For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too

Death at an Early Age

Jonathan Kozol · 242 pages

The story of the year the author spent teaching in a predominantly black school in Boston.

"Multiplication Is for White People": Raising Expectations for Other People’s Children

Lisa Delpit · 234 pages

Readings for Diversity and Social Justice

Maurianne Adams, Carmelita Rosie Castaneda, Heather W. Hackman, Madeline L. Peters, Ximena Zuniga, Warren J. Blumenfeld · 652 pages

Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools

Monique Morris · 277 pages

"Fifteen-year-old Diamond stopped going to school the day she was expelled for lashing out at peers who constantly harassed and teased her for something everyone on the staff had missed: she was being trafficked for sex. After months on the run, she was arrested and sent to a detention center for violating a court order to attend school. Black girls represent 16 percent of female students but almo

The Freedom Writers Diary

Erin Gruwell, Zlata Filipovic, The Freedom Writers · 292 pages

Shocked by the teenage violence she witnessed during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, Erin Gruwell became a teacher at a high school rampant with hostility and racial intolerance. For many of these students--whose ranks included substance abusers, gang members, the homeless, and victims of abuse--Gruwell was the first person to treat them with dignity, to believe in their potential and help t

Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

bell hooks · 208 pages

In Teaching to Transgress bell hooks—writer, teacher, and insurgent black intellectual—writes about a new kind of education, *education as the practice of freedom*. Teaching students to "transgress" against racial, sexual and class boundaries in order to achieve the gift of freedom is, for hooks, the teacher's most important goal.

Lies My Teacher Told Me

James W. Loewen · 414 pages

Since its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has gone on to win an American Book Award, the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship, and to sell over half a million copies in its various editions. What started out as a survey of the twelve leading American history textbooks has ended up being what the San Francisco Chronicle calls "an extremely convincin

Up from Slavery

Booker T. Washington · 192 pages

Booker T. Washington, the most recognized national leader, orator and educator, emerged from slavery in the deep south, to work for the betterment of African Americans in the post Reconstruction period. "Up From Slavery" is an autobiography of Booker T. Washington's life and work, which has been the source of inspiration for all Americans. Washington reveals his inner most thoughts as he transi

White Teacher

Vivian Gussin Paley · 140 pages

Vivian Paley presents a moving personal account of her experiences teaching kindergarten in an integrated school within a predominantly white, middle-class neighborhood. In a new preface, she reflects on the way that even simple terminology can convey unintended meanings and show a speaker's blind spots. She also vividly describes what her readers have taught her over the years about herself as a

The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game

Michael Lewis · 345 pages

Follows one young man from his impoverished childhood with a crack-addicted mother, through his discovery of the sport of football, to his rise to become one of the most successful, highly-paid players in the NFL.

The Water is Wide

Pat Conroy · 260 pages

"A young white teacher goes to an island off the coast of South Carolina to teach a group of functionally illiterate black children. Yamacraw Island is backward and primitive, a world for the most part left untouched by the 20th century....By ignoring the textbooks and concentrating on meaningful situations and dialogue...he begins to make headway. He also, unfortunately arouses the ire of the pow

A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League

Ron Suskind · 390 pages

At Ballou Senior High, a crime-infested school in Washington, D.C., honor students have learned to keep their heads down. Like most inner-city kids, they know that any special attention in a place this dangerous can make you a target of violence. But Cedric Jennings will not swallow his pride, and with unwavering support from his mother, he studies and strives as if his life depends on it--and it

But Some Of Us Are Brave: All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men: Black Women's Studies

Akasha Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, Barbara Smith · 418 pages

Winner of the Outstanding Women of Colour Award, and the Women Educator's Curriculum Material Award. This ground-breaking collection provides a wealth of materials needed to develop course units on black women, from political theory to literary essays on major writers to work on black women's contributions to the blues. Bibliographies and a collection of syllabi provide readers with essential clas

Reading with Patrick: A Teacher, a Student, and a Life-Changing Friendship

Michelle Kuo · 320 pages

Michelle Kuo arrived in the rural town of Helena, Arkansas, as a Teach for America volunteer in 2004, bursting with optimism and drive. But she soon encountered the jarring realities of life in one of the poorest counties in America. In this unforgettable memoir, Michelle shares the story of her complicated but rewarding mentorship of one student, Patrick Browning, and his remarkable literary and

Life Is So Good: One Man's Extraordinary Journey through the 20th Century and How he Learned to Read at Age 98

George Dawson, Richard Glaubman · 280 pages

The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life

Richard J. Herrnstein, Charles Murray · 845 pages

Breaking new ground and old taboos, Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray tell the story of a society in transformation. At the top, a cognitive elite is forming in which the passkey to the best schools and the best jobs is no longer social background but high intelligence. At the bottom, the common denominator of the underclass is increasingly low intelligence rather than racial or social disa

A Chance to Make History: What Works and What Doesn't in Providing an Excellent Education for All

Wendy Kopp · 229 pages

America's failure to educate millions of children is a crisis that strikes at our fundamental ideals and health as a nation. Since 1990, Teach For America has been building a movement to end educational inequity in America. Now its founder, Wendy Kopp, shares the lessons learned from the experiences of more than 25,000 teachers and alumni who have taught and led schools in low-income communities .

Among Schoolchildren

Tracy Kidder · 340 pages

Year-long case study of a fifth-grade Holyoke, Massachusetts, teacher and her class.

We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change

Myles Horton, Paulo Freire · 276 pages

Ain't No Makin' It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood

Jay MacLeod · 319 pages

The author immersed himself in the teenage underworld of Clarendon Heights. The Hallway Hangers, one of the neighborhood cliques, appear as cynical self-destructive hoodlums. The other group, the Brothers, take the American Dream to heart and aspire to middle-class respectability. The twist is that the Hallway Hangers are mostly white; the Brothers are almost all black. Comparing the two groups, M

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Education

John Taylor Gatto · 104 pages

Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses

Richard Arum, Josipa Roksa · 265 pages

A statistical analysis of survey responses, transcript data, and the Collegiate Learning Assessment to determine how well students learn during their first few years of college. The analysis shows almost half the students surveyed show no significant improvement in skills such as critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing. The analysis goes on to consider possible causes for this educatio

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner · 320 pages

*A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything* Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But

Outliers: The Story of Success

Malcolm Gladwell · 320 pages

In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their