What I'm Reading
Multicultural Education
In this book, Takaki provides an overview of American history, highlighting the contributions and stories of groups typically underrepresented in history books, including Native Americans, Asian Americans, Mexican-Americans, Muslim Americans. The book does not shy away from confronting and describing the harsh realities of oppression, and sheds light on the origins of several systems of oppression in the United States. Although the book stops short of the present day, I found the book illuminating, and could imagine using specific chapters or excerpts with high school students.
As the title indicates, this short book examines how creating representations of those perceived to be “other” and having the power to disseminate those representations can be (and have been) used as a tool for oppression. The book explores how peoples colonized by “the West” were represented, by whom, and to what effect during pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods.
Marriam has brought together a collection of chapters, each one written by a different author/authors and focused on a different non-Western conception of learning and knowledge. I found this book to be personally and professionally illuminating, and it pushed me to think more reflectively and critically about my own experiences as a student and practice as an educator.
Teaching Tolerance is a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. This website is a treasure trove of free resources that include news and research, reading lists, webinars, self-reflection tools, and practical lesson plans and strategies.
This two-part blog on the Education Week website explores the question: what does culturally sustaining pedagogy look like in the classroom? The blog includes audio of an interview with Django Paris and comments from several other teacher-scholars.
College Access
Here, the Civil Rights Project of UCLA has collected recent research related to college access. Abstracts, summaries, as well as full reports are included.
Michigan College Access Network has collected a short but interesting list of research and policy briefs related to college access.
Multicultural Literature
This book is a collection of ten short pieces from different authors addressing, as the title suggests, living “between cultures”. The short pieces are accessible and great to use in the classroom, potentially with middle school students or high school students.
Words without Borders is an online magazine featuring international literature. The website includes articles and pieces of writing from the magazine, as well as book recommendations and book reviews.
My Bookshelf
Below is a sampling of some other works of literature that I love. I have read these texts for personal enjoyment and also have incorporated them into my work with students.
All images courtesy of goodreads.com