“In Civic Literacy in Schools and Communities, Charest (Univ. of Redlands) provides a concise guide for changing how teachers approach their classrooms, emphasizing democratic principles. …. An excellent resource for both education students and practitioners.”
—CHOICE
“Charest urges us to imagine a path to teaching and learning that is inseparable from democracy. . . . Education as movement building! Charest offers us frameworks and examples of doing just that. Let’s join the movement.”
—From the Foreword by Kevin K. Kumashiro, former dean, School of Education, University of San Francisco
“I am overjoyed that Brian Charest is brave enough to take a stance on justice-centered teaching as a relational and political act rooted in the principles of organizing. As the streets burn, we have been forced to reckon with the fact that reform is not enough. When those who experience injustice are the primary doers and thinkers in determining what the justice condition will be, we will move further away from schooling and closer to education.”
—David O. Stovall, University of Illinois at Chicago
“Teaching Civic Literacy in Schools takes up the central problem of our country’s failed education system: how to move schooling away from structures that isolate, stigmatize, and disempower students and communities towards structures that prioritize democracy, relationships, and organizing for power. Writing from a human perspective to which every teacher can relate, Brian Charest nails the description of the problem and offers scores of specific examples to show how things can be different. Most importantly, he argues that teachers and teacher educators must learn to use the strategies of organizers—and as organizers, that we need to make our way out of schools and into communities so that we can work with students and families in the re-making of education into something genuinely democratic and just. Charest shows us how.”
—Jay Gillen, teacher and organizer
“Brian Charest is a compassionate iconoclast, a humane destroyer of schools as cloistered sites of individualistic advancement or failure. We must demand better, Charest insists, and in Teaching Civic Literacy in Schools he sets forth a vision of schools and communities as inextricably linked and dedicated to their mutual well-being. Drawing on the strategies of labor organizers and civic activists, Charest reimagines the job of teachers as that of asking questions, listening, building relationships, and acting with others for the common good. Charest is clear-eyed about the systemic racism and shameful economic inequality that divide and diminish us, and yet he offers readers hopeful models of how educators, students, and community members can get into ‘good trouble’ as engaged citizens to create schools that embody the just and democratic society we aspire to be.”
—Todd DeStigter, associate professor, University of Illinois at Chicago
“Today American schools sit directly between trauma and transformation. Racial suffering highlighted by COVID-19 and movements for racial justice have changed the ground underneath our feet. Brian Charest gives us permission to reimagine the role of teachers as we recreate civil society. Charest offers a fresh lens for us to image how teachers can engage students with the civic literacies required to create more humanizing institutions. This book is a must-read for teachers, researchers, and practitioners searching for a fresh and deeply authentic model for transforming teaching.”
—Shawn Ginwright, professor of education & Africana studies, San Francisco State University
“Who are we as educators—as human beings? Where do we come from, and where are we headed? How can we lead our teaching lives in a time of overlapping and intensifying crises—racial, economic, environmental, governmental—so that they don’t make a mockery of our teaching values? Brian Charest addresses these questions with the fierce urgency of now. Civic Literacy in Schools and Communities is a necessary book for this historic moment.”
—Bill Ayers, education activist
“What does it mean to learn, in school? My own kids think (and my observations of their pandemic classes confirm) that much of school is about the digestion of discrete bits of ‘knowledge,’ to be assessed via tests. But what if we think of learning, as Paolo Freire did, as problem-solving, as a way to speak to the very real and present needs of students and communities? Brian Charest helps us see schools as responsive to community needs and best organized in partnership with community-based groups. If you are a teacher or teacher educator looking for a viable progressive way out of the testing and worksheet morass, here are real examples to inspire you and real ideas to help you think of schooling differently.”
—David Schaafsma, University of Illinois at Chicago
