“The authors offer valuable insights into providing a diverse high school English language arts curriculum, building relationships with students, working with colleagues, and other critical aspects that impact teaching. Their book also introduces the extensive literature on culturally responsive teaching strategies. They conclude with a chapter reflecting on what teaching has taught them. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and practitioners.”
—CHOICE
“Embracing Diversity: Teachers’ Everyday Practices in Secondary English Language Arts Classrooms is a must-read for all teacher education programs and secondary language arts teachers committed to creating and implementing inclusive curriculum and instruction, particularly in this divisive era. The authors, with their combined 75 years of experience as educators, have written a refreshingly accessible and critically important guide to designing student-centered, culturally sustaining, and critically reflective literature classrooms. Though this book imagines ELA teachers as its intended audience, all educators will benefit from learning more about how to center diversity by meaningfully considering and incorporating strategies for teacher self-examination, navigating (dis)comfort zones in the classroom, and responding to shifting educational landscapes.”
—Keisha L. Green, associate professor, University of Massachusetts
“In this engaging book, authors Sarah Bickens, Frances Bittman, and David J. Connor offer their reflections as white teachers on addressing the increasing diversity among their students. They also provide extensive resources for building relations with students and colleagues, centering diversity through culturally responsive instruction, taking risks, attending to discomforts, and reflecting on instruction.”
—Richard Beach, professor emeritus of literacy education, University of Minnesota
“Written by teachers, for teachers, Embracing Diversity explores the personal, professional, and political complexities of teaching English language arts today. Grounded in theories of social justice, the authors offer practical classroom strategies and critical personal reflections that will inspire and empower teachers to develop an English language arts pedagogy that, first and foremost, centers students’ diverse identities and experiences.”
—Amanda Haertling Thein, dean of the Graduate College and professor, University of Iowa
