As the population of Latinx students grows in U.S. public schools and our nation seeks to address systemic inequities, racism, and xenophobia, this counternarrative provides inspiration to those wishing to reinvigorate schools and build a more caring and just world. This book documents the innovative practices, successes, and struggles of a full-service community high school serving mostly low-income, Latinx youth in an economically depressed California city. Based on 4 years of qualitative research, the author examines how educators, families, and community members established and sustained a social justice school that immersed youth in authentic cariño—a holistic blend of familial, intellectual, and critical care. By nurturing students’ moral, social, personal, and academic development, the school produced college-bound graduates ready to be agents of change in their own lives and in their communities. This case study synthesizes and extends scholarship on color-conscious, healing-centered educational care and offers rich portrayals of praxis that illuminate how schools can equip marginalized youth to thrive. “Although directed toward Latinx students, this work will benefit all students! Curry has provided us with a masterpiece.” —Gloria Ladson-Billings, professor emerita, University of Wisconsin-Madison “A must-read for teachers, researchers, and practitioners searching for a deeply authentic model for transforming schooling.” —Shawn Ginwright, San Francisco State University

Maintaining that urban teaching and learning is characterized by numerous contradictions, this book proposes that there is a wide range of social, cultural, psychological, and pedagogical knowledge that urban educators must possess in order to engage in effective and transformative practice. It is necessary for teachers in urban schools to be scholar-practitioners, as opposed to bureaucrats who only follow rather than analyze, understand, and create. Ten major sections cover the myriad issues of urban education as it exists today: context of urban education, race and ethnicity, social justice, teaching and pedagogy, power and urban education, language issues, cultural issues of urban schools as seen in the media, research in city schools, aesthetics and the proximity of cultural institutions, and education policy. Sixty one essays written by specialists in teacher education; public policy; sociology; psychology; applied linguistics; forestry; urban studies; school administration; cultural studies; evaluation; and linguistics, provide a blueprint for scholars, teachers, parents, urban politicians, school administrators, policy professionals, and others seeking to understand the situation of urban schools across America today.

Maintaining that there is nothing simple about urban education, this work approaches the study of schooling in cities as a complex universe of the poorest students and schools alongside the wealthiest.

This new edition offers new critical insight into the process of second language acquisition.

Freire and Macedo analyse the connection between literacy and politics according to whether it produces existing social relations, or introduces a new set of cultural practices that promote democratic and emancipatory change.