Between the World and the Urban Classroom

Between the World and the Urban Classroom
Author: George Sirrakos Jr.
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 143
Release: 2017-05-12
Genre: Education
ISBN: 946351032X
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Borrowing from the ideas of John Dewey, schools and classrooms are a reflection of the world; therefore, in order to make sense of the urban classroom, we need to make sense of the world. In this book, the editors have compiled a collection of nine critical essays, or chapters, each examining a particular contemporary national and/or international event. The essays each undertake an explicit approach to naming oppression and addressing it in the context of urban schooling. Each essay has a two-fold purpose. The first purpose is to help readers see the world unveiled, through a more critical lens, and to problematize long held beliefs about urban classrooms, with regard to race, gender, social class, equity, and access. Second, as each author draws parallels between an event and urban classrooms, a better understanding of the microstructures that exist in urban classrooms emerges. “At a time of serious political, economic, and social uncertainty, we need a book like this, one that showcases how the world can be seen as a critical site of curriculum and pedagogy. A powerful intersectional analysis of the world, word, and urban sociopolitical context, authors in this book push the boundaries of what educators know and do in urban schools and classrooms. Grounded in frameworks of critical race theory and culturally relevant pedagogy, authors center essential societal moments that must be viewed as the real curriculum. These moments can equip students with tools to examine ‘the what of the world’ as well as how to examine, critique, challenge, and disrupt individual, systemic, and structural realities and practices that perpetuate and maintain a racist, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic status quo. This is an important, forward-thinking, innovative book – a welcome addition to the field of urban education.” – H. Richard Milner IV, Helen Faison Chair of Urban Education, University of Pittsburgh

Between the World and the Urban Classroom

Between the World and the Urban Classroom
Author: George Sirrakos Jr
Publisher: Brill
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2017
Genre: Education, Urban
ISBN: 9789463510301
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Borrowing from the ideas of John Dewey, schools and classrooms are a reflection of the world; therefore, in order to make sense of the urban classroom, we need to make sense of the world. In this book, the editors have compiled a collection of nine critical essays, or chapters, each examining a particular contemporary national and/or international event. The essays each undertake an explicit approach to naming oppression and addressing it in the context of urban schooling. Each essay has a two-fold purpose. The first purpose is to help readers see the world unveiled, through a more critical lens, and to problematize long held beliefs about urban classrooms, with regard to race, gender, social class, equity, and access. Second, as each author draws parallels between an event and urban classrooms, a better understanding of the microstructures that exist in urban classrooms emerges.

For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too

For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too
Author: Christopher Emdin
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2017-01-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0807028029
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A New York Times Best Seller "Essential reading for all adults who work with black and brown young people...Filled with exceptional intellectual sophistication and necessary wisdom for the future of education."—Imani Perry, National Book Award Winner author of South To America An award-winning educator offers a much-needed antidote to traditional top-down pedagogy and promises to radically reframe the landscape of urban education for the better Drawing on his own experience of feeling undervalued and invisible in classrooms as a young man of color, Dr. Christopher Emdin has merged his experiences with more than a decade of teaching and researching in urban America. He takes to task the perception of urban youth of color as unteachable, and he challenges educators to embrace and respect each student’s culture and to reimagine the classroom as a site where roles are reversed and students become the experts in their own learning. Putting forth his theory of Reality Pedagogy, Emdin provides practical tools to unleash the brilliance and eagerness of youth and educators alike—both of whom have been typecast and stymied by outdated modes of thinking about urban education. With this fresh and engaging new pedagogical vision, Emdin demonstrates the importance of creating a family structure and building communities within the classroom, using culturally relevant strategies like hip-hop music and call-and-response, and connecting the experiences of urban youth to indigenous populations globally. Merging real stories with theory, research, and practice, Emdin demonstrates how by implementing the “Seven Cs” of reality pedagogy in their own classrooms, urban youth of color benefit from truly transformative education.

Between the World and Me

Between the World and Me
Author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Publisher: One World
Total Pages: 163
Release: 2015-07-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0679645985
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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone) NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • People • Entertainment Weekly • Vogue • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • New York • Newsday • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

The Battle for Room 314

The Battle for Room 314
Author: Ed Boland
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2016-02-09
Genre: Education
ISBN: 145556060X
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In this insightfully honest and moving memoir about the realities of teaching in an inner-city school, Ed Boland "smashes the dangerous myth of the hero-teacher [and] shows us how high the stakes are for our most vulnerable students" (Piper Kerman, author of Orange is the New Black). In a fit of idealism, Ed Boland left a twenty-year career as a non-profit executive to teach in a tough New York City public high school. But his hopes quickly collided headlong with the appalling reality of his students' lives and a hobbled education system unable to help them. Freddy runs a drug ring for his incarcerated brother; Nee-cole is homeschooled on the subway by her brilliant homeless mother; Byron's Ivy League dream is dashed because he is undocumented. In the end, Boland isn't hoisted on his students' shoulders and no one passes AP anything. This is no urban fairy tale of at-risk kids saved by a Hollywood hero, but a searing indictment of schools that claim to be progressive but still fail their students. Told with compassion, humor, and a keen eye, Boland's story is sure to ignite debate about the future of American education and attempts to reform it.

"These Kids Are Out of Control"

Author: H. Richard Milner IV
Publisher: Corwin Press
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2018-07-18
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1506301819
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Today’s classrooms reimagined If you’re looking for a book on how to "control" your students, this isn’t it! Instead, this is a book on what classroom learning could be if we aspire to co-create more culturally responsive and equitable environments—environments that are safe, affirming, learner-centered, intellectually challenging, and engaging. If we create the kind of places where our students want to be . . . A critically important resource for teachers and administrators alike, "These Kids Are Out of Control" details the specific practices, tools, beliefs, dispositions, and mindsets that are essential to better serving the complex needs of our diverse learners, especially our marginalized students. Gain expert insight on: What it means to be culturally responsive in today’s classroom environments, even in schools at large How to decide what to teach, understand the curriculum, build relationships in and outside of school, and assess student development and learning The four best practices for building a classroom culture that is both nurturing and rigorous, and where all students are seen, heard, and respected Alternatives to punitive disciplinary action that too often sustains the cradle-to-prison pipeline Classroom "management" takes care of itself when you engage students, help them see links and alignment of the curriculum to their lives, build on and from student identity and culture, and recognize the many ways instructional practices can shift. "These Kids Are Out of Control" is your opportunity to get started right away!

The Beautiful Struggle

The Beautiful Struggle
Author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Publisher: One World
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2009-01-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0385527462
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An exceptional father-son story from the National Book Award–winning author of Between the World and Me about the reality that tests us, the myths that sustain us, and the love that saves us. Paul Coates was an enigmatic god to his sons: a Vietnam vet who rolled with the Black Panthers, an old-school disciplinarian and new-age believer in free love, an autodidact who launched a publishing company in his basement dedicated to telling the true history of African civilization. Most of all, he was a wily tactician whose mission was to carry his sons across the shoals of inner-city adolescence—and through the collapsing civilization of Baltimore in the Age of Crack—and into the safe arms of Howard University, where he worked so his children could attend for free. Among his brood of seven, his main challenges were Ta-Nehisi, spacey and sensitive and almost comically miscalibrated for his environment, and Big Bill, charismatic and all-too-ready for the challenges of the streets. The Beautiful Struggle follows their divergent paths through this turbulent period, and their father’s steadfast efforts—assisted by mothers, teachers, and a body of myths, histories, and rituals conjured from the past to meet the needs of a troubled present—to keep them whole in a world that seemed bent on their destruction. With a remarkable ability to reimagine both the lost world of his father’s generation and the terrors and wonders of his own youth, Coates offers readers a small and beautiful epic about boys trying to become men in black America and beyond. Praise for The Beautiful Struggle “I grew up in a Maryland that lay years, miles and worlds away from the one whose summers and sorrows Ta-Nehisi Coates evokes in this memoir with such tenderness and science; and the greatest proof of the power of this work is the way that, reading it, I felt that time, distance and barriers of race and class meant nothing. That in telling his story he was telling my own story, for me.”—Michael Chabon, bestselling author of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay “Ta-Nehisi Coates is the young James Joyce of the hip hop generation.”—Walter Mosley

A People's Curriculum for the Earth

A People's Curriculum for the Earth
Author: Bill Bigelow
Publisher: Rethinking Schools
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2014-11-14
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0942961579
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A People’s Curriculum for the Earth is a collection of articles, role plays, simulations, stories, poems, and graphics to help breathe life into teaching about the environmental crisis. The book features some of the best articles from Rethinking Schools magazine alongside classroom-friendly readings on climate change, energy, water, food, and pollution—as well as on people who are working to make things better. A People’s Curriculum for the Earth has the breadth and depth ofRethinking Globalization: Teaching for Justice in an Unjust World, one of the most popular books we’ve published. At a time when it’s becoming increasingly obvious that life on Earth is at risk, here is a resource that helps students see what’s wrong and imagine solutions. Praise for A People's Curriculum for the Earth "To really confront the climate crisis, we need to think differently, build differently, and teach differently. A People’s Curriculum for the Earth is an educator’s toolkit for our times." — Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate "This volume is a marvelous example of justice in ALL facets of our lives—civil, social, educational, economic, and yes, environmental. Bravo to the Rethinking Schools team for pulling this collection together and making us think more holistically about what we mean when we talk about justice." — Gloria Ladson-Billings, Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison "Bigelow and Swinehart have created a critical resource for today’s young people about humanity’s responsibility for the Earth. This book can engender the shift in perspective so needed at this point on the clock of the universe." — Gregory Smith, Professor of Education, Lewis & Clark College, co-author with David Sobel of Place- and Community-based Education in Schools

Teaching to Change the World

Teaching to Change the World
Author: Jeannie Oakes
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 473
Release: 2015-11-17
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317250834
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This is an up-to-the-moment, engaging, multicultural introduction to education and teaching and the challenges and opportunities they present. Together, the four authors bring a rich blend of theory and practical application to this groundbreaking text. Jeannie Oakes is a leading education researcher and former director of the UCLA teacher education program. Martin Lipton is an education writer and consultant and has taught in public schools for 31 years. Lauren Anderson and Jamy Stillman are former public school teachers, now working as teacher educators. This unique, comprehensive foundational text considers the values and politics that pervade the U.S. education system, explains the roots of conventional thinking about schooling and teaching, asks critical questions about how issues of power and privilege have shaped and continue to shape educational opportunity, and presents powerful examples of real teachers working for equity and justice. Taking the position that a hopeful, democratic future depends on ensuring that all students learn, the text pays particular attention to inequalities associated with race, social class, language, gender, and other social categories and explores teachers role in addressing them. The text provides a research-based and practical treatment of essential topics, and it situates those topics in relation to democratic values; issues of diversity; and cognitive, sociocultural, and constructivist perspectives on learning. The text shows how knowledge of education foundations and history can help teachers understand the organization of today s schools, the content of contemporary curriculum, and the methods of modern teaching. It likewise shows how teachers can use such knowledge when thinking about and responding to headline issues like charter schools, vouchers, standards, testing, and bilingual education, to name just a few. Central to this text is a belief that schools can and must be places of extraordinary educational quality and institutions in the service of social justice. Thus, the authors address head-on tensions between principles of democratic schooling and competition for always-scarce high-quality opportunities. Woven through the text are the voices of a diverse group of teachers, who share their analyses and personal anecdotes concerning what teaching to change the world means and involves. Click Here for Book Website Pedagogical Features: Digging Deeper sections referenced at the end of each chapter and featured online include supplementary readings and resources from scholars and practitioners who are addressing issues raised in the text. Instructor s Manual offers insights about how to teach course content in ways that are consistent with cognitive and sociocultural learning theories, culturally diverse pedagogy, and authentic assessment.New to this Edition: "

Being Bad

Being Bad
Author: Crystal T. Laura
Publisher: Teachers College Press
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2015-04-28
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0807773395
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Being Bad will change the way you think about the social and academic worlds of Black boys. In a poignant and harrowing journey from systems of education to systems of criminal justice, the author follows her brother, Chris, who has been designated a “bad kid” by his school, a “person of interest” by the police, and a “gangster” by society. Readers first meet Chris in a Chicago jail, where he is being held in connection with a string of street robberies. We then learn about Chris through insiders’ accounts that stretch across time to reveal key events preceding this tragic moment. Together, these stories explore such timely issues as the under-education of Black males, the place and importance of scapegoats in our culture, the on-the-ground reality of zero tolerance, the role of mainstream media in constructing Black masculinity, and the critical relationships between schools and prisons. No other book combines rigorous research, personal narrative, and compelling storytelling to examine the educational experiences of young Black males. Book Features: The natural history of an African American teenager navigating a labyrinth of social worlds. A detailed, concrete example of the school-to-prison pipeline phenomenon. Rare insightsof an African American family making sense of, and healing from, school wounds. Suggested resources of reliable places where educators can learn and do more. “Other books have focusedon the school-to-prison pipeline or the educational experiences of young African American males, but I know of none that bring the combination of rigorous research, up-close personal vantage point, and skilled storytelling provided by Laura in Being Bad.” —Gregory Michie, chicago public school teacher, author of Holler If You Hear Me, senior research associate at the Center for Policy Studies and Social Justice, Concordia University Chicago “Refusing to separate the threads that bind the oppressive fabric of contemporary urban life, Laura has crafted a story that is at once astutely critical, funny, engaging, tearful, dialogue-filled, profoundly theoretical, despairing, and filled with hope. Being Bad is a challenge and a gift to students, families, policymakers, soon-to-be teachers, social workers, and ethnographers.” —Michelle Fine, distinguished professor, Graduate Center, CUNY "Perhaps more than any other study on this topic, this book brings to life the complicated, fleshed, lived experience of those most directly and collaterally impacted by the politics of schooling and its relationship to our growing prison nation.” —Garrett Albert Duncan, associate professor of Education and African & African-American Studies, Washington University in St. Louis