Race, Community, and Urban Schools

In this important book, award-winning author Stuart Greene enters the ongoing conversation about low-income African American families and their role in helping their children flourish. Greene focuses on parents’ self-defined roles within the context of race, urban development, and an economy that has created opportunity for some and displaced others. Moving beyond analysis to action, the author describes a partnering strategy to help educators understand the lived experiences of children and families and to use their funds of knowledge as resources for teaching. This book combines critical race theory, critical geography, first-hand accounts, and research on literacy practices at home to provide a powerful tool that will help teachers and administrators see families in new ways.

Book Features:

• Describes a partnering model that encourages educators to consider the social, cultural, racial, and economic factors that shape parent engagement with schools.
• Identifies important areas of misunderstanding between African American parents and their children’s teachers.
• Incorporates personal narratives of children whose voices are rarely part of research on parent involvement.

Stuart Greene is associate professor of English with a joint appointment in Africana Studies at the University of Notre Dame. His books include the coedited volume with Dawn Abt-Perkins, Making Race Visible: Literacy Research for Racial Understanding, for which he won the National Council of Teachers of English Richard A. Meade Award in 2005.

“Powerful and hopeful. Stuart Greene opens a space for us to think differently about creating democratic family-school partnerships.”
—Pauline Lipman, University of Illinois at Chicago

“Will make a difference in the lives of teachers and administrators.”
—From the Foreword by Patricia A. Edwards, Michigan State University