Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom


Lisa D. Delpit - 1995
    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.

Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence


Geoffrey Canada - 1995
    Recreating his childhood world in the South Bronx and examining current crime legislation, the author offers an analysis of how a chain of events set in motion by 1960s drug laws has led to the child violence on the streets today.

Teaching with Poverty in Mind: What Being Poor Does to Kids' Brains and What Schools Can Do About It


Eric Jensen - 2009
    A brain that is susceptible to adverse environmental effects is equally susceptible to the positive effects of rich, balanced learning environments and caring relationships that build students' resilience, self-esteem, and character.Drawing from research, experience, and real school success stories, Teaching with Poverty in Mind reveals* What poverty is and how it affects students in school;* What drives change both at the macro level (within schools and districts) and at the micro level (inside a student's brain);* Effective strategies from those who have succeeded and ways to replicate those best practices at your own school; and* How to engage the resources necessary to make change happen.Too often, we talk about change while maintaining a culture of excuses. We can do better. Although no magic bullet can offset the grave challenges faced daily by disadvantaged children, this timely resource shines a spotlight on what matters most, providing an inspiring and practical guide for enriching the minds and lives of all your students.

Teaching English by Design: How to Create and Carry Out Instructional Units


Peter Smagorinsky - 2007
    Its week-by-week suggestions for in- and out-of-class activities support students as they learn to design units for use in their first classrooms.Peter Smagorinsky, the leading scholar and researcher of his generation in the field of English education, shows English teachers how to turn every hour of classroom instruction into an authentic and powerful learning experience in his inspiring new book, Teaching English by Design. It's a wonderful book and represents a challenge to all of us to teach better than we usually do. Sheridan Blau Author of The Literature WorkshopPeter Smagorinsky, a highly respected figure in English Education, here offers new teachers principled and practical ways of authoring curriculum, even in traditional settings. Randy Bomer Author of Time for MeaningMany books on English/language arts instruction describe the teaching of units, but how many of them actually show how to create the units, make them meaningful to students, and use them to support your curriculum from September to June? Teaching English by Design does it all. It helps avoid a fragmentary curriculum by providing the rationale and the process for not only teaching well but also for producing integrated units that encourage students to deepen their thinking across the school year.Teaching English by Design is two books in one: a primer for teaching secondary English and a comprehensive guide to creating and using four to six-week instructional units. Peter Smagorinsky shares important insight about students, how they learn, and what kinds of classrooms support their achievement in reading and writing. Then he uses those findings to open up the key ideas of unit design to every teacher. Smagorinsky's units are organized around key concepts in English, such as: reading strategies writing strategies genres periods, regions, and movements in literature themes the works of a significant author. From original idea to construction, to implementation and beyond, Smagorinsky's practical advice supports teachers in extending, connecting, and integrating their units to increase the cohesion and power of the curriculum.Incorporating curricular theory, educational psychology, and fourteen years of high school teaching experience, Peter Smagorinsky's advice is both theoretically sound and grounded in the daily realities of today's teacher. Complemented by a wealth of web-based illustrations, Teaching English by Design is the ideal resource for preservice teachers as well as those in the classroom who want to take charge of their curriculum and find new energy in it.

We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom


Bettina L. Love - 2019
    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.

A Guide to Composition Pedagogies


Gary Tate - 2000
    Each essay is written by an experienced teacher/scholar and describes one of the major pedagogies employed today: process, expressive, rhetorical, collaborative, feminist, critical, cultural studies, community service, and basic writing. Writing centers, writing across the curriculum, and technology and the teaching of writing are also discussed. The essays are composed of personal statements on pedagogical applications and bibliographical guides that aid students and new teachers in further study and research. Contributors include Christopher Burnham, William A. Covino, Ann George, Diana George, Eric H. Hobson, Rebecca Moore Howard, Susan C. Jarratt, Laura Julier, Susan McLeod, Charles Moran, Deborah Mutnick, Lad Tobin, and John Trimbur. An invaluable tool for graduate students and new teachers, A Guide to Composition Pedagogies provides an exceptional introduction to composition studies and the extensive range of pedagogical approaches used today.

Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom


bell hooks - 1994
    Teaching students to "transgress" against racial, sexual, and class boundaries in order to achieve the gift of freedom is, for hooks, the teacher's most important goal.Bell hooks speaks to the heart of education today: how can we rethink teaching practices in the age of multiculturalism? What do we do about teachers who do not want to teach, and students who do not want to learn? How should we deal with racism and sexism in the classroom?Full of passion and politics, Teaching to Transgress combines practical knowledge of the classroom with a deeply felt connection to the world of emotions and feelings. This is the rare book about teachers and students that dares to raise critical questions about eros and rage, grief and reconciliation, and the future of teaching itself."To educate as the practice of freedom," writes bell hooks, "is a way of teaching that any one can learn." Teaching to Transgress is the record of one gifted teacher's struggle to make classrooms work.–from the back of the book

Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School


Shamus Rahman Khan - 2010
    Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, has long been the exclusive domain of America’s wealthiest sons. But times have changed. Today, a new elite of boys and girls is being molded at St. Paul’s, one that reflects the hope of openness but also the persistence of inequality.In Privilege, Shamus Khan returns to his alma mater to provide an inside look at an institution that has been the private realm of the elite for the past 150 years. He shows that St. Paul’s students continue to learn what they always have — how to embody privilege. Yet, while students once leveraged the trappings of upper-class entitlement, family connections, and high culture, current St. Paul’s students learn to succeed in a more diverse environment. To be the future leaders of a more democratic world, they must be at ease with everything from highbrow art to everyday life — from Beowulf to Jaws — and view hierarchies as ladders to scale. Through deft portrayals of the relationships among students, faculty, and staff, Khan shows how members of the new elite face the opening of society while still preserving the advantages that allow them to rule.

Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life


William Deresiewicz - 2014
    His students, some of the nation’s brightest minds, were adrift when it came to the big questions: how to think critically and creatively, and how to find a sense of purpose.Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with parents and counselors who demand perfect grades and culminates in the skewed applications Deresiewicz saw firsthand as a member of Yale’s admissions committee. As schools shift focus from the humanities to "practical" subjects like economics and computer science, students are losing the ability to think in innovative ways. Deresiewicz explains how college should be a time for self-discovery, when students can establish their own values and measures of success, so they can forge their own path. He addresses parents, students, educators, and anyone who's interested in the direction of American society, featuring quotes from real students and graduates he has corresponded with over the years, candidly exposing where the system is broken and clearly presenting solutions.

Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College


Doug Lemov - 2010
    In this book, author Doug Lemov offers the essential tools of the teaching craft so that you can unlock the talent ond skill waiting in your students, no matter how many previous classrooms, schools, or teachers have been unsuccessful.

The Essential 55


Ron Clark - 2003
    How many authors would travel coast to coast on a bus to get their book into as many hands as possible? Not many. But that's just what Ron Clark, author of The Essential 55, did to keep his book and message in the public eye. And it worked. After his Oprah appearance, sales skyrocketed: we've sold more than 850,000 copies in six months! The book sat tenaciously on the New York Times bestseller list for 11 weeks. Ron Clark was featured on the Today show, and in the Chicago Tribune, Good Housekeeping, and the New York Daily News--not to mention the calls we've received from teachers and parents who want to get their hands on Ron's guidelines for teaching children. Now in paperback, The Essential 55 will be the perfect book for parents and teachers to slip into their own backpacks, to read on the train or at lunch, and to highlight the sections that resonate for them. And with an author who is truly a partner in getting his message to the masses, we just can't lose.

When Kids Can't Read-What Teachers Can Do: A Guide for Teachers 6-12


G. Kylene Beers - 2002
    That year, she discovered that some of the students in her seventh-grade language arts classes could pronounce all the words, but couldn't make any sense of the text. Others couldn't even pronounce the words. And that was the year she met a boy named George.George couldn't read. When George's parents asked her to explain what their son's reading difficulties were and what she was going to do to help, Kylene, a secondary certified English teacher with no background in reading, realized she had little to offer the parents, even less to offer their son. That defining moment sent her on a twenty-three-year search for answers to that original question: how do we help middle and high schoolers who can't read?Now in her critical and practical text "When Kids Can't Read - What Teachers Can Do: A Guide for Teachers 6-12," Kylene shares what she has learned and shows teachers how to help struggling readers with comprehension vocabulary fluency word recognition motivation Here, Kylene offers teachers the comprehensive handbook they've needed to help readers improve their skills, their attitudes, and their confidence. Filled with student transcripts, detailed strategies, reproducible material, and extensive booklists, this much-anticipated guide to teaching reading both instructs and inspires.

The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children


Gloria Ladson-Billings - 1993
    Through the stories and experiences of eight successful teacher-transmitters, The Dreamkeepers keeps hope alive for educating young African Americans. --ReverAnd Jesse L. Jackson, president and founder, National Rainbow Coalition In this beautifully written book Ladson-Billings illustrates the inspiring influence of a select group of teachers who keep the dreams alive for African American students. ?Henry M. Levin, David Jacks professor of Higher Education, Stanford University Ladson-Billing's portraits, interwoven with personal reflections, challenge readers 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.

Work Hard. Be Nice.: How Two Inspired Teachers Created the Most Promising Schools in America


Jay Mathews - 2009
    They did that—and more. In their early twenties, by sheer force of talent and determination never to take no for an answer, they created a wildly successful fifth-grade experience that would grow into the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), which today includes sixty-six schools in nineteen states and the District of Columbia. KIPP schools incorporate what Feinberg and Levin learned from America's best, most charismatic teachers: lessons need to be lively; school days need to be longer (the KIPP day is nine and a half hours); the completion of homework has to be sacrosanct (KIPP teachers are available by telephone day and night). Chants, songs, and slogans such as "Work hard, be nice" energize the program. Illuminating the ups and downs of the KIPP founders and their students, Mathews gives us something quite rare: a hopeful book about education.

Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America


Paul Tough - 2008
    What would it take to change the lives of poor children—not one by one, through heroic interventions and occasional miracles, but in big numbers, and in a way that could be replicated nationwide? The question led him to create the Harlem Children’s Zone, a ninety-seven-block laboratory in central Harlem where he is testing new and sometimes controversial ideas about poverty in America. His conclusion: if you want poor kids to be able to compete with their middle-class peers, you need to change everything in their lives—their schools, their neighborhoods, even the child-rearing practices of their parents.Whatever It Takes is a tour de force of reporting, an inspired portrait not only of Geoffrey Canada but of the parents and children in Harlem who are struggling to better their lives, often against great odds. Carefully researched and deeply affecting, this is a dispatch from inside the most daring and potentially transformative social experiment of our time.