Talking Diversity with Teachers and Teacher Educators

Featuring content-specific strategies, assignments, and classroom activities, this book provides strategies to help pre- and in-service teachers develop the dispositions and knowledge they need to teach all students well. Focusing on the importance of creating a classroom community in which necessarily difficult dialogues are inspired and supported, the authors present content-area chapters on language arts, social studies, mathematics, science, ESOL, foreign language, and teaching exceptional students in the inclusive environment. Each content-area chapter includes a vignette illustrating a difficult conversation dealing with diversity and presents research-based, classroom-ready exercises, effective pedagogic strategies, and action-oriented interventions—many of which the authors created and used in their own classrooms. The book concludes with an appendix of instructional and curricular resources.

This practical volume provides teacher educators and professional development personnel with a framework for:
Inspiring challenging and productive discussions about diversity in education.Using content-specific, research-based strategies for discussing diversity issues in deep and complex ways.Understanding how teacher candidates develop as culturally competent educators.Addressing conflicts that might arise when talking about diversity and self-awareness.
Contributors: Vonzell Agosto, Sylvia Celedón-Pattichis, Kathryn B. Chval, Deirdre Cobb-Roberts, Bárbara C. Cruz, Cheryl Ellerbrock, Elaine V. Howes, Zorka Karanxha, Deoksoon Kim, Miyoun Lim, Patricia Alvarez McHatton, Adam Schwartz, Roseanne K. Vallice, Anete Vásquez, Eugenia Vomvoridi-Ivanovic, and Eric Williams

“The stories in Talking Diversity are both instructive and inviting, affirming and empowering. They encourage and entice other teacher educators to join in promoting diversity in action as well as ideology, and they provide some reasonable and viable windows of opportunity for how these participations can occur successfully. In this sense, the style of this volume is as enriching, enlightening, and insightful as diversity is itself. It is a conversation of necessity and significance, and certainly one worth joining!”
—From the Foreword by Geneva Gay, professor of education, University of Washington–Seattle