Other Peoples Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom by Lisa D. Delpit

Other Peoples Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom Reviews

• 
  Trevor

  
  This book is based on a series of research papers written by Delpit and she makes it clear that the first two chapters have proven controversial over the years. This is interesting, because it is likely that these chapters remain just as controversial today.
  
  There is a really useful divide in the theory involving teaching children to read, with right-wing types likely to stress the importance of skills-based methods of instruction, while left-wing types are likely to stress the reader’s construction of meaning as the best way to learn to read. This often comes down to what is referred to as either whole-language on phonics. Delpit presents an interesting twist on this. Her point is that when many well-meaning people are trying to teach young black children to read, ideology can get in the way – whether right or left-wing ideology – while what is actually needed is a focus on what works.
  
  Now, the problem with trying to simplify her ideas is that I’ve immediately gone too far. This isn't at all just a 'let's see what works and do that' sort of book. Her work is based on theory - but her point remains - simpleminded applications of ideology do not help children of colour learn how to read.
  The theory she proposes is similar to Freire's idea of teach the world as you teach the word to me. It is not that you can get away with not teaching the 'word' if you teach the world - rather, you need to teach both and to do so at the same time.
  
  This brings us to what might be understood as the other 'problem' with her theory – one that I think many people would probably get upset with her over. For a long time people on the left have been concerned with what are called 'deficit models of education' for disadvantaged groups. One of the standard versions of this relates to Bernstein's theories, particularly around his ideas of linguistic codes. The short version is that Bernstein did research in the 1960's looking into how the speech acts of middle and working class children differed. He found that the middle class kids spoke like 'books', while you really had to be standing beside the working class kids to understand what they were talking about. The middle class kids had two linguistic codes they could rely on - a concrete one (just as the working class kids had) for when they were talking with those immediately around them - and a more universal one for when they were talking to the teacher or when they need to speak to people in authority. This second code is particularly prized at school and it therefore gives middle class children an advantage over their working class peers, particularly in the classroom.
  
  The solution seemed simple. All you needed to do, to make the world a more equal place, was to give working class the same access to this universal linguistic code they lacked. That is, the working class kids have a deficit and so if overcome that deficit everything will be great. Bernstein nether actually said this, as far as I can tell, but many of his followers certainly acted as if he had.
  The problem is that this type of deficit idea seems to imply that black or working class children are stupid - and that was certainly never Bernstein's belief. This often meant that programs were developed to teach the children lacking these skills as if they really were stupid. One of the great things about people is that they really do know when they are being patronised. Which means that too often when people are trying to teach people the 'language of power' what actually happens is that the people being tuught feel as if they are being made fun of – or disrespected at least – and that does as much to stop them from learning as anything else you can think of.
  
  Delpit's point is that you need to not only teach the highly prized language - but to do so in ways that respect their linguistic codes at the same time. There is a lovely bit here where a teacher comes into a room only to find her students impersonating her language. That is, doing exactly what she had been trying to teach them to do, although, without the irony, but to which they had been actively resisting for months.
  
  This is also true of second language learning. If you can rely on the resources you have from you first language and to then build on that, then learning a second language is much easier. But if you have never been allowed to consolidate your first language, then learning a second one is almost impossible. And yet, this is exactly what we do in schools all of the time. In the USA, for instance, children whose first language is Spanish are not taught Spanish in schools. Rather, they are taught in English, often a language they do not understand. But the tragedy of this is that it means that they don't know enough of Spanish to help them learn English. With two languages known imperfectly, they have no resources to help them learn.
  
  The same goes for working class children or children of colour. Because their linguistic codes are totally devalued by the schools they attend, so much so that they are effectively taught to shun their own linguistic codes, they are taught that what is most central to them as humans, their ability to communicate, is flawed. But without their own linguistic code being prized I'm the classroom, they effectively have nothing to use to help them learn the highly prized code.
  
  And it gets worse everyone they love speaks the linguistic code that the school is telling them is worthless. If you ever needed a reason to reject learning – then being told you and everyone you love is worthless would be as good a reason to reject that education as I can think of.
  
  Delpit is certainly not saying that we should not teach the highly prized 'language of power'. Quite the opposite. She is also not saying that children of black or working class parents can get by with their own 'quaint’ linguistic codes. Gaining access to the language of power gives access to power itself. But that does not have to come at the price of the rejection of the value of your own language. Just as Spanish speaking children should not have to lose their first language so as tolerant to speak English and that in fact they will learn English better and more quickly the better their Spanish, so too with working class children.
  
  This isn't deficit learning. It is learning. To learn any new language necessarily means having to learn the skills associated with that language. But if learning is to occur it needs to happen in a way that leaves the child with their self and community respect intact.
  
• 
  Toriamae

  I wasn't sure how I would feel about this book when I first started reading it. It seemed the author was way into race issues in a way that would make me feel guilty as a white woman who has chosen to work with ethnic and linguistic minority communities.
  
  But Delpit's message is not one of hate or hopelessness. The bottom line is that everyone can learn, bias exists and that thoughtful teachers should go to whatever means necessary to educate their students, teaching them to be successful in mainstream America. She advocates neither rejecting home language or dialect nor teaching it exclusively. Rather, she asserts, students must learn the tools and skills that are necessary for success in modern America, namely standard English.
  
  Teaching standard English and language skills requires different things for different students. Teachers should not be surprised if those who do not already have skills in standard English require more than a self-discovery or process approach to learning.
  
  I for one appreciate Delpit's perspective and the high expectations she sets for all students.
• 
  Nancy

  This would never be a book that I would consider recommending for gaining deeper insights into teaching children of color. I hoped to feel I had an edge to share with my teachers in dealing with and teaching children who come from culturally diverse backgrounds. Instead, I felt scolded and preached to and was unconvinced that even the author has ideas of how to best help, teach and reach our disadvantaged minorities. I concur with her last essay, that we need to value and celebrate the heritage of all children. However, beyond that, she offers little to help us close the achievement gap and improve the classroom management that plagues our schools nationwide.
• 
  Emily Waltman

  It feels almost sacrilegious to review "Other People's Children," which asks me to listen more than I speak, to understand more than I judge. I'll be brief, then. This book is so important it scares me. I feel obliged to actualize to Delpit's vision when teaching across difference, yet warier than ever of the challenges. I plan to return to OPC often, as a guide for rendering school pleasant and useful for every individual passing through my class.
  
  Tl;dr: Read this book! Read this book if you...
  
  ...are a white teacher of students of color
  ...are any teacher of any students
  ...analyze academic research in your line of work
  ...live in a multicultural society
  ...live
  
  BONUS! A resonant quote in Charles M. Payne's review of this resonant book: "They could not get past the idea that being from Stanford or Yale gave them the right to lead; they could not get hold of the idea that people who hadn't been to high school were, as Lisa Delpit says in 'Other People's Children,' experts in their own lives."
• 
  Abbi Dion

  Focused, honest, insightful and challenging. I took the time to type a few standout moments:
  We have given up the rich meaningful education of our children in favor of narrow, decontextualized, meaningless procedures that leave unopened hearts, unformed character, and unchallenged minds. xiv
  The reductionism spawned has created settings in which teachers and students are treated as nonthinking objects to be manipulated and “managed.” xv
  Were we focused on our children as inheritors of the future, perhaps we could be more deliberate in teaching them the traits they need to become protectors of the earth and all of its inhabitants. xvi
  Poor people and people of color are clearly in trouble in this country. And this means that we as a country are in trouble. Our “trouble” cannot be resolved by the creation and administration of standardized tests. Our “trouble” cannot be resolved by “teacher-proof” curricula. The troubles of our country – indeed, the troubles of our world – can be addressed only if we help ourselves and our children touch the deep humanity of our collective spirit and regain the deep respect for the earth that spawned us. xviii
  But we cannot blame the schools alone. We live in a society that nurtures and maintains stereotypes: we are all bombarded daily, for instance, with the portrayal of the young black male as monster. xxiii
  What should we be doing? The answers, I believe, lie not in a proliferation of new reform programs but in some basic understandings of who we are and how we are connected to and disconnected from one another. xxv
  The worldviews of those with privileged positions are taken as the only reality, while the worldviews of those less powerful are dismissed as inconsequential. Indeed, in the educational institutions of this country, the possibilities for poor people and for people of color to define themselves, to determine the self each should be, involve a power that lies outside of the self. It is others who determine how they should act, how they are to be judged. xxv
  Which I hope will interest people concerned with the improvement of education for those least well served by the public education system in this country. xxvii
  
  Liberation for poor kids and linguistic minorities starts with accepting their culture and language and helping them to build on it. page 9
  I also learned that people learn to write not by being taught “skills” and grammar, but by “writing in meaningful contexts.” Page 12
  It is time to look closely at elements of our educational system, particularly those elements we consider progressive; time to see whether there is minority involvement and support, and if not, to ask why; time to reassess what we are doing in public schools and universities to include other voices, other experiences; time to seek the diversity in our educational movements that we talk about seeking in our classrooms. Page 20
  Those with power are frequently least aware – or least wiling to acknowledge – its existence. Those with less power are often most aware of its existence. Page 24
  This meant that the child who did not come to school already primed with what was to be presented would be labeled as needing “remedial” instruction from day one; indeed, this determination would be made before he or she was ever taught. Page 30
  The authoritative teacher can control the class through exhibition of personal power; establishes meaningful interpersonal relationships that garner student respect; exhibits a strong belief that all students can learn; establishes a standard of achievement and “pushes” the students to achieve that standard; and holds the attention of the students by incorporating interactional features of black communicative style in his or her teaching. Page 35-36
  I also do not believe we should teach students to passively adopt an alternate code. They must be encouraged to understand the value of the code they already possess as well as to understand the power realities in this country. Page 40
  To do so takes a very special kind of listening, listening that requires not only open eyes and ears, but open hearts and minds. We do not really see through our eyes or hear through our ears, but through our beliefs. To put our beliefs on hold is to cease to exist as ourselves for a moment – and that is not easy. It is painful as well, because it means turning yourself inside out, giving up your own sense of who you are, and being wiling to see yourself in the unflattering light of another’s angry gaze. It is not easy but it is the only way to learn what it might feel like to be someone else and the only way to start the dialogue. Page 46-47
  Teachers are in an ideal position to play this role, to attempt to get all of the issues on the table in order to initiate true dialogue. This can only be done, however, by seeking out those whose perspectives may differ most, by learning to give their words complete attention, by understanding one’s own power, even if that power stems merely from being in the majority, by being unafraid to raise questions about discrimination and voicelessness with people of color, and to listen, no, to hear what they say. I suggest that the results of such interactions may be the most powerful and empowering coalescence yet seen in the educational realm – for all teachers and for all the students they teach. Page 47
  
  Forcing speakers to monitor their language for rules while speaking, typically produces silence. Page 51
  Teachers need to support he language that students bring to school, provide them input from an additional code, and give them the opportunity to use the new code in a nonthreatening, real communicative context. Page 53
  Robert Berdan’s Atlantis Experiment. Page 60
  Some youngsters may become more engaged in school tasks when the language of those tasks is posed in real-life contexts than when they are viewed as merely decontextualized problem completion. Since our long-term goal is producing young people who are able to think critically and creatively in real problem-solving contexts, the instructional –and linguistic – implications should be evident. Page 66
  One of the most difficult tasks we face as human beings is communicating meaning across our individual differences, a task confounded immeasurably when we attempt to communicate across social lines, racial lines, cultural lines, or lines of unequal power. Yet, all U.S. demographic data points to a society becoming increasingly diverse, and that diversity is nowhere more evident than in our schools […] We can continue to view diversity as a problem […] Or we can recognize that diversity of thought, language, and worldview in our classrooms cannot only provide an exciting educational setting, but can also prepare our children for the richness of living in an increasingly diverse national community. Page 66-67
  
  My experiences in these geographically diverse settings were some of the most important of my life. I was very much the “other”: I had no opportunity to see myself reflected in those around me. Under such circumstances, one learns to see much more clearly the assumptions one makes about the world, and to see that they are just that – assumptions. Some people in similar circumstances, I have discovered, hold on to their worldview with great tenacity, insisting that all of the others are wrong, peculiar, undeveloped, heathen, or uncivilized. I found that my survival depended on my being willing and able to learn from my new acquaintances and my new setting, to see the world through other eyes. Page 74
  The worldviews of many in our society exist in protected cocoons […] their public lives and the institutions they have encountered merely reflect a “reality” these individuals have been schooled in since birth. When these privileged individuals – and they are privileged, whether they realize it or not – see others who operate from a different worldview, they can often comprehend them only as deviants, pathologically inferior, certainly in need of “fixing.” Even when individuals believe themselves to have good intentions, their own biases blind them from seeing the real people before them. Those who have been on the receiving end of such biases understand them well […] Listening to the stories of these women and men has made me even more sensitive to the ways in which most institutions in our society are created to reflect the realities of a particular cultural group – mainly the white, academically oriented middle class. Their stories have contributed, as well, to molding my views about what is needed to expand our educational vision to embrace the diversity that is this country’s reality. Page 74-75
  “It is important to teach our children to read and write, but it is more important to teach them to be proud of themselves, and of us.” – Letter from a Parent. Page 89
  Academic education was fine and to be desired, but what really concerned them was social and moral education – the education that trains youngsters to become good people, who care about, participate in, and are proud of their communities. Page 89
  There is never a guarantee that a particular language or educational policy will “work,” but when that policy reflects the goals of the people it is to affect rather than those of either foreign missionaries or a colonial government, and when it reaffirms rather than negates a people’s knowledge of its culture and heritage, then there is no better prospect for its success. Page 90
  
  Traditional bastions of academe distance people from one another as they create power relationships whereby one group maintains the power to “name” the other. They decontextualize people as their research subjects are scrutinized and analyzed outside of their own lives. Page 91
  I realize that I am an organic part of all that is, and learn to adopt a receptive, connected stance, then I need not take an active, dominant role to understand; the universe will, in essence, include me in understanding. Page 92
  We children in our segregated schools were constantly admonished about being proper “representatives of the race.” The white population saw us as one undifferentiated mass, and so, perhaps, we learned to see each other that way as well. Page 93
  In education, we set about solving problems as if they exist in a vacuum. We isolate the problem and seek a technical solution. Page 93
  The CON (meaning, “with,”) in context […] The “modern consciousness,” […] inevitably moves us toward a focus on “text” rather than on “context,” on words rather than on all the phenomena surrounding the words. Page 96-97
  The context of a message is at least as important as, and often more important than the text of the message. Page 97
  What’s interesting to me is the frequency with which the Anglo teacher’s words do not match his actions: he frequently directs the children to do something while he is physically engaged in a completely different task himself. For example, he says, “copy the words from the board” while he is away from the blackboard looking through his desk for something or other. The Native teacher, by contrast, almost always matched her words with her actions: if she says, “copy the words,” she is at the blackboard pointing. The Anglo teacher asks that children attend to what he says, not what he does; the Native American teacher, on the other hand, supports her words in a related physical context. What gets done is at least as important as what gets said. […] in truth he may well be unconsciously preparing children for their future schooling where they will be expected to attend to the words and not the surrounding context. Page 99
  GREAT teacher example. Page 99
  The Scollons discuss how much of what just seems ordinary to academically oriented parents is really training children to respond to the world in very specific ways. While these modes may be reinforced in school, they are foreign to many children growing up in families not part of an academic culture. Page 100
  When children who have been brought up to trust their own observations enter school, they confront teachers, who, in their estimation, act as unbelievable tyrants. From the child’s perspective, their teachers attempt to coerce behavior […] Despite the rhetoric of American education, it does not teach children to be independent, but rather to be dependent on external sources for direction, for truth, for meaning. It trains children both to seek meaning solely from the text and to seek truth outside of their own good sense. Page 101-102
  Era of Doublespeak. Page 102
  Learning solely through the decontextualized word, particularly learning something that was so much a part of their home culture, was simply too foreign for the children to grasp without careful instruction about how to make the transition. Page 103
  I have carried around the question of that child and that teacher for many years. Why do we have such a hard time making school a happy place for poor children and children of color? Page 104
  
  Negative attitudes in the university appear to be expressed in two ways: directly toward the student, and/or more generally toward the student’s cultural group. This bias can be classified, according to Benokraitis and Feagin’s scheme of discrimination, as “overt,” (most blatant) “covert” (clandestine, maliciously motivated), and “subtle” (unequal treatment that is visible but so internalized as to be considered routine in bureaucratized settings). Page 113
  “I guess that is one way for a dominant culture to maintain dominance – not to recognize any of the strengths of another group.” Page 114-115
  Racial discrimination in present-day America is less likely to be the overt, blatant bigotry of the past. […] Despite change in the stated beliefs of the white population, recent studies depict their actions as reflecting other values. Researchers have found that the reactions of whites to people of color display subtle discriminatory behavior: less assistance, greater aggression, overt friendliness coupled with covert rejection, avoidance, and assessment inconsistent with actual work performance. Furthermore, whites are seldom conscious of this “modern prejudice,” even as they practice it. Page 115
  “Consequently many whites remain unconvinced of the reality of subtle prejudice and discrimination, and come to think of their black coworkers as “terribly touchy” and “overly sensitive” to the issue.” Page 116
  Good Teachers. Page 118
  Teaching is all about telling a story. You have to get to know kids so you’ll know how to tell the story, you can’t tell it just one way. You can tell if you’re on the right track by watching the kids. Page 120
  John Dewey advocated such a stance in 1904. In an article on the relationship between theory and practice in teacher education, he asserts that the “greatest asset in the student’s possession – the greatest, moreover that ever will be in his possession – [is] his own direct and personal experience.” Page 124
  Dewey further advises that failure to allow students to explore their past experiences in light of theoretical constructs will produce only a mindless imitation of others’ practice rather that a reflection on teaching as an interactive process. Page 125
  It is vitally important that connections be examined, that the education professor highlight the narratives of the students of color and ask them to serve as resources for bringing to the fore differences in worldview, learning style, social organization, language, and so forth. Page 126
  The students of color may find their experiences both admissible and valued in the classroom, which, along with the increased opportunity for interaction, may help to reduce their feelings of isolation from the university and their white classmates and professors. Page 126
  
  If we are to succeed in this quest, we must recognize and address the power differentials that exist in our society between schools and communities, between teachers and parents, between poor and well-to-do, between whites and people of color. Further, we must understand that our view of the world is but one of many, that others see things in other ways. Page 133
  We all interpret behaviors, information, and situations through our own cultural lenses; these lenses operate involuntarily, below the level of conscious awareness, making it seem that our own view is simply “the way it is.” […] Engaging in the hard work of seeing the world as others see it must be a fundamental goal. Page 151
  
  Knowledge about culture is but one tool that educators may make use of when devising solutions for a school’s difficulty in educating diverse children. Page 167
  Children who may be gifted in real-life settings are often at a loss when asked to exhibit knowledge solely though decontextualized paper-and-pencil exercises. Page 173
  If we do not have some knowledge of children’s lives outside of the realms of paper-and-pencil work, and even outside of their classrooms, then we cannot know their strengths. Not knowing students’ strengths leads to our “teaching down” to children from communities that are culturally different from that of the teachers in the school. Page 173
  If we plan to survive as a species on this planet we must certainly create multicultural curricula that educate our children to the differing perspectives of our diverse population. Page 177
  Were that not the case, these children would not talk about doing well in school as “acting white.” Our children of color need to see the brilliance of their legacy, too. Page 177
  If we are to successfully educate all of our children, we must work to remove the blinders built of stereotypes, monocultural instructional methodologies, ignorance, social distance, biased research, and racism. We must work to destroy those blinders so that it is possible to really see, to really know the students we must teach. Page 182
  REFLECTIONS
  “One of the educational conversations I always dream of having: no ego, no contest, just a consideration of schooling and how it affects children’s lives, combined with a lot of storytelling.” Herbert Kohl
  “I expect tears, arguments, denials, excuses, confessions, accusations, and whole range of displays of vulnerability, revenge, and strength […] Upon first reading OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN many white teachers take it as an attack on their capacity to teach students of color. […] Others believe their problems teaching African American students stem directly from the children’s families, neighborhoods, peers, and cultural environments. […] Most of all [Delpit] provides us with an occasion to reflect on ourselves as educators and as citizens living and working within a context where racism is pervasive and where, for many, hope is fading.” Herbert Kohl
  “They somehow go through $160K worth of schooling without learning to think self-reflexively, without learning to think of themselves as part of the problem. They have been taught to think of themselves as the objective analysts and other people as the problem.” Charles Payne
  “One of the privileges of being white in this country is that it largely insulates one from critical discussion.” Charles Payne
  “After a workshop on poverty and some honest reflection …” Patricia Lesesne
  “Through this communication, I realized that I was operating from a middle-class ethos with all of is trappings […] Instead of asking why a behavior exists and when it will stop, I began to ask how I could create a classroom setting that allows these students to thrive in a society run according to middle-class values while respecting their home cultures. […] Delpit challenges me to know myself and my limitations, know my students and their needs, and – through close, honest relationships rooted in mutual respect – come to know the values of the adults in the communities from which my students come to me.” Patricia Lesesne
  
• 
  Crystal

  Some things of note from this book:
  
  "That, I believe, is what we need to bring to our schools: experiences that are so full of the wonder of life, so full of connectedness, so embedded in the context of our communities, so brilliant in the insights that we develop and the analysis that we devise, that all of us, teachers and students alike, can learn to live lives that leave us truly satisfied." p104
  
  What can teachers do? p 163-165
  
  1. Acknowledge and validate students' home language without using it to limit students' potential.
  2. Recognize conflict between students' home discourses and the discourse of school.
  3. Acknowledge the unfair "discourse-stacking" that our society engages in.
  
  And importantly, it seemed that she was saying that to teach all students well, we must know them and if possible, know and utilize their families as resources - valuing their input.
• 
  Emma Refvem

  My advisor told me I *had* to read this book, and I can understand why. Delpit’s reflections on power in the classroom were particularly meaningful to me as I reflected on my time as a teacher. This book is probably taught to preservice educators but I think it would also work well to discuss with early career teachers after they have had the experience of wielding power in the classroom.
• 
  Stephanie Borges Folarin

  In her collection of essays, Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, MacArthur Award-winning author Dr. Lisa Delpit examines how everyday interactions in classrooms are laden with assumptions about the competencies, aptitudes and basic capabilities of low-income students and students of color. Through excerpts of conversations with educators, students and parents, Delpit explores ways in which educators can be better “cultural transmitters.” She proposes that many academic and behavioral problems attributed to low-income students and students of color are actually the consequence of miscommunication between the mainly white educators and “other people’s children.” Delpit asserts that being an educator who is an efficient and effective cultural transmitter is important in the classroom because classrooms are where prejudice, stereotypes, and cultural assumptions lead to ineffective education. But Delpit also believes that cultural sensitivity, and valuing students’ language and culture alone is not enough; educators of “other people’s children” have a responsibility to give students the tools of the majority culture, even as they discuss openly with their students the reasons why they are doing so.
  
  This hard conversation about power imbalances in our society and its effect on students is typically avoided in schools. However, through Burgundy Farm Country Day School’s new Learning Community Group Professional Development system, some teachers were able to come together this summer and read this collection of essays. We began our discussion of these ideas at the Cove (our West Virginia campus) this fall, and now hope to share with the community what we’ve learned. This article is step one in that process. We hoped that it inspires you to read this book, and to join in our discussion about culture, language and power in schools.
• 
  Christina

  An eye-opener. A collection of essays by Delpit and others looking at the classroom from the minority (minority in many senses) perspectives.
  
  Through tales of Native Alaskan tribes, urban blacks, and minority student teachers, Delpit reminds teachers, parents, administrators, and students themselves about diverse upbringings and differences in linguistic cultural traditions that can easily be misunderstood in a school environment that is run by and which teaches the (white, professional) culture in power way of speaking/writing/learning/relating.
  
  Shook me up a little when she points out the flaws in the Graves & Co. writing workshop instructional methods when used as a blanket curriculum (because I had not yet taken a truly critical eye to it or any of my readings up til now). Writing workshop intentions are good, and it works for many, but probably not all. Some students who may already have the fluency and creativity of language still need the keys to the explicit grammar skills which are the keys for entering the culture of power.
  
  In the chapter where she discusses teacher education, some disheartening stories of potential teachers who gave up because they weren't being heard or felt they couldn't make a difference in a system where the prejudices are embedded, below the surface, and largely unacknowledged.
  
  Key is to listen (to really listen and understand, not just to hear, not just to gloss over their opinions, not just to refute with attitude) to and form relationships with the community, the parents, the people of color who understand the children and the students we are trying to reach.
• 
  Phil J

  Lisa Delpit nailed it over 25 years ago, and it's embarrassing that we still haven't caught up. This book is still relevant in 2022, and it should be required reading for a bachelor's in Education.
  
  Delpit delves into a lot of important things in this book. One is that different cultures access education in different ways, and that a teacher's success has a lot to do with presenting education in a way that will connect with the students. She also pushes for academic rigor, high expectations, and teaching the conventions of standard English.
  
  Zaretta Hammond is earning a lot of praise for
  Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students. That is a great book and deserving of praise. It is also a book that builds very clearly off of the foundation that Lisa Delpit laid. Hammond's book is highly useful because it presents a number of fairly specific suggestions and action items. Delpit's book has some strong points in being more direct and blunt than Hammond's book, and, to some degree, more impactful for its bluntness. Both books are great and both should be read.
• 
  Charlie

  This book is about how students from minority backgrounds are failed by teachers with little understanding about different cultures.
  
  Little was shared about ways to address this issue, but it did open my eyes to the subtleties of racism.
• 
  Lianna Bessette

  Excellent. I wish I’d been assigned this book during my teacher training in college!
• 
  Daniel S

  “We all carry worlds in our heads, and those worlds are decidedly different. We educators set out to teach, but how can we reach the worlds of others when we don’t even know that they exist? Indeed, many of us don’t even realize that our own worlds exist only in our heads and in the cultural institutions we have built to support them.” [p.xxiv]
  
  “understanding other worlds, journeys that involved learning to see, albeit dimly, through the haze of my cultural lenses. In that blurred view, I have come to understand that power plays a critical role in our society and in our educational system. The worldviews of those with privileges positions are taken as the only reality, while the worldviews of those less powerful are dismissed as inconsequential. Indeed, in the educational institutions of this country, the possibilities for poor people and for people of color to define themselves, to determine the self each should be, involve a power that lies outside of the self.” It is others who determine how they should act, how they are to be judged.” [p.xxv]
  
  “when implicit codes are attempted across cultures, communication frequently breaks down. Each cultural group is left saying, “Why don’t those people say what they mean?” [p.25]
  
  “What the school personnel fail to understand is that if the parents were members of the culture of power and live by itself rules and codes, then they would transmit those does to their children. In fact, they transmit another culture that children must learn at home in order to survive in their communities.” [p.30]
  
  In this country, students will be judged on their product regardless of the process they utilized to achieve it. And that product, based as it is on the specific codes of a particular culture, in more readily produced when the directives of how to produce it are made explicit.” [p.31]
  
  “The teacher cannot be the only expert in the classroom. To deny students their own expert knowledge is to disempower them.” [p.32]
  
  “there are different attitudes in different cultural groups about which characteristics make for a good teacher. Thus, it is impossible to create a model for the good teacher without taking issues of culture nd community context into account.” [p.37]
  
  “Now you may have interred that I believe that because there is a culture of power, everyone should learn the codes to participate in it, and that is how the world should be. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. I believe in a diversity of style, and I believe the world will be diminished if cultural diversity is ever obliterated…each cultural group should have the right to maintain its own language style. When I speak, therefore, of the culture of power, I don’t speak of how I wish things to be but of how they are.” [p.39]
  
  “to summarize, I suggest that students must be taught the codes needed to participate fully in the mainstream of American life, not by being forces to attend to hollow, inane, decontextualizes subskills, but rather within the context of meaningful communicative endeavors; that they must be allowed the resource of the teacher’s expert knowledge, while being helped to acknowledge their own “expertness” as well; and the even while students are assisted in learning the culture of power, they must also be helped to learn about the arbitrariness of those codes and about the power relationships they represent.” [p.45]
  
  “Educators must open themselves to, and allow themselves to be affected by, these alternative voices.” [p.46]
  
  “They understand the need for both approaches, the need to help students establish their own voices, and to coach those voices to produce notes that will be heard clearly in the larger society.” [p.46]
  
  “To do so takes a very special kind of listening, listening that requires not only open eyes and ears, but open hearts and minds. We do not really see through our eyes of hear through our ears, but through our beliefs. To put our beliefs on hold is to cease to exist as ourselves for a moment- and that is not easy. It is painful as well, because it means turning yourself inside out, giving up your own sense of who you are, and being willing to see yourself in the unflattering light of another’s gaze.” [p.46]
  
  “Teachers are in an ideal position to play this role, to attempt to get all of the issues on the table in order to initiate true dialogue. This can only be done, however, by seeking out those whose perspective may differ most, by learning to give their words complete attention, by understanding one’s own power, even if that power stems merely from being in the majority, by being unafraid to raise questions about discrimination and voicelessness with people of color, and to listen, no, the hear what they say.”[p.47]
  
  Thus, if teachers hope to avoid negatively stereotyping the language patterns of their students, it is important that they be encouraged to interact with, and willingly learn from, knowledgeable members of their students’ cultural groups. This can perhaps best become a reality if teacher education programs include diverse parents, community members, and faculty among those who prepare future teachers, and take seriously the need to develop in those teachers the humility required for learning from the surrounding context when entering a culturally different setting.” [p.56]
  
  “learning to see rather than merely look, to feel rather than touch, to hear rather than listen: to learn, in short about the world by being still and opening myself to experiencing it.” [p.92]
  
• 
  Amy

  I really wanted to love this book; but sadly I could not. It was very dry, very academic, and felt a lot of the time like she was tooting her own horn. I think her ideas are important, and need to be shared, but it was hard for me to get through. A very large portion of the book was devoted to teacher education programs and how they need to change. That is probably absolutely the case, but doesn’t do me a lot of good at this point. I wanted much more info about how to better reach and teach my students that don’t look like me, and sadly that information was lacking.
• 
  Donna Davis

  I first ran across this wonderful research when I was working on my Master of Arts degree (I read an earlier edition). I was examining stereotypes regarding teachers' expectations and the Model Minority, based on the 1960's coverage in national US magazines proclaiming first-wave immigrants--i.e., Japanese- and Chinese- second and third generation Americans--to be people who had pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps without government aid. (The articles, published when the Civil Rights movement was at a fevered pitch, was a back-handed compliment, because it inferred that African-Americans who were looking for affirmative action programs ought to do whatever it was that the Asian folks had done, and do it without government programs to help them do it).
  
  Delpit does a great job of breaking apart stereotypes. My favorite anecdote she relays is one in which an Asian child, a quiet little girl in a Montessori-type program, stands off to the side, away from the social chaos created by children who were sometimes off-task, and the teacher tells Delpit that this child is her "best student". Delpit moves back behind the child and observes her. The child has a variety of materials that she is supposed to sort to match the numbers on cards. Carefully, she pulls out her blocks, sticks, whatever, and sorts them each onto the cards.
  
  And almost all of the materials she sorts fail to match the numbers on the cards, but no one else sees that.
  
  Teachers tend to value studious behavior, and students who are not successful academically but also not noisy attention-magnets sometimes fall between the educational cracks.
• 
  Jenny GB

  This is a good book for all educators to read, regardless of race. It really was an education to see the teaching styles and cultural styles of interaction that occur in different groups of people. While I resented that she claims that all white teachers don't really teach, but just stand there and expect students do the work I could get over that to learn from how other teachers work with minorities with directness and clear discipline. I know that showing emotion in the classroom and having very clear discipline are difficult things for me to use, but I should consider that when I am teaching in a majority minority student school. She says many things that are in common with all teachers in all places such as our desire to help children and form personal connections with them. As in her more recent book, she really hammers on the point that students must be taught skills, but that they should have a context in which to use the skills and the skills should be useful ones. That is a shift that I am currently seeing in education. There is a desire for more problem solving and critical thinking to occur in the classrooms. I did not find Delpit's book racist or an attack on my race or culture. She seems to sincerely want changes made so that everyone is better educated, included, and understood. I wonder if I really have been less than honest when I claim that teaching is starting to make me colorblind, but this book and others help push me to continue to try to become a better teacher for my students.
• 
  Kristin

  What does it mean to be a culturally competent teacher? How do issues of power in society show up in schools? In a collection of academic articles, Lisa Delpit explores how issues such as asserting authority, what makes a good teacher, appropriate language, and the importance of human connection and context vary across cultures. She advocates for teachers teaching ‘standard English’ and the unspoken rules of the dominant culture while encouraging students to think critically about power dynamics in society. She emphasizes how everyone should realize how our culture subconsciously influences how we see the world and the importance of white people listening to students and parents of color instead of assuming they know what is best for everyone. Finally, she suggests reforming teacher education to include students’ personal experience in classrooms, examples of schools where low-income students and students of color have succeeded instead of focusing on research linking achievement to income, and the historical accomplishments of people of color. As a white educator working with predominantly students of color, I need to learn and think more about these issues. I’m glad I read this book and I learned a lot, even if I’m not as motivated to read dense academic writing and it took me multiple summers to finish it ;-) I would be interested to know if Dr. Delpit thinks anything has changed in the 15 years since she wrote this book.
• 
  Kb

  This book isn't so much an indictment of teachers and their practices as teacher education programs. This was published before The Skin that we Speak, so having read these two books in reverse order, it appears as if Delpit's ideas are becoming less refined, which of course isn't the case. In twenty years, I'm not sure if teaching programs are all that different from what Delpit describes in this book. One of her biggest critiques is the deficit mentality that is developed by increasingly White students in teacher educating programs. We are bombarded with information about underperformance of poor minorities and their lack of cultural capital to the point where it is so internalized that when we enter the classroom, we teach less because our expectations have been lowered so much. The irony of it all is that we should be doing the opposite because these students need more from schools than anyone.
  One major question I have for Delpit regarding both this and Skin that we Speak is how to approach older students. Most, if not all, of her examples come from the grade school level, which is arguably a more formative period as far as developing academic expectations and habits. At the secondary level, after years of practice at failure or close to it, what can one do to right the ship?
• 
  Amy

  This book would be pretty dry for most people since it is a grad school book that one of the teachers I work with lent me. The main point of the book is that different cultures have different linguistic styles that often create a barrier between teachers and students, especially since the amount of "minority" children in city schools are growing while the amount of "minority" teachers is shrinking.
  
  The other main point is that minority children should learn how to read and write academically, or basically "white." While many well-intentioned liberal white teachers fear being "oppressive" or hindering a student's voice, what they don't realize is that they are preventing students from acquiring the skills they need to make it in the "white world" or to essentially "play the game." A successful teacher would be able to give affirmation to any given culture and its practices while simultaneously equipping students with appropriate skills to function in a larger discourse than just their home community or village.
  
  While this book practically hits you over the head with these philosophies, and can be a little heavy-handed at times, I still appreciated the insight that it offers into the realm of multicultural education.
• 
  Doug Crook

  I read this as part of a group and I was surprised by how many of my peers really didn't like this book. Personally, I found it to be a fantastic approach to a hard to discuss topic. It really confronted a lot of my viewpoints in a healthy way and made me think about how I would approach certain scenarios differently, especially in regards to the classroom environment. By far my favorite part of the book was how it used disparate articles to show that a classroom in Alaska can feel the same to students as a classroom in Papua New Guinea if the students in either one feel like there's no point in being there. If the only prospect of an education is to be the best fish-farmer in the area then both scenarios become equally trivial. Perspectives like this are what made me really enjoy the book.
  
  The only complaint, which was shared by many in the class, is that the collection of articles offers a vast amount of insight into the problems but has almost no solutions. Quite a bit of inference needs to occur to implement any of this in the classroom but it is also a commentary on the idea that there is never going to be a one-size-fits-all approach to any of these issues.
• 
  Kathleen

  There is really not much to say for this book: it is simply one of the most interesting and useful books I read as a teacher, and I recommend it to everyone who is considering becoming an educator. Lisa Delpit doesn't shy away from plainly stating the issues that face students of all ages. People who grow up in different communities have different expectations and ideas about getting and giving respect. In order for a student to succeed, she or he needs to be able conversant in the language that is used by the dominant culture (if that's who is influencing the school). There's nothing wrong with helping students consciously acquire this knowledge; there's nothing wrong with teachers from the dominant culture admitting that they come from a place of privilege; there's nothing wrong with all of us meeting on common ground and hashing out a way we can all understand each other and get on with the work of building a stronger community.
• 
  Merin

  I honestly think this book should be required reading in all college teacher prep programs, but also for any new teachers (regardless of race) who have secured positions teaching in predominantly minority districts. I've had 10 years of teaching experience (and 5 years of other education-based service) to give me a good foundation of what's required nowadays to teach in a culturally responsive, relevant way, but this book still had some useful information for me, and some quotes that made me sit up and take notice. It was a good reminder to view each student as a whole person, and to take in and appreciate their race and home life. Only by seeing the whole child can we truly educate them and make them feel welcome and like they belong, which is something sorely lacking in the world today. It breaks my heart that she wrote this back in the mid-1990s, and now, nearly 30 years later, very little has changed.
• 
  Liz Murray

  An incredible book. A must-read for any teacher anywhere. Lisa Delpit draws on personal experience to put forward her ideas regarding culturally responsive pedagogy. I didn't find anything she said controversial, simply humanistic. Neither did I find her preachy. Her comments stand on their own. Lisa Delpit confirmed many things that I intuitively felt. As a white teacher I was struck by her comments regarding white teachers feeling they needed to hold back in order to be culturally sensitive. Educators need to be aware of hegemonic practice in order for students (and teachers) to effectively question and change the status quo. I'm sure I'll be using this book as an educational tool, along with works by Freire and hooks as long as I'm teaching.
• 
  Mark

  This book was quite a mixed bag, with the author attempting to rebel against the failings of progressivistic pedagogy while at the same time remaining skeptical of traditional pedagogy. She noticed that facets of traditional pedagogy helped poor and POC students, but wasn't willing to go full hog, instead preferring a dialectical synthesis. I agreed with quite a few things in her intro and conclusion, but there were many points in the middle where her own dogmatism showed through (despite complaining about it in others). To clarify, I don't mind dogmatism, I never claim that I'm not dogmatic, I just wish others would admit that they're dogmatic as well (one can even be dogmatic in one's anti-dogmatism).
  
  A couple of things which I agreed strongly with in Delpit's intro were her preference of the qualitative over the quantitative (education as values and virtues instead of just test scores), as well as her echoing of Aristotle, Augustine, et al of saying that the point of education is to "help your students become human".
  
  I quickly saw despite her posturing towards being a freethinker, she held many of the leftist dogmas in vogue today. I pondered these as she referenced them, realizing that:
  
  1) One cannot bemoan [negative] stereotyping [of black males] and then turn around and propagate more stereotyping [of educators, of systems, of institutions, etc.]. It seems that only positive stereotypes of "powerless" groups is acceptable and the reverse is true (negative stereotypes of "powerful" groups like those I fall into).
  
  2) The Antiracist dogma of systemic ____-ism is a conspiracy theory. I'm not saying that it's necessarily false, but that sometimes the literature on the subject shares the diction of the most detached conspiracy theorists.
  
  This tension between repudiating what she sees as dogma, then falling into her own is evident throughout (and probably throughout my own writing too, to be fair). For example, she argues to "see through the haze of our own lenses" but then turns around and subscribes entirely to foucaultian "power" games. The problem with the latter is that who has power is not the issue; the issue is rather how the power is used. If you give power equally to all, that's possibly a greater injustice, since that will increase the number and the proportion of people who are unworthy of power who can also wield that power. Rather, we need to ensure that no matter who wields power, they are moral enough to wield it justly. There's the rub, Hamlet. But getting back on topic, she does write elegantly on the topic of worldviews:
  
  "Learning to interpret across cultures demands reflecting on our own experiences, analyzing our own culture, examining and comparing varying perspectives. We must consciously and voluntarily make our cultural lenses apparent. Engaging in the hard work of seeing the world as others see it must be a fundamental goal."
  
  At other points she complains about categorical necessities such as "when one 'we' gets to determine standards for all 'we's, then some 'we's are in trouble". I do not actually understand what she wants to do to escape this, since no matter what, some 'we' will have to determine standards, and the standards will necessarily reflect upon that 'we'. The real question is how wide a net do we want to cast on both the 'we' and the resultant standards. In other words, as she discusses later, do we want to focus on "teaching" kids what they already know (this is the pandering many progressives do to POC students, but Delpit and others, including most of the POC teachers in her experience, are against this route since it's redundant and doesn't prepare them for the wider "white" world).
  
  "I have met many radical or progressive teachers of literacy who attempt to resolve the problem of students who choose to 'not learn' by essentially deciding to 'not teach'. They appear to believe that, to remain true to their ideology, their role must be to empower and politicize their most disenfranchised students by refusing to teach what G calls the 'the superficial features' (grammar, form, style, and so forth) of dominant discourses, believing themselves to be contributing to their students liberation by de-emphasizing dominant discourses. They instead seek to develop literacy solely within the language and style of the students' home discourse"
  
  Some poor and POC students don't respond to the progressivist "liberatory" pedagogy, and the teachers then get mad at them (like communists getting mad at proles for complaining when things get worse under communism). White progressives probably take this route an effort to appear "inclusive" and "understanding" (aiming to highlight "the fluency that kids already possess", but it's self-evident that this is pointless; if they already have this, then why waste time focusing on it? teach them something they don't already know!!!). The problem is that early on in her teaching career, she starts falling back into the conspiratorial side of her dogma once she notices Black students benefiting from more traditional grammar-centric approaches: "could i have been a pawn somehow in some kind of perverse plot against Black success?"
  
  The problem I have with this and most other anti-racist-influenced work is that it forgets that there's a world outside of the US, and standard English is not an American phenomenon, it's an international phenomenon, and it's not exclusively white. Do you really claim that the millions if not billions of European, Asian, African, and South Americans who learn English as a second language should also have to learn ebonics merely to stroke your political ego? Really? That's one of the most privileged things I've ever heard. Blacks often complain that whites are appropriating their language and culture, but in reality they (Blacks) have nearly monopolized the linguistic and musical culture of America, and they set the trends in these areas. To ask the rest of the world to abandon standard English, or worse, now learn two dialects of English (to prevent being called a racist) is a bit too much.
  
  The author was surprised at many points by the many disparate approaches to the same end goal (helping POC and poor students), and was especially annoyed by how progressive white teachers are so headstrong, they think they know better than everyone else, including POC (insert "Ironic, isn't it" Palpatine meme). On a serious note, the author is noting something important, namely that many times we'll have the same end goals as others, even our "sworn enemies", yet we'll have such vastly different ways we want to achieve the same thing. How can we diffuse this tension? By "identifying and giving voice to alternative worldviews". I AGREE! But as long as that doesn't become purely "alternative" worldviews (i.e. excluding tradition and and anything more rightwing than Stalin).
  
  Part of the tension between her and her compatriots is that she disparages statistics and instead prefers pure anecdote (claims POC are wary of research, of course, without quoting any literature; instead, she points to research which calls minorities "inferior, culturally deprived, and verbally deficient"). She unfortunately dips into conspiratorial thinking, wondering if white liberals set up their pedagogy to prevent the poor and POC from getting jobs (which... well... I just don't know where to start; I get that she's frustrated, but this dogmatic assertion that you and your group can do no wrong, and it must be other people's faults is really tiring; alternative book title: Other People's Faults).
  
  The teacher elaborates on the correct way to use the knowledge that students bring to the table; as opposed to the "white progressive" mentality, which just leaves black kids alone and doesn't teach them anything, she prefers utilizing that pre-knowledge to facilitate further learning: "The teacher cannot be the only expert in the classroom. To deny students their own expert knowledge is to disempower them." The example she gives is a bit cliche, but it does its job (using songs as an example of poetry to analyze and show off expertise, also to get students excited about poetry and move into Shakespeare et al.).
  
  Echoing Zizek, she argues that the "teacher as friend" schtick doesn't work for blacks, they expect strong authority and explicit directions, instead of the indirect, confrontation-averse tiptoeing of most liberals. She also claimed that "White teachers" are cerebral and by the books, whereas minorities are dynamic, improvisational, and make real-world applications. Once again, these are generalizations from anecdotal experience, and I'm not sure if it's fair to make such generalizations, or if we should view all of these differences as mere differences, never assigning any value to them (other than negative values to "white" or "western" or "masculine" or "linear" methods).
  
  At one point, the author denies both the faculty who said that someone shouldn't have even been let into the program, as well as the lefties unable to make value judgements (don't mark off just because they're different!):
  
  > To deny her entry because of "upholding standards" is to "blame the victim for the crime"
  > The reason why she didn't do well was "poor teaching at best, institutional racism at worst" (no agency or culpability whatsoever)
  
  She still keeps certain notions like the invincibility of the victim and a general disdain for those "YT" values, and thus she comes up with a different synthesis than I would. She however does make some excellent points. One such is that future teachers need to pay attention to what they weren't taught in school, and make sure to include that when they become a teacher (which is precisely what I want to do with the three worldviews [and other optional categories]).
  
  The author concludes that the skills/process debate is a false dichotomy (I'd agree, but for different reasons), that it's an illusion created by academics who feel the need to create categories for easier analysis. It's philosophically impossible to totally dispense with categories, but they should always be used as helpful signposts and starting places, never end-all be-alls. This nuance is what leftists like her rarely ever mention, and that disappoints me.
  
  In an anti-modernist (socratic, even) move, she questions if literacy is always good (it sometimes destroys a people's knowledge of themselves, namely oral cultures). She tends to treat POC (native americans, blacks) as if they're still oral cultures, and that because of that they place the value of context above decontextualized text, but I feel this is dangerous as it could cause people (i.e. white supremacists and racists) to doubt whether those same people can even abstract.
  
  She praises some Native American group who tests their children by seeing if they'll "disregard the words of another, even the words of a knowledgeable and trusted grandfather, if the information presented conflicted with his own perceptions", which is a recipe for disobedient children, not necessarily truth-seeking children. They could just end up contrarian annoyances who constantly argue with their parents. This is putting too large of an onus on children to determine truth, too much trust in children's unfounded knowledge and ignorant perception. I really disagree with this, but perhaps that's just the difference between "my culture" and "their culture".... or maybe that trust of authority is just premodern and she's only praising the rebellious kids because they're more or less postmodern, like her.
  
  Ultimately, the conclusion she draws from this is something I support (within reason), i.e. providing students with different ways to prove their knowledge (doing or explaining). I disagree that there's any innate fairness in standards per se, as she and other lefties are tempted to relativize, but I agree that they can and should be amended and made dynamic so that kids can prove said knowledge in ways which they excel at. In a related turn, she also rightfully points out how pathos is often denigrated in contemporary education and scholarship, and this hurts those kids who use that heavily in their explication.
  
  I really loved the outro, it sums up my views on the whole topic: "In order to teach you, I must know you. I pray for all of us the strength to teach our children what they must learn, and the humility and wisdom to learn from them, so that we might better teach."
  
  I am less interested in a one-size-fits-all pedagogy (like liberation pedagogy) and rather believe that all students and teachers have blind spots. Our job is to help them become aware of those blind spots, and to learn what our own blind spots are, what our unspoken assumptions are, because perhaps those are where the real conflict stems from.
• 
  Charlie Moynahan

  Read as an assignment for my school district's response to figuring out how to nudge a little closure to equity. I jump at the chance to read, and any time someone hands me a free book, I smile - if it's a book that I can possibly learn from, I hug them (or virtually fist bump them, thanks 2020).
  
  This book... didn't disappoint, and I'm eager to jump into the dialogue with my colleagues at my school district. Comprised mostly of speeches or articles that Ms. Delpit has delivered/written previously (with extrapolations prior to each collection, for context to us that were not in attendance nor receiving the original publications) and gathered around a central theme that primarily focused on the lack of "white, liberal" educator's understanding of how to appropriately teach (again, primarily) black and Native students. (Only twice are there mentions of any other race, those two mentions being Latino, coming at the very end of the book). Ms. Delpit posits that the teaching of writing is inherently biased towards racism, since a process approach ("Don't worry about the spelling, honey, just get your AWESOME ideas down!") doesn't set up the aforementioned students of color for success past the primary grades. Ms. Delpit argues that the reason being, white students would head home to families that would have the capacity to teach their children the "skills-based" approach to writing (say, that there.shouldn't. be .periods. through.out this.sentence).
  
  Another metric Ms. Delpit uses to cast teaching as biased is in the varied language uses across the United States, and how the dialects and emphases used in these languages (and the teachers' inability to understand and properly manage the development of these styles of language) potentially sets up the case for an improper amount of time being spent on correcting language versus teaching content. She analyzes one transcript where a teacher is working with a second grader (I believe) that was doing an oral reading summary. The students says "bruvver" (brother), to which the teacher hops in to correct the spelling and pronunciation of this word. Ms. Delpit explains that this is harmful to the student, since the task was about reading comprehension (not language development), and the time the teacher spent correcting this student's incorrect pronunciation and spelling of this word (even though the usage and comprehension using the word was correct) took away from time that could've been spent developing the student's love for reading.
  
  For some reason, those two vignettes sit oddly in my mind, being one of those white educators that is being referenced in the text (and I teach, proudly, primarily students of color). I don't see the propagation of idea generation inherently biased, nor do I believe that students should not be honored in their culture inside the school system - wherever they come from, and however they arrive. Our (educators) job, I believe, is to cultivate and inspire each student to their fullest potential, and I found myself tilting my head often when reading this work. Though, as I stated originally, I cherished the opportunity to learn - and will have continued opportunities to learn as it relates to this book.
• 
  Sarah Land

  Wow, I can’t say enough good things about this book! The first section, Controversies Revisited, was a little challenging for me to get through as a reader. But every section after that and each article after that were brimming with such hope! The margins of this book for me are filled with notes on how I’ve seen this in my experience, questions/challenges for myself, and teaching strategies/activities that came to mind as I was reading. This will be a book I revisit through the years and should be required reading for teachers! It’s already positively impacted my pedagogy!
• 
  Connor Oswald

  Fantastic book. I wish I had read it earlier in my teaching career.