Books: Winter 2019

Recent books published by members of the HGSE community.

Posted January 17, 2019
By Lory Hough

TEACHERS BRIDGING DIFFERENCE: EXPLORING IDENTITY WITH ART
Marit Dewhurst
In her new book, Marit Dewhurst, Ed.M.’03, Ed.D.’09, a professor at City College of New York, looks at the ways that educators can use art to better understand how our different identities tied to race, class, culture, gender, religion, ability, sexual orientation, and nationality shape who students are and how they move in the world. She writes, “The ability to understand our students, their families, and their communities is imperative if we aim to facilitate empowering learning experiences.”

CHILDREN AT THE CENTER
Betty Bardige, Megina Baker, and Ben Mardell
Calling themselves tour guides, authors Betty Bardige, Ed.D.’83, and Project Zero researchers and investigators Megina Baker and Ben Mardell give readers an inside look at Boston Public Schools’ early education programs for preK and kindergarten students, including how the program was built in the city, early results, examples of success, and challenges and barriers faced. But the book isn’t all theory and policy — the authors eavesdrop in classrooms, at community events, and during staff meetings for the city office that oversees the programs. Children at the Center not only tells the story, but, as the authors write, “shows the program in action,” too.

USING GRAMMAR TO IMPROVE WRITING: RECIPES FOR ACTION
Sarah Tantillo
In her third book since graduating from the Ed School, Sarah Tantillo, Ed.M.’91, offers what may seem like just a grammar instructional manual but is, she says, “secretly a book about how to teach students how to write clearly.” And that matters because writing clearly seems to be a problem for many students, she says. Tantillo doesn’t waste time with the easy-to-follow book, starting with a critical chapter for instructors called “What should we STOP doing?” and including sections on helping students who are not at grade level, factors that affect how well we write, and what we should be teaching from kindergarten through high school.

TRANSFORMATIVE SCHOOLING
Vajra Watson
Vajra Watson, Ed.M.’01, Ed.D.’08, director of research and policy for equity at University of California Davis, writes about the ways that schools can become more racially inclusive. As a case study, the book follows efforts made over five years by the Oakland Unified School District to join forces with community organizers, teachers, parents, religious leaders, neighborhood elders, and students to launch the Office of African American Male Achievement and attempt to disrupt underachievement. “Altogether,” Watson writes, “a school district and a community joined forces to resurrect possibility.”

BEFORE SHE SLEEPS
Bina Shah
Described by Kirkus Reviews as “a novel that is in explicit conversation with The Handmaid’s Tale,” Before She Sleeps by journalist and writer Bina Shah, Ed.M.’94, focuses on a world devastated by war, the Virus, and gender selection, where young women are sent to indoctrination camps, forced to become mothers, and required to take on multiple husbands. Men hold all the power. There are the resisters, of course, the women who live in a hidden collective called the Panah, women who refuse to be wives and instead go underground in order to be free.