Confronting Racism, Poverty, and Power : Classroom Strategies to Change the World

Foreword ix Acknowledgments xiii Section 1: A Few Tough Questions 1(28) 1 Assumptions About Families 5(12) Portrayals of My Students and Their Families 7(2) Defining the Good Parent 9(1) An Example of Relative Power 10(2) Theoretical Understandings About Power 12(1) Features of Personal Power 13(1) Features of School Power 14(3) 2 Assumptions About Reading 17(12) Parents' Commonsense Assumptions About Reading 20(2) Parents" 'Funds of Knowledge" About Reading 22(1) Assumptions About Reading and Parents' Own School Experiences 22(3) Contemporary School Practices and Recommendations from Teachers 25(3) The Format of This Book 28(1) Section 2: Learning Lessons and Confronting Myths 29(22) A Teacher Learns 30(2) 3 Twelve Myths About Poor and Diverse Parents 32(19) Myth #1 Parents Are Content to Rely on Welfare 32(2) Myth #2 Parents Are Caught in a Cycle of Poverty 34(1) Myth #3 Parents Are Often Children Themselves 35(1) Myth #4 Poor Households Are Vacant of Print 36(1) Myth #5 Parents Have No interest in Their Own Learning 37(1) Myth #6 Parents Do Not Care About School 38(2) Myth #7 Parents Don't Know How to Help Their Children with Reading 40(2) Myth #8 Parents Don't Help Their Children with Reading 42(1) Myth #9 Parents Can't Read 43(2) Myth #10 Parents Don't Read 45(1) Myth #11 Parents Grew Up in Households Without Literacy 46(1) Myth #12 Parents Lack Resources to Help Kids with Reading 47(3) Challenging the Myths About Poor and Diverse Parents 50(1) Section 3: Building on What Children Bring 51(66) Creating a "Third Space" 53(2) Developing Critical Literacy Projects 55(2) An Overview of Section 3 57(3) 4 Critical Literacy Projects 60(7) Challenging Issues and Young Children 62(1) A Critical Literacy Project 63(3) Lessons Learned About Critical Literacy Projects 66(1) 5 Building on the Knowledge That Children Bring: Using Jump Rope Rhymes in the Classroom 67(8) Jump Rope Rhymes and Early Reading 68(4) Rhymes from My Students and Their Parents 72(2) A Lesson Learned About Language 74(1) 6 Student Ethnographers Studying Reading 75(7) Learning About Reading in My Students' Families 76(1) Parents and Reading 77(2) Children and Reading 79(1) Lessons Learned About Reading 80(2) 7 Addressing Real Issues in Communities: Fighting Violence 82(7) Children Investigating Violence 83(2) Learning from Community Members 85(1) Working for Change 86(1) A Lesson Learned About Violence 87(2) 8 Recognizing the Work of Parents 89(8) Investigating Jobs in Our Community 90(2) Investigating Jobs in the Students' Families 92(4) Lessons Learned About Families 96(1) 9 A School-Wide Project: Learning About Lead Poisoning 97(8) Learning About the Dangers of Lead 98(1) Our First Family Event 99(2) Testing, Testing, Testing 101(2) Focusing on Children's Homes 103(1) A Lesson Shared with Families 104(1) 10 Paying and Paying Back: Employing Critical Literacy in the Humanities to Examine the Warp and Woof of Democracy (by Todd K. Lilly) 105(12) The Thirty-Year Mortgage 105(2) High Risk Futures 107(3) Refinancing 110(2) Principle and Interest 112(3) Lessons Learned About Meaningful Investments 115(2) Reflection 117(2) Appendix: Methodology of the Teacher Research Study 119(4) References 123(4) Index 127