Description
Book SynopsisProvides teachers, teacher educators, and school leaders with concrete strategies for doing community-based work. By reframing the act of teaching to include working for social change, the author pushes readers to see school and community revitalization as reciprocal, not separate, projects.
Table of Contents
- Contents (Tentative)
- Foreword Kevin K. Kumashiro ix
- Acknowledgments xi
- Introduction xv
- 1. The Role of Teachers and the Purpose of Schools 1
- What’s My Job, Again? 1
- Teaching Matters: Embracing Different Ways of Knowing, Being, Seeing, and Doing 10
- Centering Civic and Community Engagement: The Promise of Democratic Participation in Schools and Communities 12
- Key Strategies and Ideas for Doing School Differently 17
- 2. Building a Relational Culture: The Power of Relational Pedagogy for Teacher Engagement in Schools and Communities 19
- Life in Schools: Educating Teachers 19
- Collective Possibilities: Envisioning Healthy and Sustainable Schools and Communities 22
- Relating Is Relational: How to Rebuild Institutions and Communities by Building Better Relationships 26
- A Short Guide to Working in Communities 37
- 3. Education and Inequality: Why Schools Haven’t Solved Our Social Problems 40
- Marching Toward the Light: Working Across Social Boundaries 40
- Making the Road by Walking: Accountability on Chicago’s South Side 47
- Rebuilding the School: Community Approaches to School Improvement 52
- Institutional Resistance: Different Views of Accountability 54
- Accountability Reconsidered: Students and Teachers Acting Together 57
- Community Power: A Look Back 58
- Accountability to Community: Learning Through Action 62
- Changing Social Conditions: Final Reflections 65
- 4. Models for Change: Community as Curriculum and the Promise of Democratic Schooling 69
- Why We Need Grassroots School Reform 69
- Grassroots Curriculum: The Power of Place 75
- Indigenous Leaders: Community Organizing and Teacher Organizers 78
- Community as Campus: Community Action Councils and the Shaping of a School 83
- Democratic Schooling: The Nova Project 89
- 5. Making Citizen Teachers: Educational Leaders for Justice and Democracy 95
- Rethinking Teacher Education 95
- Citizen Teachers and the Democratic Potential of Schools 98
- Surviving the War: What Will It Take to Change Our
- Schools and Communities? 104
- Making Citizen Teachers and the Challenges to Teaching Differently 108
- Teaching on the Boundary 112
- Possible Futures: Democratic Practices and Community Engagement in Schools 114
- The Limits of Alinsky and the Promise of Grassroots Organizing 120
- References 125
- Index 129
- About the Author 137
