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EQUITY Resources for Professional Growth

From Google's re:Work

Unconscious biases are the automatic, mental shortcuts used to process information and make decisions quickly. At any given moment individuals are flooded with millions of bits of information, but can only consciously process about 40. Cognitive filters and heuristics allow the mind to unconsciously prioritize, generalize, and dismiss large volumes of input. These shortcuts can be useful when making decisions with limited information, focus, or time, but can sometimes lead individuals astray and have unintended consequences in the workplace. Google re:Work

Image: 'Gearing for Equity' book cover

Grading For Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms
by Joe Feldman
Year Published: 2018


From US Corwin: 
Here at last—and none too soon—is a resource that delivers the research base, tools, and courage to tackle one of the most challenging and emotionally charged conversations in today’s schools: our inconsistent grading practices and the ways they can inadvertently perpetuate the achievement and opportunity gaps among our students.

With Grading for Equity, Joe Feldman cuts to the core of the conversation, revealing how grading practices that are accurate, bias-resistant, and motivational will improve learning, minimize grade inflation, reduce failure rates, and become a lever for creating stronger teacher-student relationships and more caring classrooms. 

Start Where You Are, But Don't Stay There Cover page: A diverse group of students in a classroom, engaging with each other. Text: 'Embracing diversity in today's classrooms.'"

Start Where You Are, But Don't Stay There

by H. Richard Milner IV

Year Published: 2020

 

From HEPG: 

2021 PROSE Award Finalist, Education Practice and Theory Category

In the thoroughly revised second edition of Start Where You Are, But Don’t Stay There, H. Richard Milner IV addresses the knowledge and insights required on the part of teachers and school leaders to serve students of color. Milner focuses on a crucial issue in teacher training and professional education: the need to prepare teachers for the racially diverse student populations in their classrooms.

A student running with a book titled 'Importance of Education' in hand, symbolizing the rush to class.

Rac(e)ing to Class: Confronting Poverty and Race in Schools and Classrooms

by H. Richard Milner IV

Year Published: 2015

 

From NAESP: 
Race and poverty are widely held to be among the most impactful factors in public schools across the country. H. Richard Milner IV uses his new text, Rac(e) ing to Class, to promote his mission of helping districts to consistently pursue principles and practices that can make a difference. He encourages decision-makers to “work towards those principles even if they are not able to completely implement them.”

Milner’s book will appeal to education leaders concerned with the effects of race and poverty in the classroom. It advocates for district leaders to practice equitable decision- making, respond to neighborhood conditions, reduce class size for school-dependent students, and rethink/reform the inflexible, narrowed curriculum.

African American youth reading books to shape their cultural identity

Reading for Their Life: (Re)Building the Textual Lineages of African American Adolescent Males

by Alfred Tatum

Year Published: 2009

 

From Heinemann: 

"Because African American adolescent males and face their own challenges, they must identify texts that mark their times and their lives. If we create opportunities for this to happen, they will not only begin to trust the texts, they will begin to trust us, too. Then maybe, we’ll hear one of them say, Education is on our side,’ or, ‘I used to keep it gutter, but now I am all good.’ This is my hope."  —Alfred Tatum

No reading strategy, no literacy program, no remediation will close the achievement gap for adolescent African American males. These efforts will continue to fail our students, says Alfred Tatum, until reading instruction is anchored in meaningful texts that build academic and personal resiliency inside and outside school.

We want to do more that survive cover photo

We Want to Do More Than Survive

by Bettina LoveYear

Published: 2020

 

From Penguin Random House:

Winner of the 2020 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award

Drawing on personal stories, research, and historical events, an esteemed educator offers a vision of educational justice inspired by the rebellious spirit and methods of abolitionists.

Drawing on her life’s work of teaching and researching in urban schools, Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements. She argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color. Instead of trying to repair a flawed system, educational reformers offer survival tactics in the forms of test-taking skills, acronyms, grit labs, and character education, which Love calls the educational survival complex.

A book cover with the title "Not Light, But Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Conversations in the Classroom".

Not Light, But Fire

by Matthew R. Kay

Year Published: 2018

 

From Stenhouse Books:

Do you feel prepared to initiate and facilitate meaningful, productive dialogues about race in your classroom? Are you looking for practical strategies to engage with your students?

Inspired by Frederick Douglass's abolitionist call to action, “it is not light that is needed, but fire” Matthew Kay has spent his career learning how to lead students through the most difficult race conversations. Kay not only makes the case that high school classrooms are one of the best places to have those conversations, but he also offers a method for getting them right, providing candid guidance on:

  • How to recognize the difference between meaningful and inconsequential race conversations.
  • How to build conversational “safe spaces,” not merely declare them.
  • How to infuse race conversations with urgency and purpose.
  • How to thrive in the face of unexpected challenges.
  • How administrators might equip teachers to thoughtfully engage in these conversations.

With the right blend of reflection and humility, Kay asserts, teachers can make school one of the best venues for young people to discuss race.

Cover of "Is Everyone Really Equal?: An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education" book.

Is Everyone Really Equal?: An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education (Multicultural)

by Özlem Sensoy, Robin DiAngelo, James A. Banks

Year Published: 2017

 

From Amazon: 

This is the new edition of the award-winning guide to social justice education.

Based on the authors’ extensive experience in a range of settings in the United States and Canada, the book addresses the most common stumbling blocks to understanding social justice. This comprehensive resource includes new features such as a chapter on intersectionality and classism; discussion of contemporary activism (Black Lives Matter, Occupy, and Idle No More); material on White Settler societies and colonialism; pedagogical supports related to “common social patterns” and “vocabulary to practice using”; and extensive updates throughout.

Accessible to students from high school through graduate school, Is Everyone Really Equal? is a detailed and engaging textbook and professional development resource presenting the key concepts in social justice education. The text includes many user-friendly features, examples, and vignettes to not just define but illustrate the concepts.

Book Features:

  • Definition Boxes that define key terms.
  • Stop Boxes to remind readers of previously explained ideas.
  • Perspective Check Boxes to draw attention to alternative standpoints.
  • Discussion Questions and Extension Activities for using the book in a class, workshop, or study group.
  • A Glossary of terms and guide to language use.

Building Equity: Policies and Practices to Empower All Learners
by Dominique Smith, Nancy Frey, Ian Pumpian, and Douglas Fisher
Year Published:


From ASCD:

About this Book

Imagine a school with a diverse student body where every student feels safe and valued, and all students—regardless of race, culture, home language, sexual orientation, gender identity, academic history, and individual challenges—have the opportunity to succeed with challenging classes, projects, and activities. In this school, teachers notice and meet students' individual instructional needs and foster a harmonious and supportive environment—and students feel empowered to learn, to grow, and to pursue their dreams.

This is the school all our students need and deserve.

In Building Equity, Dominique Smith, Nancy Frey, Ian Pumpian, and Douglas Fisher, colleagues at San Diego's innovative Health Sciences High & Middle College, introduce the School Equity Taxonomy, a new model to clarify the structural and interpersonal components of an equitable and excellent schooling experience, and the School Equity Audit, a survey-based tool to help school and teacher leaders uncover equity-related issues and organize their efforts to better address

  • Physical integration.
  • Social-emotional engagement.
  • Opportunity to learn.
  • Instructional excellence.
  • Engaged and inspired learners. 

Built on the authors' own experiences and those of hundreds of educators throughout the United States, this book is filled with examples of policy initiatives and practices that support crucial standards of equity and high-quality, inclusive learning experiences.

Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People

by In Blindspot, Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald

Year Published:

 

From http://blindspot.fas.harvard.edu/Book

In Blindspot, Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald explore hidden biases that we all carry from a lifetime of experiences with social groups – age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, sexuality, disability status, or nationality.

“Blindspot” is a metaphor to capture that portion of the mind that houses hidden biases. The authors use it to ask about the extent to which social groups – without our awareness or conscious control – shape our likes and dislikes, our judgments about people’s character, abilities, and potential.

In Blindspot, hidden biases are revealed through hands-on experience with the method that has revolutionized the way scientists are learning about the human mind and that gives us a glimpse into what lies within the metaphoric blindspot – the Implicit Association Test.

The title’s “good people” are the many people – the authors included – who strive to align their behavior with their good intentions. The aim of Blindspot is to explain the science in plain enough language to allow well-intentioned people to better achieve that alignment. Venturing into this book is an invitation to understand our own minds.