"We’ve Been Doing It Your Way Long Enough": Choosing the Culturally Relevant Classroom

Language and Literacy

by Janice Baines, Carmen Tisdale, Susi Long

Filled with day-to-day literacy practices, this book will help elementary school teachers understand their role in dismantling the imbalance of privilege in literacy education. Chapters take readers into classrooms where they will see, hear, and feel decolonizing and humanizing culturally relevant pedagogies as students learn literacy and a critical stance through musical literacies, oral histories, heritage lessons, and building a critical consciousness. The authors also share strategies to help teachers examine their own educational spaces, start the school year in culturally relevant ways, build reciprocal relationships with families and communities, and teach within standards and testing mandates while challenging unjust systems. Practices are brought to life through students, families, and community members who voice the realities of pedagogical privilege and oppression and urge educators to take action for change.

Book Features:


Classroom practices that build literacy proficiency and a critical consciousness while re-centering omitted, distorted, and marginalized histories and heritage. A strong foundation and rationale for why decolonizing and humanizing culturally relevant pedagogies are necessary. Strategies to help teachers and schools engage in self-examination and take action for change. Strategies for nurturing mutually respectful relationships with families and community members as teachers affirm and learn from their wisdom. Culturally relevant teaching grounded in the ethics of African cultural practice with an emphasis on its value for every student. Lists of children's books, professional books, and websites to support the practices described throughout the book.

Genres: Professional Development

168 pages, Paperback

Published August 17, 2018

Reviews

[Kaia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book for teachers, especially elementary teachers, with practical strategies, research, and many lists of mentor texts for building a culturally responsive classroom. I love how the authors use so many examples from their own classrooms, especially how they created books for their students that reflect the students' communities, interests, and values. Even though the examples are from the primary grades, many of the activities / ideas could easily be adapted for any age, and the foundational ideas behind the activities are also relevant for all grade levels.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful messages from strong women - things we need to hear as educators about our role in guiding the next generation toward empathy and love.