Winner of the 2000 Outstanding Book Award presented by the American Educational Research Association Winner of the 2001 American Educational Studies Association Critics' Choice Award Honorable Mention, 2000 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Awards Subtractive Schooling provides a framework for understanding the patterns of immigrant achievement and U.S.-born underachievement frequently noted in the literature and observed by the author in her ethnographic account of regular-track youth attending a comprehensive, virtually all-Mexican, inner-city high school in Houston. Valenzuela argues that schools subtract resources from youth in two major ways: firstly by dismissing their definition of education and secondly, through assimilationist policies and practices that minimize their culture and language. A key consequence is the erosion of students' social capital evident in the absence of academically oriented networks among acculturated, U.S.-born youth.
This book examines both the promise and complexity of diversifying today's teaching profession. Drawing from a 5-year study of 21 new teachers of colour working in urban, hard-to-staff schools, this book uncovers a systemic paradox that the teachers confront. They are committed to improving educational opportunities for students of colour by acting as role models, culturally/linguistically responsive teachers, and change agents. The teaching profession encouraged such commitments and some teachers acted with support from individual, organizational, and community-based sponsors. However, many of these new teachers work in schools that are culturally subtractive and have restrictive accountability policies that challenge their ability to perform cultural/professional roles to which they are committed. Many teachers internalize the contradiction, resulting in their becoming changed agents within the educational system they sought to change. This book is essential reading for educators, leaders, and policymakers.
In The Future of Our Schools, Lois Weiner explains why teachers who care passionately about teaching and social justice need to unite the energy for teaching to efforts to self-govern and transform teacher unions. Drawing on research, her experience as a public school teacher, and as a union activist, she explains how to create the teachers unions public education desperately needs. Lois Weiner is a professor at New Jersey City University and has been a life-long teacher union activist who has served as an officer of three different union locals. She is the author of The Global Assault on Teaching, Teachers, and their Unions: Stories for Resistanc e .
To meet the needs of the fast growing numbers of Latino/a English learners, this volume presents an approach to secondary education teacher preparation based on the work of the National Latino/a Education Research and Policy Project (NLERAP). Renowned scholar and educator Angela Valenzuela, together with an impressive roster of contributors, provides a critical framework for educating culturally responsive teachers. They examine the knowledge, skills, and predisposition required for higher education institutions to create curricula for educating Latino/a children, children of color, and language minority youth. Growing Critically Conscious Teachers illuminates why growing our own teachers makes sense as an approach for not only addressing the achievement gap, but for also enhancing the well-being of our communities as a whole. Book Features: A community-based, university- and district-connected partnership model that fosters students’ critical consciousness. A framework for participatory action research (PAR) within teacher preparation that promotes community and societal transformation. A curriculum premised on sociocultural and sociopolitical awareness. The wisdom, experiences, and lessons learned from educators who have been change agents in their own schools, communities, and college classrooms across the country. “An enormous contribution to the field. It will also be a cherished resource and guide for Latino/a and non-Latino/a teachers alike, and for the university faculty and school- and community-based facilitators who help prepare them.” —From the Foreword by Sonia Nieto, Professor Emerita, Language, Literacy, and Culture, College of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst “Provides the elemental sparks for essential conversations about culturally responsive teaching and the well-being of youth in our communities. Through a variety of critical perspectives this volume raises significant questions that must be at the forefront of Latino/a education. This excellent volume is a must read for teachers truly committed to educational practices of social justice in schools today.” —Antonia Darder, Leavey Endowed Chair of Ethics and Moral Leadership, Loyola Marymount University
This book examines how commonly applied approaches to parent involvement in schools do not easily transfer to bilingual and bicultural families. The authors—respected scholars in the field of educational equity—challenge commonly accepted boundaries of bicultural parent involvement. They provide real-life examples, practical strategies, discussion questions, and suggestions for ensuring that schools welcome and value bicultural families. This timely resource is a hopeful vision of what authentic and democratic parent engagement can become, and how parents can be transformative change agents for their children and their schools.
Examining the Mexican American struggle for equal education during the 1960s and 1970s in the Southwest in general and in a California community in particular, Donato challenges conventional wisdom that Mexican Americans were passive victims, accepting their educational fates. He looks at how Mexican American parents confronted the relative tranquility of school governance, how educators responded to increasing numbers of Mexican Americans in schools, how school officials viewed problems faced by Mexican American children, and why educators chose specific remedies. Finally, he examines how federal, state, and local educational policies corresponded with the desires of the Mexican American community.
While reformers and policymakers focus on achievement gaps, testing, and accountability, millions of students mentally and emotionally disengage from learning and many gifted teachers leave the field. Ironically, today’s schooling is damaging the single most essential component to education—the joy of learning How do we recognize the “wounds” caused by outdated schooling policies? How do we heal them? In her controversial new book, education writer and critic Kirsten Olson brings to light the devastating consequences of an educational approach that values conformity over creativity, flattens student’s interests, and dampens down differences among learners. Drawing on deeply emotional stories, Olson shows that current institutional structures do not produce the kinds of minds and thinking that society really needs. Instead, the system tends to shame, disable, and bore many learners. Most importantly, she presents the experiences of wounded learners who have healed and shows what teachers, parents, and students can do right now to help themselves stay healthy. “We need to replace industrial schooling with more genuinely caring and humane ways of teaching, and Olson clearly shows us why and how to do it.” —Ron Miller, Editor, Education Revolution magazine “Wounded by School is not merely a technical repair manual for our broken schools, it is a guide to how to revive their purpose, their spirit, and their hope.” —David H. Rose, Founding Director, CAST (the Center for Applied Special Technology) “Kirsten Olson’s book is refreshingly unlike the general run of sludge I associate with writing about pedagogy. I can’t imagine anyone not being better for reading this book—Twice!” —John Taylor Gatto, author of Dumbing Us Down “I invite anyone invested in American public schools (and I hope that’s all of us) to read this book and join hands in building schools that help every student not only heal but thrive.” —Terry Chadsey, Associate Director, Center for Courage & Renewal “Olson questions the appropriateness of school structures, norms, rituals, and routines that were set in place—cast in stone more than a century ago—that now seem dangerously anachronistic and alienating. And she asks us to consider the ways in which we might create more cherishing and inclusive school cultures that would incite learning and love.” —From the Foreword by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Harvard Graduate School of Education
