Synopses & Reviews
Becoming (Other)Wise brings home the meaning of multicultural literature education. It examines how teachers and their students can learn to respond to literature about cultural perspectives other than their own. This book brims with instructional strategies and curriculum suggestions for becoming wiser about others and hence ourselves. The authors detail culturally responsive approaches to significant titles, such as
Song of Solomon and
Things Fall Apart, among others. We listen to transcribed student discussions, read student writing, absorb student and teacher reflections on such matters as race, ethnicity, and gender, for example. While all are approached through the metaphorical world of literature, all are rooted in the reality of increasingly diverse classrooms and communities.
Ruth Vinz (author of the award-winning Composing a Teaching Life) and four contributing teacher-authors move us quickly past the abstractness we associate with multicultural literature pedagogy. They place us in classroom settings, where real kids come to embrace the worlds and lives of others through literary texts. An important, timely work for all secondary English teachers.
Synopsis
This book examines how teachers and their students can learn to respond to literature about cultural perspectives other than their own.
About the Author
Erick Gordon teaches at the New York City Lab School.Ruth Vinz is a professor and the Enid and Lester Morse Chair in English Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Before becoming a teacher educator, she taught in secondary schools for more than twenty years. Vinz is the author of several Boynton/Cook titles, including Learning the Landscape: Inquiry-Based Activities for Comprehending and Composing, Recasting the Text: Inquiry-Based Activities for Comprehending and Composing (both coauthored with Fran Claggett and Louann Reid, 1996), Inside Out: Developmental Strategies for Teaching Writing, Second Edition (coauthored with Dan Kirby and Tom Liner, 1988), and Composing a Teaching Life, 1996.Bill Lundgren teaches at the New York City Lab School.Juliette LaMontagne is an instructor in the English Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University. She taught for several years in New York City schools and continues to work with adolescent girls at Art and Design.Greg Hamilton is an Assistant Professor in English Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. With a background in middle school teaching, he continues to teach at Center School in New York City.
Table of Contents
Introduction: "There is no frigate like a book..."
Occupying Spaces: The Mockingbird Monologues
Uneasy Moments Revisited
Exploring Fixed and Fluid Identities
Raising Their Voices
Listening, Learning, and Talking It Through
Teachers as Readers
Starting from Somewhere: Notes from a New Teacher
Unsettling Practices
" ...where you want to get to"
Bibliography