Reducing Hate Through Multicultural Education and Transformation


Book Description

Reducing Hate through Multicultural Education and Transformation is a book that reminds us that we live in a complex world; and at micro and macro levels, the demography is changing and people are worried about the current state of affairs, their future, and the future of their children. At local, national, and global levels, there appears to be unsteadiness, crises, and struggles in our economies, politics, and societies. Disruptions, disasters, and deaths are visible at all spectra of our lives; and our leaders seem unready, unwilling, underprepared, and unprepared to bring us together to solve our problems for the common good. Even when we make efforts to respond to human differences and multicultural valuing, they seem to be half-baked cakes that are unready for consumption; and there continues to be visible hateful actions that devastate our sacred existence. While these hateful actions have filtered into our families, schools, communities, nation, and world, we pretend to solve them by engaging in phony community relations, fraudulent multiculturalism, and unreasonable “wokeness” to masquerade our inefficiency, inflexibility, prejudice, and jaundiced views. Reducing Hate through Multicultural Education and Transformation provides cutting edge solutions for innovative educators and leaders. Yes, hate is a controversial construct that is rarely researched, studied, and discussed in education. The reason is that teachers and related professionals are supposedly very liberal people who cannot hate their culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students, parents, and colleagues. And, the lingering question is, can a teacher who is always liberal be also hateful? This question seems legitimate; and, to answer it, we must look deeper into traditional presumptions. The reality is that White educators and professionals who dominate the educational profession are human-beings who live in their respective White dominated communities. As a result, they teach or lead people who they do not know very well. If not, why should CLD individuals continue to experience hateful misidentifications, misassessments, miscategorizations, misplacements, and misinstructions in school programs? And, why should disproportionate placements of CLD learners with special education needs, gifts and talents, and emotional/behavioral problems continue to be burning issues in education? This book provides outside-the-box solutions!




Special Education During the Pandemic


Book Description

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered, and continues to trigger, many changes in K-12 education—some major, like learning remotely from home, and some minor, like sitting farther apart on the school bus. While most students have had routines interrupted, the children perhaps most affected by that disruption are students with special education needs. The challenges we currently face should not undermine what we have accomplished over the last 60 years to protect students with disabilities and those from traditionally marginalized backgrounds. Instead, we must take an honest, proactive and collaborative approach to the challenges laid bare. To do so, we must reckon with the fact that during a pandemic that disproportionately impacted traditionally marginalized communities and people with disabilities, we collectively dropped the ball for students receiving special education services, and we need to consider the continued consequences. Further, we must acknowledge that many students with disabilities have found virtual and remote learning to be more liberating and accessible for their learning strengths, needs, and preferences. This text addresses how we must reconcile disparate realities of the special educational experience during pandemic. Students, parents, teachers, and school officials must align themselves together so that they can provide necessary services and support systems to students with disabilities during unpredictable times. These efforts will help leverage opportunities to disrupt, improve, and ignite educational experiences and opportunities for our children and youth, particularly those with disabilities.




Rethinking Multicultural Education


Book Description

This new and expanded edition collects the best articles dealing with race and culture in the classroom that have appeared in Rethinking Schools magazine. With more than 100 pages of new materials, Rethinking Multicultural Education demonstrates a powerful vision of anti-racist, social justice education. Practical, rich in story, and analytically sharp! Book Review 1: “If you are an educator, student, activist, or parent striving for educational equality and liberation, Rethinking Multicultural Education: Teaching for Racial and Cultural Justice will empower and inspire you to make a positive change in your community.” -- Curtis Acosta, Former teacher, Tucson Mexican American Studies Program; Founder, Acosta Latino Learning Partnership Book Review 2: “Rethinking Multicultural Education is both thoughtful and timely. As the nation and our schools become more complex on every dimension–race, ethnicity, class, gender, ability, sexuality, immigrant status–teachers need theory and practice to help guide and inform their curriculum and their pedagogy. This is the resource teachers at every level have been looking for.” -- Gloria Ladson-Billings, Professor & Dept. Chair, Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children Book Review 3: “Rethinking Multicultural Education is an essential text as we name the schools we deserve, and struggle to bring them to life in classrooms across the land.” -- William Ayers, teacher, activist, award-winning education writer, and Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (retired)




Rethinking Multicultural Education


Book Description

Korn and Bursztyn and their contributors examine the cultural transitions that children make as they move between the cultures of home and school. To better understand these transitions, they explore how educators understand their students' shifting experiences and examine how educators also negotiate transitions as they too move from home to school each day. The narratives or case studies reflect this shifting gaze: from child, to teacher, to parents, and take up the various relational configurations that these can form, amongst and between each other. They turn a critical eye toward instances of classroom practice and school life, connecting personal knowledge with school change. In some cases, the authors draw directly on autobiographical material, linking these to a reflective approach to teaching. Avoiding the celebratory tone that often attends discussions of multiculturalism, the authors address how diverstiy engages us in continual renegotiation of the personal and social. The perspectives of educators and of teacher candidates are presented, and the construction of cultural identity and its impact on schools, explored. In illuminating the complicated nature of cultural transitions and the obligation of schools to create places in which children and families of diverse backgrounds can thrive, they highlight how multiculturalism can play a transformative role in the lives of children and schools. A must reading for educators and graduate students in education, school psychology, guidance and counseling.




Deconstructing Race


Book Description

How do socially constructed concepts of race dominate and limit understandings and practices of multicultural education? Since race is socially constructed, how do we deconstruct it? In this important book Mahiri argues that multicultural education needs to move beyond racial categories defined and sustained by the ideological, social, political, and economic forces of white supremacy. Exploring contemporary and historical scholarship on race, the emergence of multiculturalism, and the rise of the digital age, the author investigates micro-cultural practices and provides a compelling framework for understanding the diversity of individuals and groups. Descriptions and analysis from ethnographic interviews reveal how people’s continually evolving, highly distinctive, micro-cultural identities and affinities provide understandings of diversity not captured within assigned racial categories. Synthesizing the scholarship and interview findings, the final chapter connects the play of micro-cultures in people’s lives to a needed shift in how multicultural education uses race to frame and comprehend diversity and identity and provides pedagogical examples of how this shift can look in teaching practices. “Jabari Mahiri’s superb Deconstructing Race is the best modern book on multiculturalism in education. More than that, it can be the beginning of a vital transformation of the field and of our views about diversity.‘ —James Paul Gee, Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies, Regents’ Professor, Arizona State University "Deconstructing Race provides a framework for a new American narrative on race based on irrefutable research and inspirational evidence." —Yvette Jackson, chief executive officer of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education







Transforming Multicultural Education Policy and Practice


Book Description

"The Multicultural Education Series of books at Teachers College Press was initiated in 1996 and is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2021. The Series consists of more than 70 published books and others that are in various stages of development. This 25th commemorative volume consists of engaging, incisive, and timely selections from the best-selling and most influential books in the Series. The selections describe ways in which multicultural education should be reimagined in a nation and world that are becoming increasingly complex because of continuing immigration, race is becoming more fluid and complex due to interracial mixing and border crossing, and because social-class stratification is intensifying and becoming more salient because of the pandemic"--







Evolving Multicultural Education for Global Classrooms


Book Description

Multicultural education is a construct that has been very useful for many years in harboring sensitivities teachers need in addressing diverse students. Now the discipline needs refreshing. In the global society, the idea of multicultural education, a decidedly Western formation, needs to expand its conceptual boundaries. Salient issues in multicultural education such as individual identities, social justice, and equity are bedrock concerns of multicultural educators. These concepts are considered necessary but not sufficient in shaping an evolving model of multicultural education. The complexity of humans and modern and emerging societies requires a broadened scope of the understanding of contemporary multicultural theory and practice. Evolving Multicultural Education for Global Classrooms addresses multicultural education from a comprehensive viewpoint that acknowledges the historical benefit of multicultural education and recognizes a need to inform the discipline with a broader viewpoint. As most knowledge on multicultural education comes from a Western perspective and the scholarship on the topic is weakening, the chapters in this book present new practices and classroom applications that are internationally transferable. Topics covered include teacher education, social justice, educational equity and inclusion, online education, and cultural sensitivities. This book is ideally intended for teachers, educational theorists, sociologists of education, inservice and preservice teachers, administrators, teacher educators, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in a fresh global perspective on multicultural education.




Teaching for Justice and Belonging


Book Description

Create a classroom with a culture of true belonging, liberation, and justice for all Teaching for Justice and Belonging: A Journey for Educators & Parents provides a practical and powerful blueprint to unrooting racism in the educational setting. The book is an easy-to-understand guide designed to cultivate an educational experience that inspires a culture of true belonging, liberation, and justice for all. Relying on case studies, thorough research, and deeply personal and enlightening experiences drawn from the lives of the authors themselves, Teaching for Justice and Belonging also offers: Demonstrations of how to explore personal and collective racial identity to learn more about oneself and others Support for making systemic change within the spheres of influence of educators and parents Real testimonials and stories to guide readers on their own healthy anti-racism journeys A central piece of any anti-racism roadmap, this book is perfect for K-12 educators, administrators, and teacher leaders. It will also earn a place in the bookshelves of pre-service teachers and parents interested in unlearning racism and encouraging diverse voices in the education system.