What African American Parents Want Educators to Know

What African American Parents Want Educators to Know

Author: Gail L. Thompson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2003-05-30

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0313058695

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Thompson designed an empirical study to gather feedback from African-American parents on numerous issues pertaining to their children's schooling experiences. The results, discussed in this book, can be utilized to improve the schooling experiences of African-American children nationwide. The African-American parents/guardians who participated in this study were biological parents in two-parent homes, single parents, grandparents, foster parents, and stepparents who were rearing school-age children. Some had been deterred from completing their own formal education as a result of peer pressure, temptation outside of school, or stressful circumstances. Others had positive schooling experiences and stable childhoods. Regardless of the differences in their background experiences, the majority of these parents or guardians were single-minded about wanting a better life for their children, believing that a good K-12 education and college education were crucial to their children's advancement. And while most believed resolutely in the hope offered by the public school system, they recognized that schools couldn't do it all. African-American parents and guardians are willing to work with teachers and administrators to ensure that their children receive a quality education. Yet if the historic achievement gap is ever to be eradicated, teachers, administrators, researchers, and policymakers must be more willing to view African-American parents/guardians as assets. African-American parents/guardians must be invited to verbalize their concerns, and those concerns must be taken seriously to effect meaningful and lasting change in the public school system.


Through Ebony Eyes

Through Ebony Eyes

Author: Gail L. Thompson

Publisher: Jossey-Bass

Published: 2004-04-16

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13:

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No-nonsense advice about bridging the racial divide in our classrooms. Through Ebony Eyes deals with the cultural misconceptions held by both teachers and students and offers guidelines for teachers who want to provide sensitive but rigorous educational experiences for their African American students. The author tackles controversies over language and labels, explains what the research has to say about culture and learning, describes effective instructional practices for African American students, and offers a three-step personal development plan that will help teachers succeed in the classroom.


A Brighter Day

A Brighter Day

Author: Gail L. Thompson

Publisher: African Amer Images

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9781935521747

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Offering motivational real-life stories, a strategy guide for African-American parents show how to raise achievement expectations; enforce the need for respect for authority; and lessen the influence of music, television, and video games.


Lift Us Up, Don't Push Us Out!

Lift Us Up, Don't Push Us Out!

Author: Mark R. Warren

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2018-08-21

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 0807015806

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Parents, young people, community organizers, and educators describe how they are fighting systemic racism in schools by building a new intersectional educational justice movement. Illuminating the struggles and triumphs of the emerging educational justice movement, this anthology tells the stories of how black and brown parents, students, educators, and their allies are fighting back against systemic inequities and the mistreatment of children of color in low-income communities. It offers a social justice alternative to the corporate reform movement that seeks to privatize public education through expanding charter schools and voucher programs. To address the systemic racism in our education system and in the broader society, the contributors argue that what is needed is a movement led by those most affected by injustice--students of color and their parents--that builds alliances across sectors and with other social justice movements addressing immigration, LGBTQ rights, labor rights, and the school-to-prison pipeline. Representing a diverse range of social justice organizations from across the US, including the Chicago Teachers Union and the Genders and Sexualities Alliance Network, the essayists recount their journeys to movement building and offer practical organizing strategies and community-based alternatives to traditional education reform and privatization schemes. Lift Us Up! will outrage, inform, and mobilize parents, educators, and concerned citizens about what is wrong in American schools today and how activists are fighting for and achieving change.


White Teacher

White Teacher

Author: Vivian Gussin Paley

Publisher:

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13:

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Vivian Paley presents a moving personal account of her experiences teaching kindergarten in an integrated school within a predominantly white, middle-class neighborhood. In a new preface, she reflects on the way that even simple terminology can convey unintended meanings and show a speaker's blind spots. She also vividly describes what her readers have taught her over the years about herself as a "white teacher."


We Want to Do More Than Survive

We Want to Do More Than Survive

Author: Bettina L. Love

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2019-02-19

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 0807069159

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Winner of the 2020 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award Drawing on personal stories, research, and historical events, an esteemed educator offers a vision of educational justice inspired by the rebellious spirit and methods of abolitionists. Drawing on her life’s work of teaching and researching in urban schools, Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements. 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.


The Power of One

The Power of One

Author: Gail L. Thompson

Publisher: Corwin Press

Published: 2009-12-07

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1452273774

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"This is the book I have been waiting for—a workbook filled with stories, data, and the latest research. In clear, beautifully written prose, Gail Thompson asks us to examine our own preconceptions and perceptions. By completing the exercises and keeping a journal, we can discover our strengths and our challenges. We are encouraged to make real changes in the way we teach and in our relationships with our African American students. This book is for all of us: new teachers, experienced teachers, administrators, mentors, community workers, and anyone who wants to help rather than harm these brilliant, hopeful, marvelous young people in our care." —Julie Landsman, Writer, Teacher, Consultant Minneapolis Public Schools and Art Teachers FACET Program "A comprehensive, definitive resource for educators and all those responsible for enhancing equity, excellence, and educational achievement for African American students. Thompson has produced an engaging, solutions-oriented workbook that artfully integrates well-documented research and the right, rich blend of theoretical insights. The absence of jargon, the clarity of the writing, the substantive content, and the personal accounts of educational experiences of an array of diverse education stakeholders contribute to making this work understandable, engaging, appealing, and imaginative. Thompson′s own compelling experiences as a student and successful experience as a researcher and an educator inform the work. If I could choose only one resource, The Power of One would be number one." —Audrey P. Watkins, Associate Professor of African American Studies Western Illinois University YOU have the power to make a difference with your African American students! This interactive staff development resource helps educators deal with the main barriers—often personal assumptions or mind-sets—that can impede their progress with African American K–12 students. Calling upon readers to embark upon a personal journey to address these issues, the author skillfully combines moving first-person narratives, personal growth exercises, and informational text, and shows educators how to: Deal with obstacles to successful classroom management Foster positive interactions within the classroom Prepare African American students to succeed on standardized tests Build positive relationships with African American parents


Troubling the Waters

Troubling the Waters

Author: Jerome E. Morris

Publisher: Teachers College Press

Published: 2015-04-24

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 0807771694

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These are turbulent times. We live in a climate of vigorous testing and memorization, so how can we both engage and challenge our children to learn and become thinking citizens in our society? In her invaluable new book, Selma Wassermann takes a step forward from Louis Raths seminal work and gives us some truly helpful answers to this modern dilemma. Using new data from her extensive field work, Wassermann (a co-author of Teaching for Thinking, Second Edition) provides a wealth of innovative classroom strategies that will enable and empower students to grasp the big ideas across virtually all curriculum areas and apply this knowledge to problem solving.