25 Mini-Films for Exploring Race, Bias and Identity with Students

How do we get students to consider perspectives different from their own? How do we get them to challenge their own biases and prejudices? If, as Atticus Finch famously said, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it,” how do we get our students to do that?

25 Mini-Films for Exploring Race, Bias and Identity with Students

Don't Say Nothing

As educators we (sometimes unknowingly) step into roles of advocate, caretaker, guide, and even mother or father to students. Students pay attention to everything we say and do. They particularly pay attention to our silence. 

We may be uncomfortable talking about race, but we can no longer afford to be silent. We have chosen a profession, which—like parenting—requires that our comforts come second to those of children.

Read the article here:

Don't Say Nothing

K-12 Teaching and Learning from the UNC School of Education

Teaching should be informed not only by the content of the discipline 

                                        but also by the lives of the students.

Culturally Relevant Teaching by Heather Coffey

A Post from the Lee & Low Blog "The Open Book"

Where to Find Culturally Diverse Literature to Pair with Your Required Curriculum

Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students by Zaretta L. (Lynn) Hammond

Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students by Zaretta L. Hammond 

This book presents a bold, brain-based teaching approach to culturally responsive instruction. To close the achievement gap, diverse classrooms need a proven framework for optimizing student engagement. Culturally responsive instruction has shown promise, but many teachers have struggled with its implementation-until now. 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. The book includes: information on how one's culture programs the brain to process data and affects learning relationships; ten "key moves" to build students' learner operating systems and prepare them to become independent learners; and, prompts for action and valuable self-reflection. 

Take a look inside here.

Ready4Rigor

Identity Work in the Classroom: Successful Learning in Urban Schools

Identity Work in the Classroom: Successful Learning in Urban Schools

by Cheryl Jones-Walker

Teachers College Press

2015 128 pages

This book provides classroom examples to demonstrate how identity-making is integral to the teaching and learning process. Responding to school reform efforts that focus on top-down reform measures, this book proposes “identity work” as an alternative approach. The author argues that efforts to improve urban schools should recognize the importance of relational change that focuses on deepening personal interactions between students and teachers, teachers and other teachers, and schools and parents. Based on an in-depth study of two classrooms in urban K–8 schools, the book illuminates the importance of allowing teachers the freedom to make pedagogical adjustments based on their knowledge of students’ needs, backgrounds, and interests. This volume reframes our understanding of urban schools and raises questions about the goals of local and federal reform and what is at stake for educational systems.

Book Features:

• Provides examples of identity work and its potential for creating individual, institutional, and large scale systemic improvement.
• Identifies how skilled educators make pedagogical decisions that increase student engagement and learning outcomes.
• Examines the challenges of working within a context of increasing mandates and rigid accountability structures.
• Advocates for design improvement strategies that rely on the capacities of students, teachers, and community members.
• Shows how qualitative work that elucidates the experience of students and teachers can inform education policy.

Table of Contents

Be the Change: Reinventing School for Student Success by Linda Darling-Hammond, Nicky Ramos-Beban, Rebecca Padnos Altamirano, and Maria E. Hyler

Be the Change: Reinventing School for Student Success 

by Linda Darling-Hammond, Nicky Ramos-Beban, 

Rebecca Padnos Altamirano, and Maria E. Hyler

Teachers College Press 2015, 264 pages

Be the Change.org

Table of Contents

Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves by Louise Derman-Sparks & Julie Olsen Edwards

Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves

by Louise Derman-Sparks & Julie Olsen Edwards

The eagerly awaited successor to the influential Anti-Bias Curriculum! Become a skilled anti-bias teacher with this volume’s practical guidance to confronting and eliminating barriers of prejudice, misinformation, and bias about specific aspects of personal and social identity; most importantly, find tips for helping staff and children respect each other, themselves, and all people.

Over the last two decades, educators across the nation and around the world have gained a wealth of knowledge and experience in anti-bias work. The result is a richer and more nuanced articulation of what is important in anti-bias education. Individual chapters focus on culture and language, racial identity, family structures, gender identity, economic class, different abilities, holidays, and more. 

Preview content here.

Persona Doll Training

AmazeWorks Persona Dolls

Bridging Literacy and Equity: The Essential Guide to Social Equity Teaching by Althier M. Lazar, Patricia A. Edwards, Gwendolyn Thompson McMillon

Bridging Literacy and Equity: The Essential Guide to Social Equity Teaching

 by Althier M. Lazar, Patricia A. Edwards, Gwendolyn Thompson McMillon

• 160 pages Publisher: Teachers College Press (June 29, 2012)
• 
  

     Bridging Literacy and Equity synthesizes the essential research and practice of social equity literacy teaching in on succinct, user-friendly. Chapters identify six key dimensions of social equity teaching that can help teachers see their students’ potential and create conditions that will support their literacy development. Serving students well depends on understanding relationships between race, class, culture, and literacy; the complexity and significance of culture; and the culturally situated nature of literacy. It also requires knowledge of culturally responsive practices, such as collaborating with and learning from caregivers, using cultural referents, enacting critical and transformative literacy practices, and seeing the capacities of English Language Learners and children who speak African American Language.

     Each chapter includes a “Reflection and Inquiry” section with exercises to help readers relate chapter concepts and issues to their own teaching practices.

 Read pages here.

Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives by James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks

Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives 

384 pages,8th Edition by James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks 2012

Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives is designed to help current and future educators acquire the concepts, paradigms, and explanations needed to become more effective practitioners in culturally, racially, and linguistically diverse classrooms and schools. The Eighth Edition has been revised to reflect new research and data regarding the decreasing non-Hispanic White population in the U.S. Two new sections to the Multicultural Resources include "Special Education and Equity," and "Gifted Education and Equity." The Multicultural Resources in the Appendix have also been revised and updated and the Glossary has been revised to incorporate 2010 census data and new developments in the field.

Equity Pedagogy: An Essential Component of Multicultural Education

Multiculturalism’s Five Dimensions

Center for Multicultural Education

Everyday Antiracism: Getting Real About Race in School by Mica Pollack

           Everyday Antiracism: Getting Real About Race in School

           389 pages Publisher: The New Press (June 1, 2008) $24.95 

Which acts by educators are "racist" and which are "antiracist"? How can an educator constructively discuss complex issues of race with students and colleagues? In Everyday Antiracism, leading educators deal with the most challenging questions about race in school, offering invaluable and effective advice.
Contributors including Beverly Daniel Tatum, Sonia Nieto, and Pedro Noguera describe concrete ways to analyze classroom interactions that may or may not be "racial," deal with racial inequality and "diversity," and teach to high standards across racial lines. Topics range from using racial incidents as teachable moments and responding to the "n-word" to valuing students' home worlds, dealing daily with achievement gaps, and helping parents fight ethnic and racial misconceptions about their children. Questions following each essay prompt readers to examine and discuss everyday issues of race and opportunity in their own classrooms and schools.
For educators and parents determined to move beyond frustrations about race, Everyday Antiracism is an essential tool.

Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching and Learning: Classroom Practices for Student Success by Sharroky Hollie

          Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching and Learning

          216 pages Publisher: Shell Education (October 1, 2011) $24.95

Implement these strategies and suggestions to support culturally and linguistically diverse students. The five pedagogical areas addressed in this resource are Classroom Management, Use of Text, Academic Vocabulary, Situational Appropriateness, and Learning Environment.