Suchergebnisse

"Wood's unflinching honesty on teaching is a beacon in a world rife with misinformation, capitalist exploitation, and a perpetual commitment to white supremacy. By lifting up the role of the citizen teacher, his challenge is clear: we cannot run from the problems of the world and hide in our classrooms. Instead, we must organize and build with those who know their oppression and work to abolish it permanently." David Stovall, Professor, Black Studies and Criminology, Law, and Justice, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA "This is an exciting book that points the way forward for educators and all who care about transforming schools towards democracy, justice, and liberation. With a compelling vision, powerful stories, and practical guidance, it shows why and how teachers can become community organizers, creating equitable schools in deep partnership with families, students, and communities. Get this book, read it, and use it!" Mark R. Warren, Professor, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA, and author of Willful Defiance: The Movement to Dismantle the School-to-Prison Pipeline This book explores how citizen teachers can expand our capacities to generate more equitable and just spaces with families by working as community organizers. Paying particular attention to community organizing work in one elementary school, the book weaves stories and examples with theoretical understandings to support emerging citizen teachers in creating more democratic spaces. Each chapter provides key community organizing concepts and skills and offers lessons learned to identify what worked and what did not. By building solidarity with families, citizen teachers can effectively activate more powerful practices grounded in the lives of students, their families, and their communities while articulating a broader response to the conditions impacting educators. Gerald K. Wood is Associate Professor of Educational Foundations in the Department of Educational Leadership at Northern Arizona University, USA. His work focuses broadly on the intersections of critical geographies and community organizing. He has worked with Industrial Areas Foundations affiliates and has been involved in broad-based organizing and youth organizing work.

For this study, the authors look specifically at cultural maps that the youth created in Student Involvement Day (SID), a program committed to youth empowerment. In these maps, youth identified spaces in their schools and communities that are open and inclusive of their cultures or spaces where their cultures are excluded. Drawing on critical geographies of/in education and Freirian notions of praxis, this paper considers the nature of school spaces through school curriculum and offers ways to render these contested spaces more democratic. Using these cultural maps, students work to individually identify spaces that allow them to engage meaningfully and collectively build key alliances and organize for more equitable and inclusive spaces in their schools and communities.