Read It Forward 2021. COMMITTEE AND COUNCIL BOOK DISCUSSIONS

 We Want To Do More Than Survive by Bettina Love

"Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through racial civic initiatives and movements. Love shows that to achieve educational freedom -- not merely reform-- teachers, parents, and community leaders must approach education with the imagination, determination, boldness, and urgency of an abolitionist. Following in the tradition of activists like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer, WE WANT TO DO MORE THAN SURVIVE introduces an alternative to traditional modes of educational reform and expands our ideas of civic engagement and intersectional justice." Bettina Love is an award-winning author and an associate professor of educational theory and practice at the University of Georgia. 

We Got This: Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be by Cornelius Minor

"While challenging the teacher as hero trope, WE GOT THIS shows how authentically listening to kids is the closest thing to a superpower that we have. Cornelius identifies tools, attributes, and strategies that can augment our listening. What we hear can spark action that allows us to make powerful moves toward equity by broadening access to learning for all children. A lone teacher can't eliminate inequity, but Cornelius demonstrates that a lone teacher can disrupt the mechanisms in schools that marginalize children. We can craft better heroes... not just for the students that we hope to teach, but for the world that we hope to build. You can transform your teaching; your team can transform your school; your school can solve real community problems. If you listen. YOU GOT THIS." Cornelius Minor is a Brooklyn-based educator who has worked with thousands of students and hundreds of teachers on five continents. His love for comics and admiration for youth culture fuels his approach to teaching. 

Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy by Gholdy Muhammad IN this book, award-winning researcher, Dr. Gholdy Muhammad presents a teaching and learning model that brings the history of illustrious African American literary societies to bear on the way we teach today. The four-layered framework -- identity, skills development, intellect, and criticality -- is essential for all young students, especially students of color, who traditionally have been marginalized by learning standards, government policies, and school practices. Dr. Muhammad offers a blend of pedagogical approaches that revolutionize teaching and learning across grade levels and content areas. You'll learn how to design historically responsive learning goals and lesson plans that put this groundbreaking research into practice.