Black boys and fostering healthy self-identity and agency. Discusses the importance of critical self-reflection to examine attitudes and practices that inform how teachers engage with children and families. Examines how school officials, beginning in early childhood, can stop the adultification and criminalization of Black boys.

Discover how to give African American children the education they deserve with this updated new resource  In the newly revised Third Edition of The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children, distinguished professor Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings delivers an encouraging exploration of the future of education for African American students. She describes eight exemplary teachers, all of whom differ in their personal style and methods, who share an approach to teaching that affirms and strengthens cultural identity.  In this mixture of scholarship and storytelling, you'll learn how to create intellectually rigorous and culturally relevant classrooms that have the power to improve the lives of all children. This important book teaches:  What successful teachers do, don't do, and what we can learn from them  Why it's so important for teachers to work with the unique strengths each student brings to the classroom  How to improve educational outcomes for African American children across the country  Perfect for teachers, parents, school leaders, and administrators, The Dreamkeepers will also earn a place in the libraries of school boards, professors of education, urban sociologists, and casual readers with an interest in issues of race and education. 

Rooted in examples from their own and others' classrooms, the authors offer discipline-specific practices for implementing antiracist literature instruction in White-dominant schools. Each chapter explores a key dimension of antiracist literature teaching and learning, including designing literature-based units that emphasize racial literacy, selecting literature that highlights voices of color, analyzing Whiteness in canonical literature, examining texts through a critical race lens, managing challenges of race talk, and designing formative assessments for racial literacy and identity growth. Book Features: Specific classroom scenarios and transcripts of race-related challenges that teachers will recognize to help situate suggested strategies. Sample racial literacy objectives, questions, and assessments to guide unit instruction. A literature-based unit that addresses societal racism in A Raisin in the Sun. Assignments for exploring Whiteness in the teaching of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Questions teachers can use to examine To Kill a Mockingbird through a critical race lens. Techniques for managing difficult moments in whole group discussions. Collaborative glossary and exploratory essay assignments to build understanding of race-based concepts and racial identity development.

Making Black Girls Count in Math Education explores the experiences of Black girls and women in mathematics from preschool to graduate school, deftly probing race and gender inequity in STEM fields. Nicole M. Joseph investigates factors that contribute to the glaring underrepresentation of Black female students in the mathematics pipeline. Joseph's unflinching account calls attention to educational structures and practices that contribute to race- and gender-based stratification in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines. The author also disentangles a complex network of historical and sociopolitical elements that influence the perception and experiences of Black girls and women both inside and outside of mathematics education. In her clear-eyed assessment of the intersectional difficulties facing this marginalized group, Joseph offers a critical view of the existing mathematics education research, practice, and policies that have neglected Black girls and women; confronts the problematic history of mathematics education policy; and considers imbalances in the current teacher workforce in US mathematics programs. She then provides practical, actionable suggestions for reform. Joseph invites students, families, and educators, as well as researchers, policy makers, and other relevant stakeholders to disrupt systems, structures, and ideologies. She calls for an end to racism and sexism in many areas of mathematics education, including learning environments, curriculum design and implementation, and testing and assessments. An essential read for anyone concerned about supporting the mathematical learning and development of Black girls and women, this work advocates for coalition-building so that greater, more equitable opportunities for learning and engagement may be offered to Black female students.

Multiplication is for White People' is a passionate reminder that there is no achievement gap at birth. Poor teaching, negative stereotypes and a curriculum that does not adequately connect to poor children's lives conspire against the prospects of poor children of colour. From reception classes and on through the university years, Delpit brings the topic of educating other people's children into the twenty-first century, outlining a blueprint for raising expectations based on a simple premise: that all aspects of advanced education are for everyone.'

The "powerful" (Michelle Alexander) exploration of the harsh and harmful experiences confronting Black girls in schools, and how we can instead orient schools toward their flourishing On the day fifteen-year-old Diamond from the Bay Area stopped going to school, she was expelled for lashing out at peers who constantly harassed and teased her for something everyone on the staff had missed: she was being trafficked for sex. After months on the run, she was arrested and sent to a detention center for violating a court order to attend school. In a work that Lisa Delpit calls "imperative reading," Monique W. Morris chronicles the experiences of Black girls across the country whose complex lives are misunderstood, highly judged--by teachers, administrators, and the justice system--and degraded by the very institutions charged with helping them flourish. Painting "a chilling picture of the plight of black girls and women today" (The Atlantic), Morris exposes a world of confined potential and supports the rising movement to challenge the policies, practices, and cultural illiteracy that push countless students out of school and into unhealthy, unstable, and often unsafe futures. At a moment when Black girls are the fastest growing population in the juvenile justice system, Pushout is truly a book "for everyone who cares about children" (Washington Post). Book cover photograph by Brittsense/brittsense.com.

An examination of how curriculum choices can perpetuate White supremacy, and radical strategies for how schools and teacher education programs can disrupt and transform racism in education When racist curriculum "goes viral" on social media, it is typically dismissed as an isolated incident from a "bad" teacher. Educator Bree Picower, however, holds that racist curriculum isn't an anomaly. It's a systemic problem that reflects how Whiteness is embedded and reproduced in education. In Reading, Writing, and Racism, Picower argues that White teachers must reframe their understanding about race in order to advance racial justice and that this must begin in teacher education programs. Drawing on her experience teaching and developing a program that prepares teachers to focus on social justice and antiracism, Picower demonstrates how teachers' ideology of race, consciously or unconsciously, shapes how they teach race in the classroom. She also examines current examples of racist curricula that have gone viral to demonstrate how Whiteness is entrenched in schools and how this reinforces racial hierarchies in the younger generation. With a focus on institutional strategies, Picower shows how racial justice can be built into programs across the teacher education pipeline-from admission to induction. By examining the who, what, why, and how of racial justice teacher education, she provides radical possibilities for transforming how teachers think about, and teach about, race in their classrooms.

2021 PROSE Award Finalist, Education Practice and Theory Category In the thoroughly revised second edition of Start Where You Are, But Don't Stay There, H. Richard Milner IV addresses the knowledge and insights required on the part of teachers and school leaders to serve students of color. Milner focuses on a crucial issue in teacher training and professional education: the need to prepare teachers for the racially diverse student populations in their classrooms. The book, anchored in real world experiences, centers on case studies that exemplify the challenges, pitfalls, and opportunities facing teachers in diverse classrooms. The case studies--of teachers in urban and suburban settings--are presented amid current discussions about race and teaching. In addition, the second edition includes a new chapter dedicated to opportunity gaps in education and an expanded discussion of how Opportunity Centered Teaching can address these gaps. Start Where You Are, But Don't Stay There strives to help educators in the fight for social justice, equity, inclusion, and transformation for all students. It is a book urgently needed in today's increasingly diverse classrooms.

This book will help educators rethink their expectations of and practices for developing the literacy skills of Black boys in the elementary school classroom. Tatum shows educators how to bring students' literacy development into greater focus by creating an early intellectual infrastructure of advanced literacy, knowledge, and personal development. He provides a strong conceptual frame, with associated instructional and curricular practices, designed to move Black boys from across the economic spectrum toward advanced literacy that aligns with the Black intellectual tradition. Readers will learn how to use texts from a broad range of potential professions, across academic disciplines, to nurture social and scientific consciousness. The text includes guidance for selecting texts, reading supports, prompts for analysis, and examples of student work. Teaching Black Boys in the Elementary Grades counters the current obsession with basic and proficient reading and argues for adopting an exponential growth model of literacy development. Book Features: A multidimensional model that supports reading and writing development. Student writing artifacts that can be used as a model for teachers. Sample lessons with texts for use across the academic disciplines. A strong conceptual and curricular frame to support educators in their text selection.

Teaching for Black Lives grows directly out of the movement for Black lives. We recognize that anti-Black racism constructs Black people, and Blackness generally, as not counting as human life. Throughout this book, we provide resources and demonstrate how teachers connect curriculum to young people's lives and root their concerns and daily experiences in what is taught and how classrooms are set up. We also highlight the hope and beauty of student activism and collective action.

Critical and necessary, this book provides a window into the education and lives of Black boys in early childhood settings. Drawing on Black Critical Theory and Black Male Studies, and applying portraiture methodology, Bryan explores experiences of Black boys and their male teachers in ways that affirm their humanity and acknowledge the consequences of existing in a white supremacist system. Bryan's nuanced and comprehensive portraits honor the voices of Black boys and their male teachers, and counter the one-dimensional and essentialist perspectives that proliferate in our schools, which Bryan identifies as anti-Black misandry. Introducing BlackBoyCrit Pedagogy, Bryan addresses the impact of socially constructed stereotypes and perceptions in the classroom and highlights the importance of educators who challenge such practices. In so doing, he provides a much-needed in-depth examination of pedagogies, literacies, and practices Black male teachers employ, as well as a perceptive view of the academic and social landscapes Black boys must navigate.

This book contributes to the understanding of the transformative power of incorporating translanguaging, the dynamic language practices of bi/multilingual communities, in the schooling of US Latinx children and youth. It showcases instructional spaces in US education where Latinx children's and youths' translanguaging is at the center of their teaching and learning. By centering racialized Latinx bilingual students, including their knowledge systems and cultural and linguistic practices, it transforms the monolingual-white supremacy ideology of many educational spaces. In so doing, racialized bilingual Latinx subjectivities are potentially transformed, as students learn to understand processes of colonization and domination that have robbed them of opportunities to use their entire semiotic repertoire in learning. The book makes a strong theoretical contribution to the field, putting decolonial, post-structuralist understandings of language and bilingualism alongside critical race theory and critical pedagogy.

For many years to come, race will continue to be a source of controversy and conflict in American society. For many of us it will continue to shape where we live, pray, go to school, and socialize. We cannot simply wish away the existence of race or racism, but we can take steps to lessen the ways in which the categories trap and confine us. Educators, who should be committed to helping young people realize their intellectual potential as they make their way toward adulthood, have a responsibility to help them find ways to expand identities related to race so that they can experience the fullest possibility of all that they may become. In this brutally honest-yet ultimately hopeful- book Pedro Noguera examines the many facets of race in schools and society and reveals what it will take to improve outcomes for all students. From achievement gaps to immigration, Noguera offers a rich and compelling picture of a complex issue that affects all of us.

Winner of the 2020 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award Drawing on personal stories, research, and historical events, an esteemed educator offers a vision of educational justice inspired by the rebellious spirit and methods of abolitionists. Drawing on her life's work of teaching and researching in urban schools, Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements. She argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color. Instead of trying to repair a flawed system, educational reformers offer survival tactics in the forms of test-taking skills, acronyms, grit labs, and character education, which Love calls the educational survival complex. To dismantle the educational survival complex and to achieve educational freedom-not merely reform-teachers, parents, and community leaders must approach education with the imagination, determination, boldness, and urgency of an abolitionist. Following in the tradition of activists like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer, We Want to Do More Than Survive introduces an alternative to traditional modes of educational reform and expands our ideas of civic engagement and intersectional justice.

Topics such as race, gender, politics, religion, andsexualityare part of our students' lives, yet when these subjects are brought up at school teachers often struggle with how to respond. How do we create learning conditions where kids can ask the questions they want to ask, muddle through how to say the things they are thinking, and have tough conversations? How can we be proactive and take steps to engaging in the types of conversations where risk is high but the payoff could be even greater? Being the Changeis based on the idea that people can develop skills and habits to serve them in the comprehension of social issues. Sara K. Ahmed identifies and unpacks the skills of social comprehension, providing teachers with tools and activities that help students make sense of themselves and the world as they navigate relevant topics in today's society. Each chapter includes clear, transferrable lessons and practical strategies that help students learn about a targeted social comprehension concept. From exploring identity and diversity to understanding and addressing biases and microaggressions, Sara demonstrates how to address real issues honestly in the classroom while honoring and empowering students. Dealing with social issues is uncomfortable and often messy, but you can build habitats of trust where kids and adults can make their thinking visible and cultivate empathy; where expression, identity, and social literacy matter. There is no magic formula for making the world a better place. It happens in the moments we embrace discomfort and have candid conversations. **** "I am convinced that every class of kids I work with is filled with change agents who will make this world the one we teach toward. I believe that my students will carry the work of doing right by this world into their own lives. I'll bet you believe this about your kids, too." -Sara K. Ahmed

In Cultivating Genius, Dr. Gholdy E. Muhammad presents a four-layered equity framework--one that is grounded in history and restores excellence in literacy education. This framework, which she names, Historically Responsive Literacy, was derived from the study of literacy development within 19th-century Black literacy societies. The framework is essential and universal for all students, especially youth of color, who traditionally have been marginalized in learning standards, school policies, and classroom practices. The equity framework will help educators teach and lead toward the following learning goals or pursuits:   Identity Development--Helping youth to make sense of themselves and others Skill Development-- Developing proficiencies across the academic disciplines Intellectual Development--Gaining knowledge and becoming smarter Criticality--Learning and developing the ability to read texts (including print and social contexts) to understand power, equity, and anti-oppression  When these four learning pursuits are taught together--through the Historically Responsive Literacy Framework, all students receive profound opportunities for personal, intellectual, and academic success. Muhammad provides probing, self-reflective questions for teachers, leaders, and teacher educators as well as sample culturally and historically responsive sample plans and text sets across grades and content areas. In this book, Muhammad presents practical approaches to cultivate the genius in students and within teachers.

Build learning environments that support Black girls' excellence and academic achievement. In this thought-provoking and illuminating book, former educator and social justice advocate Monique W. Morris addresses the harmful policies, practices, conditions, and assumptions that too often criminalize Black girls' behavior and steer them down "school-to-confinement pathways" in disproportionate numbers. The key to disrupting such punitive pushout is for educators to develop meaningful relationships with Black girls-connections that are grounded in cultural understanding and focused on helping Black girls develop their identities as valued individuals and contributors to the larger community. Such relationships, Morris argues, can shift Black girls' schooling from a punishment-oriented experience to one that is joyful, healing, and transformative. Along with her own research and experience, Morris explores the topic through in-depth conversations with three distinguished educators and clinical practitioners: Venus Evans-Winters, Janice Johnson Dias, and Kakenya Ntaiya, who provide insights about the challenges of educating Black girls and uplifting accounts of success in promoting their excellence and achievement.These conversations and takeaways for practice are essential guideposts for any teacher, school leader, and policymaker committed to creating learning environments that dispel damaging attitudes and practices and allow Black girls to flourish.

The achievement gap remains a stubborn problem for educators of culturally and linguistically diverse students. Diverse classrooms need a proven framework for optimizing student engagement and facilitating deeper learning. Culturally responsive pedagogy has shown great promise in meeting this need, but many educators still struggle with its implementation. In this book, Zaretta Hammond draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to offer an innovative approach for designing and implementing brain-compatible culturally responsive instruction.

Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies raises fundamental questions about the purpose of schooling in changing societies. Bringing together an intergenerational group of prominent educators and researchers, this volume engages and extends the concept of culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP)--teaching that perpetuates and fosters linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of schooling for positive social transformation. The authors propose that schooling should be a site for sustaining the cultural practices of communities of color, rather than eradicating them. Chapters present theoretically grounded examples of how educators and scholars can support Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian/Pacific Islander, South African, and immigrant students as part of a collective movement toward educational justice in a changing world. Book Features: A definitive resource on culturally sustaining pedagogies, including what they look like in the classroom and how they differ from deficit-model approaches. Examples of teaching that sustain the languages, literacies, and cultural practices of students and communities of color. Contributions from the founders of such lasting educational frameworks as culturally relevant pedagogy, funds of knowledge, cultural modeling, and third space. Contributors: H. Samy Alim, Mary Bucholtz, Dolores Inés Casillas, Michael Domínguez, Nelson Flores, Norma Gonzalez, Kris D. Gutiérrez, Adam Haupt, Amanda Holmes, Jason G. Irizarry, Patrick Johnson, Valerie Kinloch, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Carol D. Lee, Stacey J. Lee, Tiffany S. Lee, Jin Sook Lee, Teresa L. McCarty, Django Paris, Courtney Peña, Jonathan Rosa, Timothy J. San Pedro, Daniel Walsh, Casey Wong

Tatum addresses the power of writing to connect young people with the deeper meaning in their own lives as they put their voices on record, exploring, in particular, writing as a tool to navigate lives in "communities of turmoil" and build positive relationships. Additionally, he explores the power of writing to help students construct meaning as readers as they explore the enabling literary works of their textual lineages. The book also addresses the practical implications of supporting students as writers and, to that end, targets teachers as writers!

Literacy is the foundation for all learning and must be accessible to all students. This fundamental truth is where Kimberly Parker begins to explore how culturally relevant teaching can help students work toward justice. Her goal is to make the literacy classroom a place where students can safely talk about key issues, move to dismantle inequities, and collaborate with one another. Introducing diverse texts is an essential part of the journey, but teachers must also be equipped with culturally relevant pedagogy to improve literacy instruction for all. In Literacy Is Liberation, Parker gives teachers the tools to build culturally relevant intentional literacy communities (CRILCs) with students. Through CRILCs, teachers can better shape their literacy instruction by * Reflecting on the connections between behaviors, beliefs, and racial identity. * Identifying the characteristics of culturally relevant literacy instruction and grounding their practice within a strengths-based framework. * Curating a culturally inclusive library of core texts, choice reading, and personal reading, and teaching inclusive texts with confidence. * Developing strategies to respond to roadblocks for students, administrators, and teachers. * Building curriculum that can foster critical conversations between students about difficult subjects--including race. In a culturally relevant classroom, it is important for students and teachers to get to know one another, be vulnerable, heal, and do the hard work to help everyone become a literacy high achiever. Through the practices in this book, teachers can create the more inclusive, representative, and equitable classroom environment that all students deserve.

In this lively and groundbreaking book, arts educator Marit Dewhurst examines why art is an effective way to engage students in thinking about the role they might play in addressing social injustice. Based on interviews and observations of sixteen highschoolers participating in an activist arts class at a New York City museum, Dewhurst identifies three learning processes common to the act of creating art that have an impact on social justice: connecting, questioning, and translating. Noting that "one of the challenges of social justice art education has been the difficulty of naming effective strategies that can be used across multiple contexts," Dewhurst outlines core strategies for an "activist arts pedagogy" and offers concrete suggestions for educators seeking to incorporate activist art projects inside or outside formal school settings. Social Justice Art seeks to give common language to educators and others who are looking to expand and refine their practices in an emerging field, whether they work in art education, social justice programming, or youth development.

Most educators want to cultivate an antibias and antiracist classroom and school community, but they often struggle with where and how to get started. Liz helps us set ourselves up for success and prepare for the mistakes we'll make along the way. Each chapter in Start Here, Start Nowaddresses many of the questions and challenges educators have about getting started, using a framework for tackling perceived barriers from a proactive stance. Liz answers the questions with personal stories, sample lessons, anchor charts, resources, conversation starters, extensive teacher and activist accounts, and more. We can break the habits that are holding us back from this work and be empowered to take the first step towards reimagining the possibilities of how antibias antiracist work can transform schools and the world at large. We must remind ourselves that what is right is often not what is easy, and we must continue to dream. Amidst the chaos, our path ahead is clear. This is our chance to dream big and build something better.

"Be prepared to be embraced with words, images, stories, examples, experiences, and a love for teaching in community with young people toward social and cultural justice."-Django Paris As middle and high school teachers, we know that students begin to develop racial identities and ideologies as early as preschool. By the time they reach us, there is much socializing and learning that needs to be undone. Textured Teaching is a way to seamlessly embed the social justice work that is needed to undo;to begin to make things right. With Culturally Sustaining Practice as its foundation, Textured Teachinghelps secondary teachers in any school setting stop wondering and guessing how to implement teaching and learning that leads to social justice. Lorena shares her framework for creating a classroom environment that is highly rigorous and engaging, and that reflects the core traits of Textured Teaching: student-driven, community centered, interdisciplinary, experiential, and flexible. Throughout the book, Lorena shares lesson design strategies that build traditional literacy skills while supporting students in developing their social justice skills at the same time. The actionable strategies Lorena uses to bring Textured Teaching values to life illuminate what is possible when we welcome all types of texts, all types of voices, and all forms of expression into the classroom.

In this follow-up to Cultivating Genius, Dr. Gholdy Muhammad adds a fifth pursuit--joy--to her groundbreaking instructional model. She defines joy as more than celebration and happiness, but also as wellness, beauty, healing, and justice for oneself and across humanity. She shows how teaching from cultural and historical realities can enhance our efforts to cultivate identity, skills, intellect, criticality, and-indeed-joy for all students, giving them a powerful purpose to learn and contribute to the world. Dr. Muhammad's wise implementation advice is paired with model lessons and assessment tools that span subjects and grade levels.

The concept of "funds of knowledge" is based on a simple premise: people are competent and have knowledge, and their life experiences have given them that knowledge. The claim in this book is that first-hand research experiences with families allow one to document this competence and knowledge, and that such engagement provides many possibilities for positive pedagogical actions. Drawing from both Vygotskian and neo-sociocultural perspectives in designing a methodology that views the everyday practices of language and action as constructing knowledge, the funds of knowledge approach facilitates a systematic and powerful way to represent communities in terms of the resources they possess and how to harness them for classroom teaching. This book accomplishes three objectives: It gives readers the basic methodology and techniques followed in the contributors' funds of knowledge research; it extends the boundaries of what these researchers have done; and it explores the applications to classroom practice that can result from teachers knowing the communities in which they work. In a time when national educational discourses focus on system reform and wholesale replicability across school sites, this book offers a counter-perspective stating that instruction must be linked to students' lives, and that details of effective pedagogy should be linked to local histories and community contexts. This approach should not be confused with parent participation programs, although that is often a fortuitous consequence of the work described. It is also not an attempt to teach parents "how to do school" although that could certainly be an outcome if the parents so desired. Instead, the funds of knowledge approach attempts to accomplish something that may be even more challenging: to alter the perceptions of working-class or poor communities by viewing their households primarily in terms of their strengths and resources, their defining pedagogical characteristics. Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities, and Classrooms is a critically important volume for all teachers and teachers-to-be, and for researchers and graduate students of language, culture, and education.