Race, Community, and Urban Schools

In this important book, award-winning author Stuart Greene enters the ongoing conversation about low-income African American families and their role in helping their children flourish. Greene focuses on parents’ self-defined roles within the context of race, urban development, and an economy that has created opportunity for some and displaced others.  Moving beyond analysis to action, the author describes a partnering strategy to help educators understand the lived experiences of children and families and to use their funds of knowledge as resources for teaching. This book combines critical race theory, critical geography, first-hand accounts, and research on literacy practices at home to provide a powerful tool that will help teachers and administrators see families in new ways.

Book Features:
Describes a partnering model that encourages educators to consider the social, cultural, racial, and economic factors that shape parent engagement with schools.Identifies important areas of misunderstanding between African American parents and their children’s teachers.Incorporates personal narratives of children whose voices are rarely part of research on parent involvement.
“Race, Community, and Urban Schools will make a difference in the lives of teachers and administrators.  As you read this book, you may find yourself moved, intrigued, or saddened by some of the examples Stuart Greene provides.  And throughout, you will find yourself rethinking, reprocessing, and recreating some of your most cherished ideas or preconceived notions about African American families.”

—From the Foreword by Patricia Edwards, Michigan State University

“This powerful—and hopeful—book challenges dominant portrayals of African American parent disengagement in their children’s education and exposes relations of race, power, and urban restructuring that exclude low-income parents of color. Through counterstories of parents’ deep commitment to their children’s education, Stuart Greene opens a space for us to think differently about creating democratic family-school partnerships.”
—Pauline Lipman, professor, University of Illinois at Chicago