The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children
Gloria Ladson-Billings 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.
Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire
Written by perhaps the most famous fifth-grade teacher in America, Rafe Esquith. In his Los Angeles public school classroom, he helps impoverished immigrant children understand Shakespeare, play Vivaldi, and become happy, self-confident people. This bestseller gives any teacher or parent all the techniques, exercises, and innovations that have made its author an educational icon, from personal codes of behavior to tips on tackling literature and algebra. The result is a powerful book for anyone concerned about the future of our children.
Why Don't Students Like School
Cognitive scientist Dan Willingham focuses his acclaimed research on the biological and cognitive basis of learning. His book will help teachers improve their practice by explaining how they and their students think and learn. It reveals-the importance of story, emotion, memory, context, and routine in building knowledge and creating lasting learning experiences.
For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too
Written by Christopher Emdin. Edmin offers a new lens on an approach to teaching and learning in urban schools. He begins by taking 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to unleash the brilliance and eagerness of youth and educators alike—both of whom have been typecast and stymied by outdated modes of thinking about urban education.
The New Jim Crow
Written by Michelle Alexander. This is a stunning account of the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States, one that has resulted in millions of African Americans locked behind bars and then relegated to a permanent second-class status—denied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement.
How To Teach Students Who Don’t Look Like You
Written by Bonnie M. Davis. This book helps educators recognize the impact that culture has on the learning process. The term "diverse learners" encompasses a variety of student groups, including homeless children, migrant children, English language learners, children experiencing gender identity issues, children with learning disabilities, and children with special needs.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Written by Paulo Freire. In the course of Freire's work and travels, and as a result of his studies in the philosophy of education, he evolved a theory for the education of illiterates, especially adults, based on the conviction that every human being, no matter how “ignorant” or submerged in the “culture of silence” is capable of looking critically at his world in a dialogical encounter with others, and that provided with the proper tools for such encounter he can gradually perceive his personal and social reality and deal critically with it.