February is Black History Month

Beyond Heroes and Holidays: A Practical Guide to K-12 Anti-Racist, Multicultural Education and Staff Development, edited by Enid Lee, Deborah Menkart, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Washington, DC: Network of Educators on the Americas, 1998. 
A 463-page collection developed by educators, parents, and activists determined to create a valuable resource for change. Lesson plans and staff development activities are included, as well as critical examinations of controversial school issues such as bilingual education and tracking. Contains an extensive resource guide of teaching and learning resources and many helpful Internet sites.

Table of Contents here:

Here's the link to reviews at Teaching for Change

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

Kwame Alexander on Children’s Books and the Color of Characters

"...The mind of an adult begins in the imagination of a child.

If we don’t give children books that are literary mirrors as well as windows to the whole world of possibility, if these books don’t give them the opportunity to see outside themselves, then how can we expect them to grow into adults who connect in meaningful ways to a global community, to people who might look or live differently than they. You cannot.

Am I saying that poetry and literature are the answer to Baton Rouge and Dallas and Orlando and Charleston? No. But their capacity to entertain, enlighten and empower — all at the same time — is an answer, and without them, we most certainly obstruct our children’s vision..."

Kwame Alexander on Children’s Books and the Color of Characters

Absent Narratives Resources

The Minnesota Humanities Center is committed to helping people tell their stories. These stories, histories, and contributions are the Absent Narratives that are often left out of the mainstream story of Minnesota and many of its K-12 classrooms. These resources and many more can be found on the Absent Narratives Resource Collection, a free, searchable database of over 900 ready-to-use videos, teacher guides, and readings. Items included in the resource collection have been created or developed by the Humanities Center and its partners. 

Absent Narratives Resource Overview from Minnesota Humanities Center

Resource Assessment Tool from Minnesota Humanities Center

Minnesota Humanities Center

TED Talk by Author Grace Lin

The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child's Bookshelf

Grace Lin Books

Books as Mirrors

On the Importance of Mirrors

"... the curriculum is a structure that ideally provides “windows out into the experiences of others, as well as mirrors of the student’s own reality.” In other words, schools should be spaces where kids explore the unfamiliar, but also see their own lived experiences validated and valued. For students whose racial, cultural, linguistic, or economic backgrounds differ significantly from that of the mainstream, the “mirrors” part of the metaphor can be particularly powerful..." Gregory Michie

Publishing Statistics on Children's Books about People of Color and First/Native Nations and by People of Color and First/Native Nations Authors and Illustrators

CCBC's Choices 2016 List
CCBC Choices is the annual best-of-the-year list of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center. This is a listing of titles that have been chosen for CCBC Choices 2016. The final CCBC Choices 2016 publication will include additional books (one or two might be removed) and include annotations and recommended ages for all of the books selected for final inclusion, as well as an author/title/subject index, and a commentary on the publishing year. The CCBC Choices 2016 booklet will be available at the CCBC after March 5, 2016. 

Cooperative Children's Book Center
CCBC's history statement:
In 1985 the Cooperative Children's Book Center began to document the numbers of books we received each year that were written and/or illustrated by African Americans. Then CCBC Director Ginny Moore Kruse was serving as a member of the Coretta Scott King Award Committee that year, and we were appalled to learn that, of the approximately 2,500 trade books that were published in 1985, only 18 were created by African Americans, and thus eligible for the Coretta Scott King Award.

As a statewide book examination center serving Wisconsin, the CCBC receives the majority of new U.S. trade books published for children and teens each year. In the early years of gathering these statistics, we used the CCBC's collections and worked in conjunction with the Coretta Scott King Award Task Force of the American Library Association, to document the number of books by and about African Americans published annually.
Starting in 1994 we began also keeping track of the numbers of books by Asian/Pacific and Asian/Pacific American, First/Native Nation and Latino book creators as well. We also began documenting not only the number of books created by people of color and First/Native Nations authors and illustrators, but the number of books about people of color and First/Native Nations, including the many titles that have been created by white authors and/or illustrators.

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

Promoting Racial Literacy in Schools: Differences That Make a Difference by Howard C. Stevenson

Promoting Racial Literacy in Schools: Differences That Make a Difference 

by Howard C. Stevenson 

240 pages Publisher: Teachers College Press (December 20, 2013)

Based on extensive research, this provocative volume explores how schools are places where racial conflicts often remain hidden at the expense of a healthy school climate and the well-being of students of color. Most schools fail to act on racial micro-aggressions because the stress of negotiating such conflicts is extremely high due to fears of incompetence, public exposure, and accusation. Instead of facing these conflicts head on, schools perpetuate a set of avoidance or coping strategies. The author of this much-needed book uncovers how racial stress undermines student achievement. Students, educators, and social service support staff will find workable strategies to improve their racial literacy skills to read, recast, and resolve racially stressful encounters when they happen.
Book Features:
* A model that applies culturally relevant behavioral stress management strategies to problem-solve racial stress in schools.
* Examples demonstrating workable solutions relevant within predominantly White schools for students, parents, teachers, and administrators.
* Measurable outcomes and strategies for developing racial literacy skills that can be integrated into the K-12 curriculum and teacher professional development.
Teaching and leadership skills that will create a more tolerant and supportive school environment for all students.

See inside here.

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)
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     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

Race, Whiteness, and Education by Zues Leonardo

Race, Whiteness, and Education 

232 pages Publisher: Routledge; 1st edition (March 25, 2009) $48.95

In the colorblind era of Post-Civil Rights America, race is often wrongly thought to be irrelevant or, at best, a problem of racist individuals rather than a systemic condition to be confronted.  Race, Whiteness, and Education interrupts this dangerous assumption by reaffirming a critical appreciation of the central role that race and racism still play in schools and society.  Author Zeus Leonardo’s conceptual engagement of race and whiteness asks questions about its origins, its maintenance, and envisages its future. This book does not simply rehearse exhausted ideas on the relationship among race, class, and education, but instead offers new ways of understanding how multiple social relations interact with one another and of their impact in thinking about a more genuine sense of multiculturalism. By asking fundamental questions about whiteness in schools and society, Race, Whiteness, and Education goes to the heart of race relations and the common sense understandings that sustain it, thus painting a clearer picture of the changing face of racism.  

Courageous Conversations About Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools by Glenn Singleton

 Courageous Conversations About Race: A Field Guide for 

Achieving Equity in Schools 

312 pages Publisher: Corwin; Second Edition (October 21, 2014) $36.95

Create a system wide plan for transforming the district office, schools, and classrooms into places that truly support ALL students achieving their highest levels!

This updated edition of the bestseller continues to explain the need for candid, courageous conversations about race so that educators may understand why achievement inequality persists and learn how they can develop a curriculum that promotes true educational equity and excellence.

·    Revised Courageous Conversation Compass

·    Racial autobiographies

·    Case study on St. Paul Public Schools, which has stayed on track with the Courageous Conversation protocol and framework

·    Links to video segments of the author describing the work

·    Activities and checklists for school and district leaders

·    Action and implementation steps

Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children by Gloria Ladson-Billings

           Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children 

           256 pages. Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 2nd edition (March 23, 2009) $21.95

In the second edition of her critically acclaimed book The Dreamkeepers, Gloria Ladson-Billings revisits the eight teachers who were profiled in the first edition and introduces us to new teachers who are current exemplars of good teaching. She shows that culturally relevant teaching is not a matter of race, gender, or teaching style. What matters most is a teacher's efforts to work with the unique strengths a child brings to the classroom. A brilliant mixture of scholarship and storytelling, The Dreamkeepers challenges us to envision intellectually rigorous and culturally relevant classrooms that have the power to improve the lives of not just African American students, but all children. This new edition also includes questions for reflection.

See Preview pages here.

But That's Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy by Gloria Ladson-Billings

We Can't Teach What We Don't Know by Gary Howard

We Can't Teach What We Don't Know: White Teachers, Multiracial Schools 

172 pages Publisher: Teachers College Press; 2nd edition (January 1, 2006) $26.95

In this expanded Second Edition, Gary Howard outlines what good teachers know, what they do, and how they embrace culturally responsive teaching. Howard brings his bestselling book completely up to date with today’s school reform efforts and includes a new introduction and a new chapter that speak directly to current issues such as closing the achievement gap, and to recent legislation such as No Child Left Behind. With our nation’s student population becoming ever more diverse, and teachers remaining largely White, this book is now more important than ever. A must-read in universities and school systems throughout the country, We Can’t Teach What We Don’t Know continues to facilitate and deepen the discussion of race and social justice in education.

The Right to Learn: A Blueprint for Creating Schools that Work and The Flat World: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future by Linda Darling Hammond

           

         The Right to Learn: A Blueprint for Creating Schools that Work

          394 pages Publisher: Jossey-Bass (August 3, 2001) $26.95 

"While she recognizes the necessity for school reform and the complexity of implementing it, Darling-Hammond remains optimistic that systemic changes to ensure access to a meaningful education for all children are possible. Her book is positive and hopeful and serves as a fascinating account of American education and its promise of 'the right to learn' for all children." --Washington Post "Darling-Hammond's central claim is well worth listening to. She argues that American students do so poorly by comparison with students in other industrialized countries not because we don't give them enough work, but because our teaching is less thoughtful, and because we are obsessed with bureaucratic processes rather than educational outcomes." --New York Times Book Review One of the nation's most respected educators provides a vision of exceptional, learner-centered schools and describes the policies and practices that are needed to create these schools on a system-wide basis.

Read Chapter 1 of The Right to Learn here.

The Flat World: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future

Drawing on her broad experience, Darling-Hammond examines the roots of the U.S. modern education system and shows how the skills required for our 21st-century global economy cannot be learned in traditional education systems, which have been in place since the early 1900s. She identifies an "opportunity gap" that has evolved as new kinds of learning have become necessary, a gap where low-income students, students of colour, and English language learners often do not have the same access as others to qualified teachers, high-quality curriculum, and well-resourced classrooms.

After setting the stage on current conditions in the U.S., Darling-Hammond offers a coherent approach for effective reform that focusses on creating successful systems, inducting and supporting quality teachers, designing effecting schools, establishing strong professional practice, and providing equitable and sufficient resources. The Flat World and Education lays out what the U.S. needs to do in order to build a system of high-achieving and equitable schools that ensures every child the right to learn.

Preview this book on Google Books here.

Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom by Lisa Delpit

                Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom 

223 pages Publisher: The New Press; 1 edition (August 1, 2006) $17.95

Winner of an American Educational Studies Association Critics’ Choice Award and Choice Magazine’s Outstanding Academic Book Award, and voted one of Teacher Magazine’s “great books,” Other People’s Children has sold over 150,000 copies since its original hardcover publication. This anniversary paperback edition features a new introduction by Delpit as well as new framing essays by Herbert Kohl and Charles Payne.
In a radical analysis of contemporary classrooms, MacArthur Award–winning author Lisa Delpit develops ideas about ways teachers can be better “cultural transmitters” in the classroom, where prejudice, stereotypes, and cultural assumptions breed ineffective education. Delpit suggests that many academic problems attributed to children of color are actually the result of miscommunication, as primarily white teachers and “other people’s children” struggle with the imbalance of power and the dynamics plaguing our system.A new classic among educators, Other People’s Children is a must-read for teachers, administrators, and parents striving to improve the quality of America’s education system.

          

See inside here.