Racial literacy, a collection of discursive and decoding skills that allow individuals to interrogate race and racism as well as representation and personal identity, is vital in a contemporary society that professes meritocracy and post-racialism yet where racism and racialism continue to give rise to fear, violence, and inequity. Because racial literacy requires individuals to develop a cache of discursive tools with which to critically read and respond to particular situations and broader societal practices as well as to investigate the rhetorical practices and power of racial ideology, there is no venue better fitted to the development of racial literacy than the college composition classroom. From the planning stages through the end of the semester, this book provides practical strategies for designing and implementing racial literacy curricula in the composition classroom and across the curriculum. Drawing upon an award-winning three-year ethnographic teacher research project, the author offers curricular suggestions and teacher resources instructors can use to increase student engagement, improve student writing, and help students harness the tools of racial literacy, including awareness of structural inequity and discursive modes with which to respond to social injustice.

Based on extensive research, this provocative volume explores how schools are places where racial conflicts often remain hidden at the expense of a healthy school climate and the well-being of other students of colour. Most schools fail to act on racial microaggressions because the stress of negotiating such conflicts is extremely high due to fears of incompetence, public exposure, and accusation. Instead of facing these conflicts head on, schools perpetuate a set of avoidance or coping strategies. The author of this much-needed book uncovers how racial stress undermines student achievement. Students, educators, and social service support staff will find workable strategies to improve their racial literacy skills to read, recast, and resolve racially stressful encounters when they happen. This book features: a model that applies culturally relevant behavioural stress management strategies to problem-solve racial stress in schools; examples demonstrating workable solutions relevant within predominantly White schools for students, parents, teachers, and adminsitrators; measurable outcomes and strategies for developing racial literacy skills that can be integrated into the K - 12 curriculum and teacher professional development; and teaching and leadership skills that will create a more tolerant and supportive school environment for all students.

Today's students use their digital expertise and the power of their voice to respond to issues of inequity in society. It is essential that teacher educators develop their own racial literacies and those of their preservice and classroom teachers to support student digital activism. From talking about race and racism to resisting the harmful narratives that circulate online but impact face-to-face interactions in the classroom, teacher educators must navigate sociotechnical spaces with a critical lens and develop strategies to help their preservice teachers do the same. This book is designed to increase educators' capacity and agency to respond to inequities that plague our educational system. The authors provide a framework to help readers rethink how curriculum and pedagogy impact classroom instruction. In Advancing Racial Literacies in Teacher Education, Price-Dennis and Sealey-Ruiz provide theoretical and practical entry points into a conversation about race in the digital age that aim to increase equity in schools and better prepare teachers entering the U.S. school system. Book Features: Provides examples of how racial literacy can be fostered in teacher education programs. Offers reflection questions designed to assess the status of racial literacy in both teacher education programs and K-12 classrooms. Helps educators develop curricula that leverage multimodal ways of cultivating racial literacy. Offers a conceptual model of racial literacy for the digital age that advances civic engagement for equity in education. Focuses on pedagogical practices that support racial literacy development in teacher education. Includes a Foreword by Jabari Mahiri and an Afterword by Rebecca Rogers, leading scholars in the field of racial literacy.

Recipient of the 2022 Excellence in Equity Award! It is not enough to be against racism in education teachers must be actively antiracist. Yet how do we start reflecting on our own beliefs and lives so we can truly teach for racial literacy? In the award-winning Teaching for Racial Equity: Becoming Interrupters , authors Tonya Perry, Steven Zemelman, and Katy Smith engage in honest conversations between educators of color and their white colleagues. Authentic, inspiring, and sometimes uncomfortable, teachers share stories of personal histories and experiences that shaped them as people and educators.In this book you will find: Strategies to understand different backgrounds through a racial lens and ways to address potentially difficult conversations with fellow educators In-depth overview of Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz’s Archaeology of Self™ and how it can be personally and professionally adopted Lists of resources for teaching about and actively interrupting racism in education and tools that document systemic inequalities in the classroom Ways to facilitate student-led conversations which examine race and inequitable conditions found nationwide By examining inequalities found at a systemic level, teachers can start to remove some of their internal biases and allow students to show who they truly are. In turn, this can help create a school curriculum that makes space for BIPOC voices that inspire and invite students to share. Teaching for Racial Equity: Becoming Interrupters provides a resource for teachers and educators to critically reflect and begin work to interrupt racism at all levels.

Early college classrooms provide essential opportunities for students to grapple and contend with the racial geographies that shape their lives. Based on a mixed methods study of students’ writing in a first-year-writing course themed around racial identities and language varieties at St. John’s University, Mapping Racial Literacies shows college student writing that directly confronts lived experiences of segregation—and, overwhelmingly, of resegregation. This textual ethnography embeds early college students’ writing in deep historical and theoretical contexts and looks for new ways that their writing contributes to and reshapes contemporary understandings of how US and global citizens are thinking about race. The book is a teaching narrative, tracing a teaching journey that considers student writing not only in the moments it is assigned but also in continual revisions of the course, making it a useful tool in helping college-age students see, explore, and articulate the role of race in determining their life experiences and opportunities. Sophie Bell’s work narrates the experiences of a white teacher making mistakes in teaching about race and moving forward through those mistakes, considering that process valuable and, in fact, necessary. Providing a model for future scholars on how to carve out a pedagogically responsive identity as a teacher, Mapping Racial Literacies contributes to the scholarship on race and writing pedagogy and encourages teachers of early college classes to bring these issues front and center on the page, in the classroom, and on campus.

Rooted in examples from their own and others’ classrooms, the authors offer discipline-specific practices for implementing antiracist literature instruction in White-dominant schools. Each chapter explores a key dimension of antiracist literature teaching and learning, including designing literature-based units that emphasize racial literacy, selecting literature that highlights voices of color, analyzing Whiteness in canonical literature, examining texts through a critical race lens, managing challenges of race talk, and designing formative assessments for racial literacy and identity growth. “Sophia and Carlin’s book is startling in how openly and honestly it takes up the problem of how to teach about racism, using literature, in White schools. As I read, I kept marveling at how courageous and direct and clear their writing is.” —From the Foreword by Timothy J. Lensmire, University of Minnesota “Letting Go of Literary Whiteness unpacks the necessary responsibility of exploring race for all teachers. Borsheim-Black and Sarigianides center this work in English classrooms, exploring the kinds of literature, discussions, and difficult instructional decisions that teachers make every day. This book emphasizes that racial justice is a shared responsibility for teachers today and, through myriad practical examples, offers guidance for centering equity in schools.” —Antero Garcia, Stanford Graduate School of Education

In anticipation of the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, Catherine Prendergast draws on a combination of insights from legal studies and literacy studies to interrogate contemporary multicultural literacy initiatives, thus providing a sound historical basis that informs current debates over affirmative action, school vouchers, reparations, and high-stakes standardized testing. As a result of Brown and subsequent crucial civil rights court cases, literacy and racial justice are firmly enmeshed in the American imagination--so much so that it is difficult to discuss one without referencing the other. Breaking with the accepted wisdom that the Brown decision was an unambiguous victory for the betterment of race relations, Literacy and Racial Justice: The Politics of Learning after Brown v. Board of Education finds that the ruling reinforced traditional conceptions of literacy as primarily white property to be controlled and disseminated by an empowered majority. Prendergast examines civil rights era Supreme Court rulings and immigration cases spanning a century of racial injustice to challenge the myth of assimilation through literacy. Advancing from Ways with Words, Shirley Brice Heath's landmark study of desegregated communities, Prendergast argues that it is a shared understanding of literacy as white property which continues to impact problematic classroom dynamics and education practices. To offer a positive model for reimagining literacy instruction that is truly in the service of racial justice, Prendergast presents a naturalistic study of an alternative public secondary school. Outlining new directions and priorities for inclusive literacy scholarship in America, Literacy and Racial Justice concludes that a literate citizen is one who can engage rather than overlook longstanding legacies of racial strife.