Promoting Racial Literacy in Schools

Promoting Racial Literacy in Schools uncovers how racial stress undermines student achievement and provides educators and social service support staff with workable strategies to improve their racial literacy skills.

Based on extensive research, this provocative volume explores how schools are places where racial conflicts often remain hidden at the expense of a healthy school climate and the well-being of students of color.

Most schools fail to act on racial microaggressions because the stress of negotiating such conflicts is extremely high due to fears of incompetence, public exposure, and accusation. Instead of facing these conflicts head on, schools perpetuate a set of avoidance or coping strategies. The author of this much-needed book uncovers how racial stress undermines student achievement. Students, educators, and social service support staff will find workable strategies to improve their racial literacy skills to read, recast, and resolve racially stressful encounters when they happen.

Book Features:

• A model that applies culturally relevant behavioral stress management strategies to problem solve racial stress in schools.
• Examples demonstrating workable solutions relevant within predominantly White schools for students, parents, teachers, and administrators.
• Measurable outcomes and strategies for developing racial literacy skills that can be integrated into the K–12 curriculum and teacher professional development.
• Teaching and leadership skills that will create a more tolerant and supportive school environment for all students.

Howard C. Stevenson is a clinical and consulting psychologist and the Constance E. Clayton Professor of Urban Education and Professor of Africana Studies, and former chair of the Applied Psychology and Human Development Division in the Graduate School of Education, both at the University of Pennsylvania.

“Once more, Howard Stevenson has provided a blueprint of critical importance to policymakers, practitioners, teachers, and parents!”
—Margaret Beale Spencer, University of Chicago