Book Description
Education, like electricity, needs a conduit, a teacher, through which to transmit its power-- i.e., the discovery and continuity of information, knowledge, wisdom, experience, and culture. Through the stories and experiences of eight successful teacher-transmitters, The Dreamkeepers keeps hope alive for educating young African Americans.
--ReverAnd Jesse L. Jackson, president and founder, National Rainbow Coalition
In this beautifully written book Ladson-Billings illustrates the inspiring influence of a select group of teachers who keep the dreams alive for African American students.
?Henry M. Levin, David Jacks professor of Higher Education, Stanford University
Ladson-Billing's portraits, interwoven with personal reflections, challenge readers to envision intellectually rigorous and culturally relevant classrooms that have the power to improve the lives of not just African American students but all children.
Customer Reviews:
Positive thoughts on culturally relevant teaching.......2006-12-02
The author of Dreamkeepers makes the argument that African American children can be successful in school if changes are made by the education community. Gloria Ladson-Billings advocates for "culturally relevant teaching" which she believes will allow children to achieve academic success while maintaining a positive African American identity. By examining historical inequalities and the poor state of current education and achievement of African American children, the future may appear bleak or even destined for failure. Ladson-Billings offers examples of teachers, teaching methods, and ideas to keep the dream of education and success alive for African American children today. The focus of the book is the roles teachers have in helping children find success and examples of how teachers of African American children have been successful in this role. The way children should be taught is also discussed because she claims that the way children are taught is often more important than what they are taught. Ladson-Billings believes that these ideas could be used to get teachers, parents, and community members to redesign schools to better meet the needs of African American children, and after considering her reasons and evidence provided I am inclined to agree with these ideas.
The study was done in a predominantly low income African American community. To find successful teachers of African American children, Ladson-Billings asked parents and community members and then principals. When she had gathered a list of possible names, she chose only the names that had appeared from both groups. Ladson-Billings notes a distinction between excellent teaching and teachers because she does not want the examples to be dismissed as a cult of personality. Current problems in education will not be corrected if findings of success are viewed as exceptions, so she offers the examples in hopes that they can become the typical educational experience of African American children.
Through teacher interviews, classroom observations, and personal reflections the author develops the idea of culturally relevant teaching. To demonstrate how culturally relevant teaching might improve education, she describes three programs that are used in educating African American children. The first is to ignore differences that exist. It is designed to remediate or accelerate progress without attending or acknowledging to students' social or cultural needs. The second is the idea that problems are rooted in pathology and children need to be removed from it, so African American children are socialized into mainstream behaviors and values while teaching them basic skills. The third is culturally relevant teaching, where differences are seen as strengths. The concept of culturally relevant teaching is the cornerstone in Ladson-Billings' argument to improve the educational experience for African Americans. Student learning is facilitated by capitalizing on students' own social and cultural background. The broad nature of this concept is a strength to its usefulness because teachers can accomplish this using many ways. Culturally relevant teaching is valid teaching style because it does not expect teachers to follow certain steps. Pedagogy that tells teachers to follow specific steps like teaching is a recipe is unrealistic and useless. Culturally relevant teaching practices can be used in countless teaching styles and curriculum because the underlying theme of appreciation of culture and differences will create a better learning environment and better results for African American children.
The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children.......2006-12-01
The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children was a very informative book for educators that address the aspect of culturally relevant teaching. The author, Gloria Ladsen-Billings, talks about the relationship of pedagogy and how to fulfill the needs of African American children. Ladson-Billings also addresses seven critical points that many educators have brought up, which include: a case for separate schools, the growing educational and anthropological literature in ways schools can be made to be more compatible with all of the students' cultural backgrounds, the way that a classroom's social interactions are structured in a critical aspect of culturally relevant teaching, the teachers' conceptions of themselves and others, the teachers' conception of knowledge, the teaching of elementary literacy and mathematics, and ways for improving the academic performance and the school experience of African American students.I am only going to discuss three points that I agree with most which include the case for separate schools, how education literature is allowing the schools to be more compatible with a student's cultural background and how teachers teach elementary literacy and mathematics.
The first critical point that the author brings up asks if there is a case for separate schools. It does tell us that there is a growing isolation of those that are African American with the type of education that the children receive today in public schools. I am inclined to disagree with the case for separate schools because many teachers do have a growing disaffection towards African American students, as well as students of other minority status which is not discussed in this book. I am also sure that teachers do have a stereotype towards African American children as well because if they are not experienced on how to handle teaching their students of another race, they will be less likely to focus on them in class.
The author also discusses how educational literature is growing in ways that schools are able to be much more compatible with their students background. When I did an internship at an elementary school, I could tell that many of the teachers and principals showed interest in making sure their school was diverse. I do disagree in the fact that I have heard from others and also can see where they are coming from in that there definitely is a lack of literature of the African American experiences taught in class. It is rare to see a classroom in which the African American culture is taught, and it is something that should be considered.
Another critical area was how the teachers taught elementary literacy and mathematics. The teachers focused equally on those who were illiterate and literate as well as those who did or did not excel in math. I can definitely see why the teachers handled this because I have seen first hand at how some teachers do not cure and just continue teaching. Taking the time to make sure a child understands what they are learning in school; especially an important area such as reading is very valuable in their education. Making sure that children can read and add is very important and something that should not be ignored. However, I do disagree on how teachers taught elementary literacy and mathematics, I believe how they went about it was completely wrong. For instance, I think a child who is struggling in a certain subject should not be pulled out of class during the time that subject is taught. In addition to the class time, the student should have extra tutoring. Pulling them from class is not the best solution.
The quality of the book's argument convinces those who are likely to see things differently. She expalins in detail what is culturally relevant teaching. She also describes her observations and the components and results that had occurred throughout. Finally, she was successful in questinoning the teacher's views of how African Americans are schooled. The reasons that the author gives support the main argument in great detail. I believe that teachers are fully capable of allowing these students to succeed if they are willing to do so and give it their best effort.
Dreamkeepers Book Review.......2006-11-17
The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children
By, Gloria Ladson-Billings
Gloria Ladson-Billings starts this book by posing this question, "Do African American students need separate schools?" She concludes her studies by saying, "What African American students need are better schools." Her main argument throughout this book is that culturally relevant teaching practices would be a huge part of creating these "better schools." Ladson-Billings suggests that there are many key characteristics of culturally relevant teachers. Some of these consist of the teachers seeing themselves as an artist and teaching as an art, they believe that all students have the ability to succeed, they demonstrate a connectedness with all of their students, and they help students develop necessary skills for their lives. These are just a few of the many characteristics that have to do with culturally relevant teachers.
In order to find out more about culturally relevant teaching, Gloria Ladson-Billings conducted a study to find and examine culturally relevant teachers. She started out this study by asking parents and community members for the names of some teachers who were very successful at teaching African American students. Next she asked the principals of area schools to provide a list of successful teacher's names. Once eight of the same teacher's names appeared on both lists, and those teacher's agreed to participate, she stared her investigations. She combined classroom observations, interviews, and personal experience to come up with her argument for culturally relevant teaching.
Ladson-Billings' argument for culturally relevant teaching came about because she saw negative effects on students whose culture and history did not appear in their textbooks or in their lessons. She believes that African American students need to achieve academic success while still maintaining a positive African American identity. She believes that it is the teacher's responsibility to help the students want to choose academic success. In her study she had multiple teachers who were just like this. They did not care where these students were or what other people had said about these students, they knew that they could succeed and that they would succeed with their help. They, many times, would work with them on an individual level to help them in whatever way that they could. In the end, all of the students who were thought of as being difficult or not intelligent enough to learn certain skills, ended up learning what they needed to know and sometimes more. That is what made these teachers such great teachers.
Personally, I agree with these reasons to support culturally relevant teaching. I think that if students do not see their cultural history correctly displayed in textbooks or in lessons in the classroom this could cause the children to see themselves as insignificant or inferior to those of a different cultural or racial background. I also agree that African American students should and can achieve academic excellence while still maintaining a positive African American culture and identity. I think that it is a wonderful teacher who can do both of these things, help them achieve academic excellence and maintain a positive image of themselves and their background. I hope that I can be one of these wonderful teachers who can do that.
I also believe that Ladson-Billings' evidence for culturally relevant teaching is both convincing and relevant. Most of her evidence is given through her classroom observations and her interviews with the teachers. She shows that when a teacher is culturally relevant, the students end up learning more and in many cases the students like that class more. In situations where the teacher is not culturally relevant the children do not learn as much or as easily and do not enjoy the class to the same extent as the other students with culturally relevant teachers. In the final chapter of this book she talks about one of her student teachers who is too impatient and does not bring in any cultural relevance when trying to teach three sixth graders math. That teacher ended up sending those students back to their seats with homework that they had no idea how to complete. This would be an example of a teacher who is not culturally relevant. The result was that the students did not find it interesting and did not learn anything from the lesson.
The one problem that I do see with her study is that she only examined eight teachers. I think that is hardly enough to base a whole argument off of. I do think that is definitely a great start but it may be more helpful so study many more teachers. She also only studies African American students. She does not even begin to look at any other races. I believe that culturally relevant teaching would be a wonderful idea for both African American students and students of any other race.
Altogether, I think that Gloria Ladson-Billings makes a wonderful argument for culturally relevant teaching. Her main point is that students will learn better and will enjoy learning more if the lessons are culturally relevant and if the teacher is also. The only weakness that I saw with this argument is the amount of people that she studied. Overall, I think that this is a good argument and was a great book for a future teacher to read.
A Dream to Keep Alive.......2006-02-25
Though Ladon-Billings leans towards idealism constructing a perfect model of societal bliss, this book does show the underlying lack of knowledge many people have regarding educational issues. Those who say that the African-Americans' educational problems are their own fault show incredible short-sightedness to the truth of history. Have we forgotten that the Africa diaspora of colonialism was a forced migration to this country that treated blacks as inferior, and thus that it was a waste of time to educate them? In order for racism to stop, people have to recognize that there is no one race better than any other. All races have value and thus all races should be celebrated. God created them all. An understanding of this will lead to advances in the educational system which often has curricula that have no connection to many of its students. Ladson-Billings book, though primarily focused on African-Americans, is still an important blueprint toward removing some of the blinders people wear when it comes to historical truth. This book is for those who have ears to hear.
The education problem is never a one race or one minority problem.......2005-07-12
Author Ladson-Billings (1994) book "The Dreamkeepers", gave me valuable inside on examples of various challenging and rigorous classrooms, and the emphasis the author put in presenting the cultural and social aspects of schooling when framing education as a whole, was evident. However the author makes the problems of African American children the main issue at stake in her book. Therefore I was presented with a fact and a different point of view based on statistics while conducting my research: One cannot lobby to change the system for one type of minority, to be successful at change. One has to see the "spreading tumor' per se, as a culturally diverse illness, affecting all of us. We, as a diverse society cannot try to make only one minority the beneficiary of our input, improvement, and educational reform. According the U.S. Department of Education (2004) NCLB (No child left behind) report, it showed that among the reading and math proficiency levels of performance for 4th graders in 2003, African American children were slightly lower, by one to five percent, under performing the Hispanics, meaning Hispanics proficiencies in reading and math are slightly better, just slightly, but this does not justify viewing the problem of minority children as being only an African American one. To be successful at change, one has to be more objective and start change for all minorities, why is it so vital to start with only one? I know poverty and lack of social skills are a major factor, but imagine how difficult it is to learn with a new language too.
Changes need to apply to all minorities, if one starts with only one minority, one is not addressing one method of change but only one perceived suitable application for one race. It just seems logical to improve all problems minorities face with the same vigor and dedication in order to truly make changes. I just do not see why is it that African Americans or any race should be the starting point. We are all culturally diverse, aren't we? Unless we are seeing this from the historical point of view again, and we are only to consider the many challenges one race has always faced historically in the U.S. school system, but that still does not justify starting -subjectively speaking- with a minorty that could have, or perceivably so, has been least served.
My two cents...SUSAN WILDBURGER
Book Description
In this book, Gail L. Thompson takes on the volatile topic of the role of race in education and explores the black-white achievement gap and the cultural divide that exists between some teachers and African American students. Solidly based on research conducted with 175 educators, Through Ebony Eyes provides information and strategies that will help teachers increase their effectiveness with African American students. Written in conversational language, Through Ebony Eyes offers a wealth of examples and personal stories that clearly demonstrate the cultural differences that exist in the schools and offers a three-part, long-term professional development plan that will help teachers become more effective.
Customer Reviews:
Only personal accounts, no research........2007-10-15
I have heard it all before. This writer only judges people by the color of their skin. She seems to take pleasure pointing out how wrong white people are about everything. Most of the book is based on her personal experiences, so she uses them to generalize for the whole population with a lot of sterotyping thrown in. She fails to realize that some people truley do not base their opinions of others on the color of their skin. Many people are raised to just love people and treat them with respect without concern of skin color. I found very little useful information.
Not the Answers I Was Looking For.......2007-05-30
This was a quick read, and very informative. It did include a lot of the author's personal experiences (making it quick), but didn't offer as much practical advice as I was hoping for. The book affirmed much of what I already know and do, but did not offer much in the way of new information. I do think I will try some of her other works that were referenced.
No excuses!!!.......2007-05-25
The reason I like this book is because, even though it was written by an African American author, it offers NO EXCUSES. I am an Urban School, middle class, white male teacher, and I love my job and my students. The reality, however, is that (in the words of Malcolm X) "African Americans will never be respected and treated equally until they become educated and earn the respect of other races." A lot of books I have read on helping African American students have made excuses, blaming other races and living situations, and the system, etc. This writer offers no excuses and just explains why some children act the way that they do and how to then deal with them. It also offers suggestions how to counter-act their excuses and complaints to show them success. I love it!!!!!
Love of Learning.......2007-03-14
This book would serve as a good reference for anyone teaching students of color. I have read many books on ways to teach minorities. This book is one that I refer to constantly.
Walk a Mile in My Shoes.......2004-12-28
Through Ebony Eyes tackles a difficult subject with grace and truth. The author, a Black woman, has been a student, a classroom teacher, a college professor, and a teacher of teachers. She knows her subject intimately. As an educator, my goal is to teach all students to the best of my ability. Before I read this book, I would have said that I was a color-blind teacher, looking at all students the same. I had to come to grips with my own cultural identity and biases. Ms. Thompson doesn't condemn or belittle but believes that all teachers desire their students to learn and excel. This is a sociological study complete with research data, charts and graphs and case studies but is not intimidating to read. At the end she includes a program for educators to pursue to improve their teaching of children of color, and a list of books to read and reflect on. I want to empasize that this book is not a "preachy" book, but one I found revealing and extremely readable. I would recommend this book highly to anyone in the field of education, anyone thinking of becoming an educator, and to parents.
Average customer rating:
- Are you kidding me??????
- 4.5 stars for The Human Stain
- A Life Based on a Lie!
- a contemptible pleasure
- Identity check
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The Human Stain: A Novel
Philip Roth
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American Pastoral
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Amazon.com
Athena College was snoozing complacently in the Berkshires until Coleman Silk--formerly "Silky Silk," undefeated welterweight pro boxer--strode in and shook the place awake. This faculty dean sacked the deadwood, made lots of hot new hires, including Yale-spawned literary-theory wunderkind Delphine Roux, and pissed off so many people for so many decades that now, in 1998, they've all turned on him. Silk's character assassination is partly owing to what the novel's narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, calls "the Devil of the Little Place--the gossip, the jealousy, the acrimony, the boredom, the lies."
But shocking, intensely dramatized events precipitate Silk's crisis. He remarks of two students who never showed up for class, "Do they exist or are they spooks?" They turn out to be black, and lodge a bogus charge of racism exploited by his enemies. Then, at 71, Viagra catapults Silk into "the perpetual state of emergency that is sexual intoxication," and he ignites an affair with an illiterate janitor, Faunia Farley, 34. She's got a sharp sensibility, "the laugh of a barmaid who keeps a baseball bat at her feet in case of trouble," and a melancholy voluptuousness. "I'm back in the tornado," Silk exults. His campus persecutors burn him for it--and his main betrayer is Delphine Roux.
In a short space, it's tough to convey the gale-force quality of Silk's rants, or the odd effect of Zuckerman's narration, alternately retrospective and torrentially in the moment. The flashbacks to Silk's youth in New Jersey are just as important as his turbulent forced retirement, because it turns out that for his entire adult life, Silk has been covering up the fact that he is a black man. (If this seems implausible, consider that the famous New York Times book critic Anatole Broyard did the same thing.) Young Silk rejects both the racism that bars him from Woolworth's counter and the Negro solidarity of Howard University. "Neither the they of Woolworth's nor the we of Howard" is for Coleman Silk. "Instead the raw I with all its agility. Self-discovery--that was the punch to the labonz.... Self-knowledge but concealed. What is as powerful as that?"
Silk's contradictions power a great Philip Roth novel, but he's not the only character who packs a punch. Faunia, brutally abused by her Vietnam vet husband (a sketchy guy who seems to have wandered in from a lesser Russell Banks novel), scarred by the death of her kids, is one of Roth's best female characters ever. The self-serving Delphine Roux is intriguingly (and convincingly) nutty, and any number of minor characters pop in, mouth off, kick ass, and vanish, leaving a vivid sense of human passion and perversity behind. You might call it a stain. --Tim Appelo
Book Description
It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would have astonished even his most virulent accuser.
Coleman Silk has a secret, one which has been kept for fifty years from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman. It is Zuckerman who stumbles upon Silk's secret and sets out to reconstruct the unknown biography of this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all his life, and to understand how this ingeniously contrived life came unraveled. And to understand also how Silk's astonishing private history is, in the words of The Wall Street Journal, "magnificently" interwoven with "the larger public history of modern America."
Customer Reviews:
Are you kidding me??????.......2007-06-22
How does a light skin black man "an oxymoron" if I ever heard one pass himself off as a Jewish man? First off, ask any black person who has family members of every shade, if any light skinned black person can pass as white. Impossible! Lets give Mr. Roth the benefit of the doubt, lets say that a light skinned black man can pass himself off as white. Why would he then become Jewish? European Jews came to America and dropped their so-called Jewish sounding names to become more Anglo. And here we have this light skinned black man, becoming a Jew, not an Anglo, which is more advantagous to him but a Jew!
Give me a break! Only a white novalist could come up with this dribble! What is Mr. Roth trying to say exactly? It is better for so-called light skinned blacks to be anything other than, say black?? And how exactly does one pass oneself off as a Jew? By changing one's name from Leroy Jones to Lenny White? This story proves what I have always believed about some, and I say it again "some" whites in this county, they have no concept of who or what African Americans, blacks or what ever name they what to call Africans. By the way, here is a list of mixed Africans, Derek Jeter (Yankees), Mariah Carey, Lenny Kravitz, and so on, all have light skin. So, which one of them can pass and become white? Mariah Carey, and she would me more latina, than white.
The only blacks that passed back in the day are the ones that are white in appearance. Not! Light skinned blacks. Mr. Roth would have been better served if he wrote a book about a Jewish man passing as Anglo, a topic which I am sure he would have been well versed.
4.5 stars for The Human Stain.......2007-04-18
In this book Roth sets the story of an African- American college professor who has spent his adult life "passing: as white against the backdrop of the Clinton -Monica Lewinsky scandal. The character of Coleman Silk is shattered by an ironic and unfair accusation of racism at the school that forces him to end his career while preserving his secret. He begins an affair with a female janitor at the school who is divorced from an angry and unbalanced VietNam Vet from whom she had suffered abuse. Her tragic past collides with SIlk's tragic present resulting in the story's slow build toward a disasterous end. An American tragedy that has people victimized by circumstances beyond their control as well as by their own decisions , the Human Stain is a complex story that examines hypocrisy and racial, economic and social biases in American Society.
A Life Based on a Lie!.......2007-03-31
Dean Coleman Silk had kept a secret that he was actually light-skinned African American who passed for Jewish and maintained that identity for the rest of his life. According to Philip Roth's alter-ego Nathan Zuckerman, Silk chose to live this way. While most of us would abhor such a decision, Roth helps us to understand how Silk who probably never fit in the African American world because he was too light but let people assume he was Jewish. I felt so bad for his family who he disowned. His poor mother who was never acknowledged to Iris. Who was Iris anyway? Maybe she would have accepted, she appeared to be more understanding that COleman gives her credit for. You just don't sympathize with Coleman because you don't understand how somebody could live a lie and how it effected his family's life as well as his children, wife, relatives and friends. You wonder if he told the truth, how much richer his life would have been. Maybe Iris and her family would accept their African American relatives.
a contemptible pleasure.......2007-02-20
Not only have I not been so moved by a book for a while, but I hadn't been moved by a book by Philip Roth in an even longer time. I had a brief fascination with Roth back in graduate school, and then all interest for him fell by the wayside.
Then, a student of mine, one with whom I could talk delightfully about DeLillo, Barthelme, even Beckett, told me that she had read _American Pastoral_, and that it had changed her life. When I went to get said book, I found out then (and only then) that this book was also written by Roth. I knew of the movie, and had thankfully not seen it yet, and decided to get to this one first.
Roth does have a tendency to get a little long-winded, with paragraphs that cover pages at a time, but I think that man has earned the privelege at this point. The scope and depth of character that he achieves, all in the name of the search for personality, is overwhelming. Coleman Silk is both sympathetic and repulsive, probably a staple of Roth since _Portnoy's Complaint_, as this classics professor is undone by a simple miscontruing of context--turns out, the missing students that he wonders aloud about the possibility of being 'spooks' are black, and this man who is steadfast in his ego and place in the world goes more than a little haywire and winds up befriending writer Nathan Zuckerman in order to have his tale told--but does Coleman want the REAL story, or just his own version of it?
Zuckerman, of course, delves into the depths of the relationships among people in this academically incestuous town. Coleman is demanding and secretive, but to extreme ends, which also makes him quite sad. Roth even explores with alarming pathos into the mind of Les, an abusive ex-husband who is a Vietnam vet. There is a constant fight here when it comes to happiness and identity--those who think, and those who experience, and Roth adeptly never comes down on one side or another.
There is, of course, something a little gratuitous about Roth's handling of Delphine Roux, a female literary critic and language professor who seems unable to please herself in any way, once she lets herself think about what she is doing, but the entire cast that Roth creates pales her out enough to make her presence not so scathing.
There were times that I struggled with this book, and got angry at its direction, but I would only offer that as testament to its brilliance--to develop intricate feelings and revulsions over a book is something to offer as a highlight.
Identity check.......2006-12-08
On one level, this is the story of an old-school classics professor, formerly the powerful dean of his New England college, who is driven to resign on charges of racism then further alienates members of the community through his subsequent actions. On another, most strikingly, it is a book about identity and the degree to which we may reinvent ourselves, not merely building on our backgrounds but even rewriting them. On yet another, it is a meditation on the American decline from the postwar years through the trauma of Vietnam to the moral relativity of the Clinton era. On all these levels, Roth succeeds magnificently. Perhaps he is over-fond of extended ruminations which almost become sermons, and I also wonder whether the campus politics setting would work for all audiences. But he has a wonderfully sly method of keeping the reader on his toes by interjecting important events and disclosures almost as asides, while revealing layer upon layer of his increasingly interesting characters.
Book Description
Vivian Paley presents a moving personal account of her experiences teaching kindergarten in an integrated school within a predominantly white, middle-class neighborhood. In a new preface, she reflects on the way that even simple terminology can convey unintended meanings and show a speaker's blind spots. She also vividly describes what her readers have taught her over the years about herself as a "white teacher."
Customer Reviews:
White teacher.......2007-05-06
Used this for a college class! Great book! Paley was very ahead of her time in dealing with multi-cultural issues in early childhood education settings.
Excellent.......2006-09-03
This book will really bring to light exactly how children learn to identify themselves. This book will reinforce the truth that prejudice is learned and that adults play a huge role in the value systems that children adopt. You'll also find a few things in here that make you giggle...after all the book is about a kindergarten class.
A Teacher's Memoire of Diversity.......2006-06-06
Paley developed an understanding about why kids behave the way they do. When I was in pre-school in the early 80's I had teachers who were like her; Jewish women who knew how to make the day enjoyable and constructive at the same time. However, Paley has one talent that most teachers don't have, and that is a vast threshhold of patience. She coaches a little boy away from his bad habits, using praise instead of punishment, and as a teacher I find such tactics superb. But it takes even greater effort not to get angry, and that's why Paley's efforts are sucessful.
Paley (humorously) recounts the parents who didn't trust her. She was a proponent of integration, and when her class was integrated, she had to get used to little kids with upbringings that were opposite of anything she knew. But she certainly practiced what she preached, never blaming the kids' problems on race or their economic status.
truthfulness is liberating.......2002-01-05
What struck me about the book is the author's willingess to be open about her lack of understanding about racial barriers. The writing is self-reflective without being self-loathing.It's honest and very engaging.
Multicultural Education.......2000-11-07
In White Teacher, Vivian Gussin Paley describes her experiences as a young teacher. She tells of her reactions when faced with a classroom full of children who are different from her. By recounting her experiences as a child and reflecting upon them, she is able to better understand why certain children behave in certain ways. These reflections, given in a narrative form, inform the reader of the thought processes of Paley. Through these examples, one is able to better understand what the author was experiencing.
Paley's intention is to prepare future readers for the experiences she has had by giving the reader her reactions to them. She tells the reader what worked to make a bad situation better, as well as what did not. Most of the cultural differences Paley describes occur between her, a Jew of European descent and the African-American children in her classes. However, many of the lessons and principles used apply to all children. Her examples include children with different learning styles; comments taken out of context; children who are excluded from a group and those forming the groups based on a singular characteristic. The majority of the classroom settings are in half-day kindergartens.
This is a wonderful book for anyone who has ever had, or will face a multicultural situation - that would include pretty much all of us. There is an added value in this book for potential teachers. Paley shows how to effectively validate children's perceptions of the world and make them feel value and self-worth.
Book Description
When Huston Diehl began teaching a fourth-grade class in a "Negro" elementary school in rural Louisa County, Virginia, the school’s white superintendent assured her that he didn't expect her to teach "those children" anything. She soon discovered how these low expectations, widely shared by the white community, impeded her students' ability to learn. With its overcrowded classrooms, poorly trained teachers, empty bookshelves, and meager supplies, her segregated school was vastly inferior to the county's white elementary schools, and the message it sent her students was clear: "dream not of other worlds."
In her often lyrical memoir, Diehl reveals how, in the intimacy of the classroom, her students reached out to her, a young white northerner, and shared their fears, anxieties, and personal beliefs. Repeatedly surprised and challenged by her students, Diehl questions her long-standing middle-class assumptions and confronts her own prejudices. In doing so, she eloquently reflects on what the students taught her about the hurt of bigotry and the humiliation of poverty as well as dignity, courage, and resiliency.
Set in the waning days of the Jim Crow South, Dream Not of Other Worlds chronicles an important moment in American history. Diehl examines the history of black education in the South and narrates the dramatic struggle to integrate Virginia's public schools. Meeting with some of her former students and colleagues and visiting the school where she once taught, she considers what has--and has not--changed after more than thirty years of integrated schooling. This provocative book raises many issues that are of urgent concern today: the continuing social consequences of segregated schools, the role of public education in American society, and the challenges of educating minority and poor children.
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Faculty of Color in Academe: Bittersweet Success
Caroline Sotello Viernes Turner , and
Samuel L. Myers
Manufacturer: Pearson Education
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ASIN: 0205278493 |
Book Description
Key Benefits: Faculty of Color in Academe focuses on inequities based on racial and ethnic differences within the professional workplace in higher education. This book draws on a comprehensive study of African American, Asian, Pacific American, American Indian, and Latino faculty in eight mid-western states. By using both narrative and statistical data, this book provides an in-depth view of the issues surrounding the successful recruitment, retention, and development of faculty of color.
Key Topics: The authors attempt to capture and describe some of the similarities and differences experienced by faculty among each of the above mentioned racial/ethnic groups. Includes a comprehensive discussion of what needs to be done in order to achieve diversity in the teaching profession.
Market: Scholars, practitioners, and decision-makers will benefit from the information provided in this book.
Product Description
This book provides a discussion forum for the experiences of faculty of color teaching in predominantly white institutions. The knowledge and insights gained from the narratives shared across a variety of colleges and universities provide faculty and administrators in higher education with helpful strategies for recruitment and retention. The experiences documented here extend beyond teaching in general to other areas such as administration, institutional climate, mentoring, recruitment, relationships with colleagues and students, and research. More importantly, the chapters offer a variety of recommendations so that predominantly white colleges and universities can continue to ensure that institutions change in substantive ways.
A hallmark of this book is the diversity of knowledge, firsthand experiences, and insights provided by the faculty of color who contributed to it. The authors represent a variety of cultures, ethnicities, identities, and nationalities—African American, American Indian, Asian, Asian American, Chamorro, Jamaican, Latina/Latino, Mexican American, South African, Muslim—as well as disciplines—business, dentistry, education, engineering, ethnic studies, health education, political science, psychology, public policy, social justice, social work, sociology, and speech, language, and hearing science. This book also has the potential to impact the dialogue in academia on affirmative action and the institutional goal of achieving parity so that the faculty ranks in higher education mirror the minority talent represented in the nation. Faculty of Color makes recommendations for faculty development, instructional development, and organizational development practice, and raises issues for! commentary and investigation.
Book Description
This compelling look at the relationship between the majority of African American students and their teachers provides answers and solutions to the hard-hitting questions facing education in today's black and mixed-race communities. Are teachers prepared by their college education departments to teach African American children? Are schools designed for middle-class children and, if so, what are the implications for the 50 percent of African Americans who live below the poverty line? Is the major issue between teachers and students class or racial difference? Why do some of the lowest test scores come from classrooms where black educators are teaching black students? How can parents negotiate with schools to prevent having their children placed in special education programs? Also included are teaching techniques and a list of exemplary schools that are successfully educating African Americans.
Customer Reviews:
black students.......2007-08-08
Great read. Very informative. This will be very useful for my staff in the coming school year.
Didn't use.......2007-05-20
one of six books for this class and this one was never used...why to professors do this?
Ridiculous, just as expected.......2007-01-26
As soon as I saw the first and last name of the author, I was suspicious of a radical, African dragon-fire response to Ruby Payne. And that's what it was. A few logical points now and then, but the wrong spin put on those few points. Payne's book was well-thought out and had evidence that was obvious and believable. Jawanza Kunjufu does not want to accept an educational standard set by the successful in America. His plan would not be good in Africa, but will lead to third world standards for everybody in America.
Reverse Racism.......2006-11-04
Although I found a few nuggets in this book, I was horrified at the author's extremist views. I will not recommend this book to the diversity committee at my school.
Middle Class Teachers-Shaken Not Stirred.......2006-06-04
Jawanza Kunjufu is a prolific author and lecturer who has made his mark on the educational reform movement by concentrating on factors that influence African American achievement. This installment focuses on a regularly occurring relationship in urban schools-that of middle class teachers and black students. Kunjufu leads this book off with a list of trends that impact African American achievement. These range from disparities in spending per pupil between affluent and non-affluent districts to the number of African Americans in penal institutions. He includes a revealing multi-cultural quiz, an examination of middle class schools and their practices concerning Black students, a detailed analysis of white female teachers and a relevantblack curriculum to consider. I felt imprortant pressure on myself as an educational leader to internalize this piece so that I can be more effective in my urban school district as I work with children of color. Any educator struggling with our achievement gap between those who have and those who have not should definitly read this and other books by this author.(such as Keeping Black Boys Out Of Special Education.)
Average customer rating:
- Wife loved this book
- What is Marguerite's race?
- Wonderful
- Not very good
- More for educators, not parents.
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I'm Chocolate, You're Vanilla: Raising Healthy Black and Biracial Children in a Race-Conscious World: A Guide for Parents and Teachers
Marguerite A. Wright
Manufacturer: John Wiley & Sons
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Braun IRT 4020 ThermoScan Ear Thermometer
ASIN: 0787941964 |
Book Description
This superb, rational, and highly readable volume answers a deeply felt need. Parents and educators alike have long struggled to understand what meanings race might have for the very young, and for ways to insure that every child grows up with a healthy sense of self. Marguerite Wright handles sensitive issues with consummate clarity, practicality, and hope. Here we have an indispensable guide that will doubtless prove a classic.
--Edward Zigler, sterling professor of psychology and director, Yale Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy
A child's concept of race is quite different from that of an adult. Young children perceive skin color as magical--even changeable--and unlike adults, are incapable of understanding adult predjudices surrounding race and racism. Just as children learn to walk and talk, they likewise come to understand race in a series of predictable stages.
Based on Marguerite A. Wright's research and clinical experience, I'm Chocolate, You're Vanilla teaches us that the color-blindness of early childhood can, and must, be taken advantage of in order to guide the positive development of a child's self-esteem.
Wright answers some fundamental questions about children and race including:
- What do children know and understand about the color of their skin?
- When do children understand the concept of race?
- Are there warning signs that a child is being adversely affected by racial prejudice?
- How can adults avoid instilling in children their own negative perceptions and prejudices?
- What can parents do to prepare their children to overcome the racism they are likely to encounter?
- How can schools lessen the impact of racism?
With wisdom and compassion, I'm Chocolate, You're Vanilla spells out how to educate black and biracial children about race, while preserving their innate resilience and optimism--the birthright of all children.
Customer Reviews:
Wife loved this book.......2007-09-06
We are adopting kids from Ethiopia, so I got this for my wife to read. She absolutely loved it. Not sure if it was due to our situation or if she would have loved it anyway. Brings up interesting points about inter-racial adoptions. She is recommending it to our friends and family as an good read.
What is Marguerite's race?.......2007-05-21
This book was one of the worst I have read. As a transracially adopted person, a parent with a white partner and multi-racial kids, a teacher, and a diversity director, this book is misleading. It gives teachers of young children an excuse to not talk about race. This attitude silences children. It also gives them a message that there is something wrong with race. Do we not talk about gender at an early age, hair color, eyes. Let's get all these "researchers" to live, be in and run a classroom over time. There is where your research is. White parents, don't be fooled by this book. She is making money off of your need for eduacation.
Wonderful.......2007-02-17
I have read a lot of these types of books since we are white and my son is African American. Great book for people preparing to adopt transracially. Gives you a lot to think about and prepare for. I think it's the best of these books.
I have also read the very popular "Inside Transracial Adoption" and this book takes a much more positive spin. I found the other one to be somewhat depressing. This book is much more hopeful and helpful. I consider it a must read if you are considering adopting a child of a race different than your own.
Not very good.......2007-01-08
I thought the author spent a lot of time dancing around serious issues and making everything seem lovely and dandy. She seemed afraid to go deeper into truly revolutionary parenting of black and mixed part black kids. I didn't finish the book for this reason.
More for educators, not parents........2007-01-05
This book had some good information in it, but seemed to be geared toward teachers and administrators of schools in inner-city areas where black children, presumably, are not as exposed to other races. The title was misleading to me as the book did not focus on topics, tips, or ideas for parents trying to raise a biracial child. If the title is what caught your attention, try "Does Anybody Else Look Like Me", that book is specifically for parents of biracial children and gives age-appropriate discussion topics as your child grows.
Amazon.com
In a personal and profound examination of the United States legal system and its effect on African Americans, Patricia J. Williams uses the term alchemy--the medieval, mysterious practice of turning base metal into gold--as a haunting metaphor for the nearly mystical process by which United States law emboldens and endangers blacks through arcane interpretation, as well as the heroic will of a people to make those laws manifest. "I'm interested in the way in which the legal language flattens and confines in absolutes the complexity of meaning inherent in any given problem," she writes. "I am trying to challenge the usual limits of commercial discourse by using an intentionally double-voiced and relational, rather than a traditionally legal black letter, vocabulary."
With an authorial voice that draws upon Williams's perspective as teacher, lawyer, black American, and woman, The Alchemy of Race and Rights uses a palette of court cases, educational encounters, and personal experiences--including her discovery of her slave ancestor and her interactions with school deans over how to teach law--to create a literary cubist portrait detailing the rhetoric and reality that color the complexion of American justice. --Eugene Holley Jr.
Book Description
Patricia Williams is a lawyer and a professor of commercial law, the great-great-granddaughter of a slave and a white southern lawyer. The Alchemy of Race and Rights is an eloquent autobiographical essay in which the author reflects on the intersection of race, gender, and class. Using the tools of critical literary and legal theory, she sets out her views of contemporary popular culture and current events, from Howard Beach to homelessness, from Tawana Brawley to the law-school classrom, from civil rights to Oprah Winfrey, from Bernhard Goetz to Marth Beth Whitehead. She also traces the workings of "ordinary racism"--everyday occurences, casual, unintended, banal perhaps, but mortifying. Taking up the metaphor of alchemy, Williams casts the law as a mythological text in which the powers of commerce and the Constitution, wealth and poverty, sanity and insanity, wage war across complex and overlapping boundaries of discourse. In deliberately transgressing such boundaries, she persues a path toward racial justice that is, ultimately, transformative.
Williams gets to the roots of racism not by fingerpointing but by much gentler methods. Her book is full of anecdote and witness, vivid characters known and observed, trenchant analysis of the law's shortcomings. Only by such an inquiry and such patient phenomenology can we understand racism. The book is deeply moving and not so, finally, just because racism is wrong--we all know that. What we don't know is how to unthink the process that allows racism to persist. THis Williams enables us to see. The result is a testament of considerable beauty, a triumph of moral tactfullness, The result, as the title suggests, is magic.
Customer Reviews:
passionate diatribe.......2006-04-22
There is a lot to complain about regarding race and civil rights and this author questions how far we've come.
We have NOT arrived, she reminds us.
She is a downer and does not leave much hope, yet, somehow it is energizing to read.
A Widely Read Manifesto of Regressive Race Relations.......2004-04-01
A great deal of discourse has come out of the use of this book in my law class on the interaction of law in society, but I find it's use counter-productive to the forward-thinking goals of most academic institutions. Prof. Williams cannot seem to make up her mind on anything. She attacks Marxist lawyers, while at the same time advocating an affront to the bourgeoise, especially those without black skin (whites, Hispanics and Asians are all vilified to some degree in this book). While masquerading as a socialist activist herself, she then advocates a very right-wing goal of keeping each other in our respective racial boxes to keep order, even refusing to accept that she herself can be at once black, female and educated -- these three identities always appear separately for her. Her book is a regressive look at the future that denies the possibility of progress in race and gender relations. She is sadly unable to employ the power in her rights and instead prefers to wallow in a viscious cycle that refuses to recognize nuance, and prefers rather to assume racial categories, because they are simpler. Very few new ideas are presented in this racist, ethnically intolerant and misandric text and it is hardly worth a read, beyond the fact that it may come up in discussion.
More gibberish from the good professor.......2003-06-21
What a dreary tome. Ms. Professor Williams has a unique ability to obscure the most obvious and trite revelations in pedantic and turgid prose that she thinks is thrillingly poetic because the words are long-winded and flowery. and that's when she's making sense, which isn't very often. the rest of her writings tend to be either outright calls for more preferences for her preferred friends camouflaged as courageous iconoclasm, or just plain idiocy posing as intellectually daring originality. Sadly enough, if Thomas Kuhn is right, we'll have the likes of Professor Pat around for another couple of decades. (But hey, if you have the money, you can always sign up for the Nation's annual cruise and talk about the revolution with Pat and the gang for a mere 8 grand or so....)
Fabulous Book for the Open-Minded.......2003-05-05
This is an extraordinary book. Through the use of a wide array of reasoning and writing methods, Williams makes it possible for us to get a glimpse of the dangerous and contradictory legal world that ethnic minorities must negotiate to survive. It may be a bit of a stretch for people unaccustomed to thinking outside the box as well as those unfamilar with literature and literary theory. But the insight Williams offers is well worth the effort. It also provides members of the privileged class with the unusual & valuable experience of not being the central focus of the text. A fabulous experience for readers with an open mind!
Incoherent BROKEN Necklace of Thoughts.......2002-07-03
Williams style is more of a problem than her substance. She uses numerous anecdotal stories, told from one side, some of which are dubious in truth, and rare questionably-derived statistics, to demonstrate an invisible undercurrent of racism from whites against blacks, and these are the issues she addresses best. Her style could perhaps best be described as varying between insightful and incoherent, with I'm afraid more of the latter.
Williams argues in the beginning of her book against generalization, that "reconceptualizing from "objective truth" to rhetorical event will be a more nuanced sense of legal and social responsibility," (p.11) then proceeds to generalize and polarize whites and blacks and generalize about numerous other issues throughout the book:
"White women are prostitutes; black women are whores" p. 175
"To say that blacks never fully believed in rights is true" p. 163
"Blacks are thus, in full culturally imagistic terms, not merely unmothered but badly fathered, abused and disowned by whites." p. 163
Argues would probably be a bad choice of word, for logic is the study of arguments, and Williams is neither consistent nor logical. In style, Williams is neither clear nor concise, and in one word, rambles.
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Black Students / Middle Class Teachers
