Book Description

The Culturally Inclusive Educator asks educators to consider what they can do differently to create a welcoming, inclusive, and exciting environment for the 21st century. Based on the author’s national research and consulting work, this book examines the discrepancy between the current educational cultural climate and the need for educators and their institutions to prepare for a growing multicultural population. It asks what constitutes effective preparation, and provides guidance on overcoming personal and institutional challenges to cultural inclusiveness (stereotype threats, microaggressions, colorblindness/identity-blindness, implicit bias, among others). Samuels begins with the challenges facing the higher education community and then offers 8 transformative steps to help build cultural inclusiveness that any educator teaching any subject can utilize to increase their effectiveness. Culturally inclusive leadership is highlighted as the model for educators and institutions to embrace for success in today’s world. Book Features: Diversity training and inclusiveness strategies for transforming curricula.Reflective practices that unearth personal biases and behaviors.Insights about faculty preparedness drawn from an unprecedented national study.Attention to specific issues and intersections of race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability.A lens for understanding cultural inclusiveness as a fundamental leadership practice. “Dena Samuels takes us straight to the heart of what is perhaps the most urgent and perplexing questions facing 21st-century educators: Are we prepared to work effectively with the rapidly increasing diversity of our student population? She challenges us to confront the misperceptions of our own readiness and to examine the biases that lie beneath even our best intentions. The journey she guides us into is both profoundly discomforting and absolutely necessary. This book provides the research and the tools for transforming ourselves and our practice; it is up to us to do the work.” —Gary R. Howard, Equity and School Change Consulting “At last—an empathetic and inspiring book that says the way to educate all students more successfully is to awaken teachers’ higher awareness. Dena Samuels suggests a paradigm shift in which teachers, having seen the practices of exclusion that have been programmed into them, develop more inclusive awareness and learn to respect, hear, and ally with the growth and development of all students, including themselves.” —Peggy McIntosh, founder and senior associate, National SEED Project on Inclusive Curriculum