Creating a Home in Schools: Sustaining Identities for Black, Indigenous, and Teachers of Color

by Francisco Rios, A Longoria, James A. Banks (Series Editor)

The authors of this book provide caring advice to Black, Indigenous, and Teachers of Color (BITOC) to help sustain them into and through the teaching profession. Through an examination of BITOC in the education workforce, the assets that these educators bring to the teaching profession are identified, as are some of the most critical challenges they face in today's schools. The book illuminates the importance of cultivating and supporting social cultural identities as resources that will serve prospective teachers and their increasingly diverse students. Rooted in an identity sustaining framework, the authors strongly encourage BITOC to bring their full cultural, social, and linguistic assets into the classroom while simultaneously encouraging their students to do the same. Creating a Home in Schools will help readers successfully negotiate and navigate the teaching profession, from pathway programs, to teacher education, and into the classroom.

Book Features:

Explores major contextual constraints that BITOC will have to understand and navigate. Identifies the cultural and linguistic assets BITOC bring with them and how to make these a central part of their teaching. Focuses on the importance of a strong sense of identity and how to approach teaching and learning in identity sustaining ways. Offers guidance for enacting culturally sustaining pedagogies that are rooted in BITOC identities to serve the needs of their students.

224 pages, Paperback

Published April 28, 2021

Reviews

[Candice · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well researched, informative guide for critical and transformative pedagogy. This book covers “the basics” providing valuable definitions of terms, and also covers the evolution from multiculturalism to culturally responsive and culturally sustaining pedagogues. One especially useful definition is the definition of oppression from John Bell’s 4 I’s of Oppression Adapted from Sensoy& DiAngleo (2017) which reads:

Oppression: The use of prejudice, discrimination, and power to dominate an individual or group of people:
A. Internalized — What individuals come to believe about the rightness of their own oppression.
B. Individual — What one individual, because they have power does to another
C. Institutional — The policies, practices, and procedures used by institutions (e.g. judicial system, schools, banks) that advantage some and disadvantage others.
D. Ideological — The values/beliefs of the powerful, messaged through schools and the media, justifying these forms of oppression or describing them as natural/logical.