February is Black History Month. In support of Black students, teachers, and communities, the books on this reading list explore educational justice, anti-racist pedagogy, family-school partnerships, pro-Blackness in education, and more.
Coming March 2024
Pro-Blackness in Early Childhood Education
Diversifying Curriculum and Pedagogy in K–3 Classrooms
Gloria Swindler Boutte, Jarvais J. Jackson, Saudah N. Collins, Janice R. Baines, Anthony Broughton, and George Lee Johnson Jr.
Engage in Pro-Black teaching with young children as an antidote to endemic anti-Black racism in schools and society. This easy-to-understand book provides evidence-based curriculum examples, pedagogies, and resources; demonstrates how teachers can achieve Pro-Black teaching while also addressing curricular standards; and explains the benefit of Pro-Black teaching for all children.
Coming May 2024
Race and Media Literacy, Explained (or Why Does the Black Guy Die First?)
Frederick W. Gooding Jr.
Drawing on cinema and popular media, Gooding offers guidance for honing media literacy skills with middle, high school, and undergraduate college students. Twelve concise racial rubrics are provided to help readers discern the disparate treatment of non-White characters onscreen, including an analysis of the top ten highest-grossing films of all time.
Coming June 2024
Educating African Immigrant Youth
Schooling and Civic Engagement in K–12 Schools
Edited By: Vaughn W. M. Watson, Michelle G. Knight-Manuel, and Patriann Smith
This volume presents key research on how to develop and enact teaching methodologies and research approaches that support Black African immigrant and refugee students. Disciplinary perspectives include literacy and language, social studies, civics, mathematics, and higher education; university and community partnerships; teacher education; global and comparative education; and after-school initiatives.
A Brighter Choice
Building a Just School in an Unequal City
Clara Hemphill
Follow a group of mostly Black parents in gentrifying Brooklyn as they learn to share their public elementary school with White newcomers. Hurt feelings and misunderstandings push parents apart, but they work to build mutual trust and interracial solidarity to fight for better schools for all.
The Hip-Hop Mindset
Success Strategies for Educators and Other Professionals
Toby S. Jenkins
Moving beyond pedagogy and teaching strategies, this book presents The Hip Hop Mindset Framework as a perspective that gives us permission to be our full authentic selves. Jenkins pushes us to consider culture as a professional practice and to embrace the insights from hip-hop culture to inform how we lead and work professionally.
Black Immigrant Literacies
Intersections of Race, Language, and Culture in the Classroom
Patriann Smith
Learn how to center, affirm, and develop Black immigrant literacies. This book presents a framework with five mechanisms for doing this work: the struggle for justice, the myth of the model minority, transraciolinguistics, the local-global, and holistic literacies. The text includes lesson plans, instructional modules, and templates that range in their focus from K–12 to college.
Anti-Blackness at School
Creating Affirming Educational Spaces for African American Students
Joi Spencer and Kerri Ullucci
Embedded in everyday realities, the authors outline the many ways anti-Blackness shows up in schools. Drawing on more than 44 years of equity work, they provide concrete, doable, and meaningful ways in which teachers and administrators can create Black-affirming spaces. This is a must-read for everyone working with Black children and youth.
Critical Race Theory in Education
A Scholar’s Journey
Gloria Ladson-Billings
This important volume brings together key writings from one of the most influential education scholars of our time. This one-of-a-kind collection of Gloria Ladson-Billings’ seminal essays on critical race theory is for everyone interested in how inequality operates in our society and how race affects educational outcomes.
Talking College
Making Space for Black Language Practices in Higher Education
Anne H. Charity Hudley, Christine Mallinson, and Mary Bucholtz
Talking College shows that language is fundamental to Black and African American culture and that linguistic justice is crucial to advancing racial justice. The text presents a model of how Black students navigate the linguistic expectations of college, with key insights to help faculty and staff create the educational community that Black students deserve.
Teaching Black Boys in the Elementary Grades
Advanced Disciplinary Reading and Writing to Secure Their Futures
Alfred W. Tatum
Tatum provides a strong conceptual frame, with instructional and curricular practices, designed to move Black boys from across the economic spectrum toward advanced literacy that aligns with the Black intellectual tradition. This resource includes texts from a broad range of potential professions, with sample lessons for use across the academic disciplines.
Radical Care
Leading for Justice in Urban Schools
Rosa L. Rivera-McCutchen
This book argues that care, as typically described, is not sufficient for leading schools, particularly those serving Black and Latinx children. Instead, leaders need to embrace radical care. Drawing from 20 years of researching and working in New York City public schools, the author outlines the components of radical care and shares vignettes to demonstrate strategies.
Strong Black Girls
Reclaiming Schools in Their Own Image
Danielle Apugo, Lynnette Mawhinney, and Afiya Mbilishaka
Strong Black Girls lays bare the harm Black women and girls are expected to overcome in order to receive an education in America. Readers will see resistance and resilience emerge through the central themes that shape these coming-of-age narratives. Essential reading for everyone teaching, mentoring, programming, and policymaking for Black females in all public institutions.
about Centering Possibility in Black Education
Chezare A. Warren
Improving education outcomes for Black students begins with resisting racist characterizations of blackness. Inspired by the “freedom dreaming” of activists in the Black radical tradition, this book features original images, poems, and lyrics by Black artists to breathe new life into the concept of possibility and its relevance to remaking Black children’s experience of school.
The Brilliance of Black Boys
Cultivating School Success in the Early Grades
Brian L. Wright
This accessible book provides teachers (pre-K–3rd grade) with classroom strategies to help young Black boys achieve their highest potential, along with other resources for supporting their social-emotional development, such as a reading list of authentic multicultural children’s books with Black boys as protagonists.
Jim Crow Campus
Higher Education and the Struggle for a New Southern Social Order
Joy Ann Williamson-Lott
This well-researched volume explores how the Black freedom struggle and the anti–Vietnam War movement dovetailed with faculty and student activism in the South to undermine the traditional role of higher education and bring about social change. It offers a deep understanding of the vital importance of independent institutions during times of national crisis.
Photo by Mary Taylor