Althier M. Lazar

Activists, Allies, and Racists: Helping Teachers Address Racism through Picture Books.

Teachers often resist discussions about racism in the classroom, yet it is a topic that is frequently addressed in multicultural literature. This study examines teachers in a graduate reading program (N = 58) who used picture books reflecting African American heritage with elementary school children in a summer reading practicum. Prior to teaching children, a subset of these teachers participated in a course that addressed issues of racism, allowing for an investigation of a course effect on teachers’ comfort level with the literature and their addressing of themes that surfaced in the books. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to analyze questionnaires, planning forms, lesson evaluation forms, and transcripts of teachers using the books to test the hypothesis of a course effect and to identify the range of variation in teachers’ ways of using the literature. The teachers in both “course” and “comparison” groups tended to focus on the perspectives, feelings, and traits of the story protagonists when creating discussion questions and after-reading projects for students. Course teachers focused on the activism of Black protagonists significantly more often than comparison teachers did, although participants of both groups did not tend to represent racism as a system of White advantage. These findings suggests that literacy education programs can have an impact on teachers’ ways of using multicultural literature, but to teach in critical and transformative ways, they will need programs that strengthen their understandings of constructs such as structural racism and help them facilitate thoughtful inquiries of this concept when using multicultural literature with children.

Pedagogies of Discomfort: Shifting Preservice Teachers’ Deficit Orientations toward Language and Literacy Resources of Emergent Bilingual Students

Abstract A major challenge in teacher education in the United States is how to address the academic and linguistic needs of the growing numbers of emergent bilingual students. A second challenge is how to prepare predominantly White monolingual preservice teachers with little exposure to speakers of languages other than English to educate culturally and linguistically diverse students. With these two challenges in mind, this study examines how a course on literacy, language, and culture grounded in pedagogies of discomfort shifts preservice teachers’ deficit orientations toward emergent bilingual students’ language and literacy resources. Using Ofelia Garcia’s (2009) definition for emergent bilingualism, this mixed-method study was conducted from 2011 to 2013 with 73 preservice teacher participants enrolled at an urban mid-Atlantic university. Quantitative data consisted of pre and post surveys while qualitative data comprised written responses to open-ended statements, self-analyses, and participant interviews. Findings evidence preservice teachers’ endorsement of monolingualism before coursework; however, pedagogies of discomfort during coursework provoke critical reflection leading to significant shifts in preservice teachers’ dispositions toward teaching language diversity in the classroom with implications for teaching emergent bilingual students.

Teacher Education Programs That Prepare Teachers for Social Equity

This chapter addresses what teacher educators can do to create teachers who understand the sociocultural and sociopolitical realities that impact students in underserved communities and are prepared to teach with an equity orientation. Teacher education programs are challenged to transform candidates’ deficit orientations towards students and families and help candidates see their responsibility to offset educational and societal injustices through their roles as teachers. Since teacher education programs may not address these challenges in comprehensive and uniform ways, teacher educators need to commit to their own professional growth around issues of social equity and build programs that allow teacher candidates to (1) examine issues of privilege, subordination, and the sociopolitical factors shaping school achievement; (2) uncover the knowledge traditions of students, families, and communities; (3) explore models of advocacy and activism; and (4) teach literacy in culturally sustaining, critical, and balanced ways.

What School Leaders and Teacher Mentors Can Do To Support Teachers for Social Equity

The narratives revealed varied levels of support for teacher development across schools and different degrees of teacher autonomy for making instructional decisions. This chapter addresses what school leaders and teacher mentors can do to support teachers’ instructional capacities and help them grow as educators for social justice. School leaders can support teacher growth by prompting teachers’ self-reflection and working to foster teachers’ professional growth. Teacher mentors can model instructional practices, provide in-class coaching, ask teachers questions that prompt self-reflection, and raise teachers’ consciousness about social equity. Professional learning communities and teacher inquiry groups offer additional support for growth. Leslie Reich shares some insights from her own experiences working with school leaders in three different schools and how leaders can best support early career teachers.

Unpacking Teachers’ Narratives: Dimensions of Social Equity Teaching Revealed

The narratives of the five teachers are analyzed in relation to the perspectives on teacher development and social equity teaching presented in chapter “ A Cause Beyond Ourselves”. Teachers’ social-justice leanings and their interest in urban teaching were shaped across a variety of activity settings over time. These orientations were further developed in their teacher-education programs. The narratives provide a window into how teachers then brought these inclinations to their classrooms, revealing their (1) understandings about the sociocultural and sociopolitical factors shaping their students’ lives; (2) enactments of culturally responsive, sustaining, and critical literacy teaching; (3) recognition of students’ diverse language and literacy abilities and efforts to balance literacy skill teaching with holistic approaches; (4) advocacy and activism; and (5) caring with political clarity. The analysis helps to inform an agenda for preparing and supporting teachers in underserved communities.

A Cause Beyond Ourselves

The chapter introduces five early career teachers whose backgrounds and educational experiences draw them to teach in some of the most underserved urban communities in the United States. Among the many challenges of urban education are high rates of attrition among new teachers that limit students’ access to high-quality teaching. This precipitates a need to understand the views and experiences of our most promising new teachers who are oriented toward social equity. Their narratives, which appear in subsequent chapters, reveal their beliefs about teaching, their instructional practices, and their efforts to develop their students’ literacy capacities. Research on cultural responsiveness, social justice, and critical caring can inform an agenda for preparing and supporting early career teachers in urban and under-resourced schools. The chapter addresses these perspectives and provides research that shows how teachers acquire them over time and across activity settings. It also addresses the significance of teacher narrative as a form of inquiry, how teachers were selected for this project, and how their narrative writing evolved.

“Now I Look at All the Kids Differently”: Cracking Teacher Candidates’ Assumptions about School Achievement in Urban Communities

ABSTRACT This mixed-methods study explores the impact of teacher preparation coursework on 141 teacher candidates’ understandings about educational equality, school achievement, and meritocracy. Framed by pedagogies of discomfort, the program included readings, discussions, simulations, films, and direct work with emergent bilingual students. Findings from an analysis of surveys, interviews, and class discussions indicate that the program (1) complicated candidates’ understandings of school achievement and meritocracy in urban, underserved communities and (2) prompted participants to see students and themselves differently. These findings inform new pathways for enhancing candidates’ ability to critically understand school achievement within complex systems of systemic advantage and disadvantage.