Talking Back and Looking Forward: An Educational Revolution in Poetry and Prose

by Paul C. Gorski (Editor), Rosanna M. Salcedo (Editor), Julie Landsman (Editor)

Overview

As schools grow more and more vulnerable to the whims of profiteers and, as a result, become less and less a sacred public space of learning and justice, the voices of everyday educators and students are increasingly marginalized. This is the tyranny of neoliberal school reform: silence the people who know education, the people committed to equity and justice, and elevate the voices and desires of the privileged few whose knowledge of education is peripheral and profit-driven. Talking Back and Moving Forward: An Education Revolution in Poetry and Prose is a collective response to this tyranny, a collecting rallying cry for reclaiming our schools. It is a chorus of voices from teachers, educators, and educational justice advocates who refuse to be silenced—who are standing up and responding to the imposition of damaging school reform initiatives. Unconfined by the conventions of the traditional scholarly voice, the contributors use poetry, memoir, short stories, and photography, choosing the expressions that most effectively capture their experiences and their demands for educational and social justice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781475824919
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	03/08/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	226
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Paul C. Gorski is an activist, author, and educator whose life revolves around social justice, environmental justice, and animal rights causes. He teaches in the Social Justice and Human Rights program at George Mason University. He lives in Falls Church, Virginia, with his two cats, Unity and Buster.

Rosanna María Salcedo is a Latina artist, writer, educator, parent, and activist. She teaches Spanish and currently holds the position of Dean of Multicultural Affairs at Phillips Exeter Academy, a preparatory school in New England.

Julie Landsman is a retired teacher, writer and teacher trainer. Her book A White Teacher Talks About Race is in its third printing. She enjoys working in schools and teaching creative writing to all age groups. Her latest book is Growing Up White: A Veteran Teacher Reflects On Racism. She believes student voices can drive educational change.

Table of Contents

Dedication
Foreword
Introduction by Paul C. Gorski, Rosanna Salcedo, and Julie Landsman

Chapter 1: Troubling Common Sense
Regrouping the Children by Anne M. Beaton
Quick Spring by Margot Fortunato Galt
Artifacts by Mary Harwell Sayler
out of the mouths of scholars by Kindel Nash
Dots, Lines, Spaces, and Math by Geetha Durairajan
Taco Night by Paul C. Gorski

Chapter 2: Revealing the Cost of Educational Tyranny
EDU Haiku by Mari Ann Roberts
Standardized by Alison Stone
Act V by Kelly Jean Olivas
a lesson from an elementary principal by Korina Jocson
Phoenixes by Julia Stein
This Thing of Memory by Andrena Zawinski
Answering the Call by J.F. McCullers
The Auspices of Social Justice by Shannon Audley-Piotrowski

Chapter 3: Honoring Liberated Voices
I Apologize by Alejandro Jimenez
A Classroom Assignment by María Gabriel
“Where Are You From?” by Hana Alhady
Felipe by Janice Lobo Sapigao
unpredicted storm by Cathi LaMarche

Chapter 4: Teaching Against the Grain
Punk Has Always Been My School by Rebekah Cordova and Erin Bowers
Pickled by Sarah Warren
They Are Me and I Am Them: A Memoir of A Social Justice Educator by Cherise
Martinez-McBride
Look by Elizabeth Harlan-Ferlo
Teaching from the Margins by Monique Cherry-McDaniel
Peace by Walter Enloe
You Gotta Be Ready for Some Serious Truth to Be Spoken by Debra Busman

Chapter 5: Speaking Up and Talking Back
Playground Futurities by James F. Woglom and Stephanie Jones
The Richest Country in the World: A Fable by LouAnn Johnson
Three Spaces of Exclusion: The 21st Century High School Integration of That Girl
by V. Thandi Sulé
They Said by Sarah Ann Gilbertson
Language as Weapon: Lessons from the Front Lines by Lani T. Montreal
Starfish (A Practical Exorcism) by Kyle “Guante” Tran Myhre
All the Ways We Learn by Sarita Gonzales
we pull the wool over this rainbow of eyes by Paul Thomas
Use your words! by Mary Elizabeth Hayes
Privileged and Under by Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb
The Goddess of Autumn by Richard Levine

Chapter 6: Advocacy and Solidarity
Connecting with Carlos by Amy Vatne Bintliff
Praise by Julie Landsman
Three Portraits by Jehanne Beaton
Willie Alexander by Thomas Thurman
Knowledge as a Function of Freedom by Toby Jenkins
School Talk by Stacy Amaral
letter to student by Sarah Warren

Author Bios

Editorial Reviews

Talking Back and Looking Forward is a brilliant counter to lists of best practices that race to the top. This wonderful book evokes the transformational power of the arts to reclaim the identities, experiences, and injuries that standardization-policed-by-testing tries to erase from schools.

Christine Sleeter

In this moment when the narratives and debates about educational “reform” seem only to constrict, we need the arts more than ever to rattle and expand, and this is precisely what we find in this powerfully moving new book by Gorski, Salcedo, and Landsman, who have assembled educators and activists to speak through poetry and prose against the moment and towards a future yet untold.  Passionate, illuminating, troubling, and inspiring, their words will sit with you as they stir you to action. Read it today.

Kevin Kumashiro

Reading this book was an inspirational breath of fresh air in the often stifling struggle for social justice in education. Hearing from fellow teachers and from students is a much needed break from the dialogue of well-meaning scholars who, though impassioned, are not in the classroom. I can see applications for this book both in my classroom and in my work as a teacher mentor.

Angela Cunningham

So-called education reformers have tried to convince the public that neo-liberal policies and no-excuses rhetoric are the answers to the problems of public education, particularly the problem of educational disparities. This volume takes on these so-called palliatives and speaks through the voices of real people to the problems of real people.

Gloria Ladson-Billings

Poetry, like life itself, is about the world around us, and the world within. In this volume, teachers, students, and activists express with deep feeling what education should be, both in the world around us – our classrooms, schools, and communities – and within us – our hearts, minds, and souls. May all teachers and students hear the powerful messages about social justice, the current state of public education, and what we can do to change it, from the poetry in this heartfelt collection.

Sonia Nieto

Sometimes the spirit of resistance speaks, sometimes it sings—but always in unison with the voices of the oppressed, the excluded and those marginalized by injustices systemic to neoliberal capitalist society. And sometimes this spirit is amplified by educators advocating for them. This is a book in which the spirit of resistance is present in all of its polyvalent glory. It is a book that sings, that laughs, that weeps and that screams in fierce harmony with those forebearers of social justice who have over the decades forged a path towards liberation with both creativity and unyielding resolve. I hear their suffering and their joy echoed throughout every page of this book. I feel the stirrings of a new pedagogy of the heart.

Peter McLaren