Teacher Educators as Critical Storytellers

Breaking away from the historically dominant narrative that White females make the best teachers, this book contends that effective teachers can be both “windows” and “mirrors” for students. Teachers should reflect the student population in racial and cultural terms while also serving as windows for students to see opportunities that lie outside of their immediate circumstances. Employing a critical storytelling framework, respected scholars share the teaching practices of influential teachers that they learned from. Chapter authors are diverse teacher educators from the fields of education, educational psychology, administration, policy, and curriculum and instruction. Each storyteller identifies key concepts and principles that explain why the selected teacher was so memorably effective. This inspirational volume provides a series of templates that help pinpoint the attitudes and behaviors of those teachers who make a positive difference in the lives of their students.

Book Features:

• Highlights contributions from diverse teacher educators, including Asian American, African American, Latinx, and Native American.
• Examines the long-lasting impact that a teacher’s race, ethnicity, and/or indigeneity can have on the lives of their students beyond high school and college.
• Includes analyses drawn from research on identity in teacher education, theory, and research in education, psychology, and human development.
• Contains photographs, images, charts, and diagrams to assist readers.

Antonio L. Ellis is a scholar in residence and the director of the Institute on Education Equity and Justice at the American University School of Education. Nicholas D. Hartlep is the Robert Charles Billings Endowed Chair in Education at Berea College, where he chairs the Department of Education Studies. Gloria Ladson-Billings is professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and president of the National Academy of Education 2018–2021. David O. Stovall is professor of Black Studies and criminology, law, and justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“Through the use of personal stories, the book successfully contributes to a broader, inclusive and culturally sustaining narrative of teaching and education related professions.”

—Educational Renaissance

“Each chapter offers an intimate view of what it feels like to be taught by a teacher who affirms to the student: You belong here….Until the nation achieves its educator workforce diversity goals, how can we ensure that schools are places where all children feel they belong? The teacher stories told here guide the way.”
—From the Forewrod by Leslie T. Fenwick, dean in residence, American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education

“Stressing the important role of equity in education, the authors in this book demonstrate how educators co-construct curriculum and instructional practices that cultivate learning and development. Authors reflect on their own experiences and provide a view into those of others to build knowledge about mirroring and windowing as essential in our fight for social justice. This book strikingly and compellingly weaves together the voices and experiences of a diverse group of authors who dare to write toward and for freedom.”
—H. Richard Milner IV, Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair of Education, Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development

“Storytelling can serve as a powerful means of conveying important ideas. This new book shows us that it can also serve as a means of describing the power of teachers to transcend barriers related to race and class differences to reach and motivate students. For those who teach teachers, and for teachers everywhere, this book will serve as an invaluable resource and a source of inspiration for what can be achieved in the classroom.”
—Pedro A. Noguera, Distinguished Professor and the Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean, USC Rossier School of Education

“Although the evidence was already clear, distributional impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are now bringing into even starker relief the disparities of opportunity that gnaw at the fabric of our society, and reminding us how much teachers and teaching matter to the lives of children. With this volume, a group of distinguished educators and scholars provide a rich panoply of evidence on the importance of racial, ethnic, and gender identity as attributes for effective teaching. Through their inspired and inspiring stories, the authors offer hope and energy to the next generation of teachers. A must-read for policymakers and practitioners working toward fulfillment of the great promise of American education.”
—Michael Feuer, dean, George Washington University; immediate past-president, the National Academy of Education

“I am extremely grateful for the publication of this book, as I cannot imagine my achievements apart from the profound influence of my high school teachers. We know today that high school preparation in many places has become a significant barrier to college access for African American students. It is critically important that every teacher becomes aware of exemplars of effective teachers of Black adolescents.”
—James D. Anderson, dean and the Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Professor of Education, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Contents

Foreword  Leslie T. Fenwick  ix

Effective Teachers as Windows and Mirrors: An Introduction  1
Antonio L. Ellis, Nicholas D. Hartlep, Gloria Ladson-Billings, and David O. Stovall

PART I: AFRICAN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES: TOWARD “DEMOGRAPHIC” AND “DEMOCRATIC” IMPERATIVES

1.  Mr. Linard H. McCloud:  A Dreamkeeper in the American Education Milieu  7
Antonio L. Ellis  

2.  “Perfect Practice Makes Perfect”: Sister Mary Regis, OSP—Tempered Radical and Refined Revolutionary  14
Judy Alston

3.  Undoing My Miseducation: Lessons Learned from Brother Kmt Shockley  27
Ramon B. Goings

4.  Two White Teachers Who Cultivated My Hidden Talents: The Story of An African American Male in Special Education  40
Shawn Anthony Robinson

5.  Married to Education: The Impact of Teacher Expectations on African American Student Success  52
Roslyn Clark Artis

PART II: ASIAN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES: BEYOND BLACKNESS AND WHITENESS

6.  Like Captured Fireflies: Effective Teaching Pedagogy of a White Elementary School Counselor  65
Nicholas D. Hartlep

7.  Finding My Voice: Developing a Critical Writing and APIDA Identity in a Newspaper Course  76
Theodore Chao

PART III: NATIVE AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES: INDIGENEITY IS NOT RACE

8.  “The Moon Will Tell Us When It Will Rain”: Aesthetics of Grandmothers’ Pedagogies  91
Amanda R. Tachine

9.  Reclaiming Our Position as the Most Important Educators of Our Native Children  102
Jameson D. Lopez

10.  Honoring My (Academic) Matriarchs  112
Theresa Stewart-Ambo

PART IV: LATINX PERSPECTIVES: THE LATINIZATION OF EDUCATION

11.  Cultural Affirmations of Giftedness: An Autoethnography of My Experiences with Educational Leadership Faculty at an HBCU  125
Lisa Maria Grillo

12.  “¿No me ves?”: Seen by Two Teachers in a Sea of Blind Educators  145
Aimeé I. Cepeda

Afterword: The Deliberative Practice of Teacher Educators’ Reflections on Culturally Relevant Teachers  155
Dawn G. Williams

About the Editors and the Contributors  159

Index  165