Rethinking Elementary Education: Teaching for Racial and Cultural Justice

Rethinking Elementary Education collects the finest writing about elementary school life and learning from 25 years of Rethinking Schools magazine. The articles in this volume offer practical insights about how to integrate the teaching of content with a social justice lens, how to seek wisdom from students and their families, and how to navigate stifling tests and mandates. Teachers and parents will find both inspiration and hope in these pages. The indispensable resource for social justice elementary educators in six parts: Part 1: Building Classroom Community Part 2: Reading and Writing Toward a More Just World Part 3: Minding Media Part 4: Math is More than Numbers Part 5: Laboratory for Justice: Science Across the Curriculum Part 6: The Classroom, The School, The World

The authors of Rethinking Elementary Education see curriculum as a metaphor for the lives they want to live, a metaphor for the world they want their students to inhabit with them. They believe schools in a democracy even elementary schools ought to be focused on equity and justice. Chapter after chapter, teachers take your breath away with the power of their teaching, demonstrating practices that help the children in their care 'live the curriculum.' This is a much needed look at how, despite mandates to the contrary, teachers might make curriculum relevant to children, connecting it to their lives by addressing the big issues that surround them from the commercialization of childhood to the xenophobia our society holds toward immigrants. ---Jerome C. Harste, Martha Lea and Bill Armstrong Chair Emeritus of Teacher Education, Indiana University

This is an essential book that will transform how we see Elementary Education. It ties together organizational aspects of schooling, like classroom discipline and building learning communities with methodological approaches, like effective writing prompted by art or poetry. It shows how teachers can incorporate diversity, respond to the needs of immigrant students and English learners, fight the insidious damages of tracking, and address social justice. "Both clear and profound, this honest book provides inspiration, invites reflection, and through engaging real life examples of classrooms across the nation, shows that in spite of all the external restriction placed upon our schools, we can be the teachers we want to be and give all children the true education they deserve. ---Alma Flor Ada, professor emerita. University of San Francisco, and author of numerous books for children and educators, including A Magical Encounter: Latino Children's Literature in the Classroom.

Rethinking Elementary Education is both powerful and practical. The stories are direct from the classroom and offer testimony to the opportunities for creating real-world curriculum, based on the lives of our children and their families, and in the service of encouraging children to use their agency in support of the values of justice and empathy. I truly loved the collection and will use it with both pre-service and inservice teachers I work with. Highly recommended! ---Ruth Shagoury, Mary Stuart Rogers Professor of Education, Lewis & Clark College, and author of Raising Writers: Understanding and Nurturing Young Children's Writing Development