Full Description
This practical book provides teachers, teacher educators, and school leaders with concrete strategies for doing community-based work.
By reframing the act of teaching to include working for social change, the author pushes readers to see school and community revitalization as reciprocal, not separate, projects. Drawing on the strategies and tactics of community organizers and activists, Charest describes an approach to schooling that addresses the social and economic concerns that students and families in under-resourced communities confront in their daily lives. He uses a decolonial framework to examine how schools can decenter Whiteness and reimagine curriculum and teaching. He also shows teacher educators how they can better prepare the next generation of civic-minded teachers to create a more just and democratic society.
This model of intentional community engagement, when initiated by teachers and school leadership, is designed to re-position schools to take up questions of equity, racism, and the long-term health and well-being of individuals and communities.
Book Features:
Outlines useful strategies for teachers, teacher educators, and school leaders who want to enact community engagement.
Explores how educators can center the voices and experiences of people of color to revitalize teaching and learning.
Explains how to build curriculum around local history to address everyday concerns in communities.
Provides community engagement strategies for middle and high school educators.
Contents
Contents (Tentative)
Foreword Kevin K. Kumashiro ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xv
1. The Role of Teachers and the Purpose of Schools 1
What's My Job, Again? 1
Teaching Matters: Embracing Different Ways of Knowing, Being, Seeing, and Doing 10
Centering Civic and Community Engagement: The Promise of Democratic Participation in Schools and Communities 12
Key Strategies and Ideas for Doing School Differently 17
2. Building a Relational Culture: The Power of Relational Pedagogy for Teacher Engagement in Schools and Communities 19
Life in Schools: Educating Teachers 19
Collective Possibilities: Envisioning Healthy and Sustainable Schools and Communities 22
Relating Is Relational: How to Rebuild Institutions and Communities by Building Better Relationships 26
A Short Guide to Working in Communities 37
3. Education and Inequality: Why Schools Haven't Solved Our Social Problems 40
Marching Toward the Light: Working Across Social Boundaries 40
Making the Road by Walking: Accountability on Chicago's South Side 47
Rebuilding the School: Community Approaches to School Improvement 52
Institutional Resistance: Different Views of Accountability 54
Accountability Reconsidered: Students and Teachers Acting Together 57
Community Power: A Look Back 58
Accountability to Community: Learning Through Action 62
Changing Social Conditions: Final Reflections 65
4. Models for Change: Community as Curriculum and the Promise of Democratic Schooling 69
Why We Need Grassroots School Reform 69
Grassroots Curriculum: The Power of Place 75
Indigenous Leaders: Community Organizing and Teacher Organizers 78
Community as Campus: Community Action Councils and the Shaping of a School 83
Democratic Schooling: The Nova Project 89
5. Making Citizen Teachers: Educational Leaders for Justice and Democracy 95
Rethinking Teacher Education 95
Citizen Teachers and the Democratic Potential of Schools 98
Surviving the War: What Will It Take to Change Our
Schools and Communities? 104
Making Citizen Teachers and the Challenges to Teaching Differently 108
Teaching on the Boundary 112
Possible Futures: Democratic Practices and Community Engagement in Schools 114
The Limits of Alinsky and the Promise of Grassroots Organizing 120
References 125
Index 129
About the Author 137
