This comprehensive book is grounded in the authentic experiences of educators who have done, and continue to do, the messy everyday work of transformative school reform. The work of these contributors, in conjunction with research done under the aegis of the National Institute of Urban School Improvement (NIUSI), demonstrates how schools and classrooms can move from a deficit model to a culturally responsive model that works for all learners. To strengthen relationships between research and practice, chapters are coauthored by a practitioner/researcher team and include a case study of an authentic urban reform situation. This volume will help practitioners, reformers, and researchers make use of emerging knowledge and culturally responsive pedagogy to implement reforms that are more congruent with the strengths and needs of urban education contexts. Contributors: Sue Abplanalp, Cynthia Alexander, Alfredo J. Artiles, David R. Garcia, Dorothy F. Garrison-Wade, JoEtta Gonzales, Taucia Gonzalez, Cristina Santamaría Graff, Donna Hart-Tervalon, Jack C. Jorgensen, Elaine Mulligan, Sheryl Petty, Samantha Paredes Scribner, Amanda L. Sullivan, Anne Smith, Sandra L. Vazquez,Shelley Zion “If you truly care about the serious, research-based pursuit of equity and inclusivity in urban schools, you must read this book. Using researcher-practitioner co-author teams and a case study of national urban reform, Kozleski, King Thorius, and their chapter team authors show how to go successfully to scale with systemic reform.” —James Joseph Scheurich, Professor, Indiana University School of Education, Indianapolis Elizabeth B. Kozleski chairs the Special Education program at the University of Kansas. She received the TED-Merrill award for her leadership in special education teacher education in 2011. Kathleen King Thorius is an assistant professor of urban special education in Indiana University’s School of Education at IUPUI. She is principal investigator for the Great Lakes Equity Center, a Regional Equity Assistance Center funded by the U. S. Department of Education.

Infusing Diversity & Cultural Competence into Teacher Education

How do high school students confront and resolve conflicting messages about their intelligence and academic potential, particularly when labeled with social and learning disabilities? How does disability become “disablement” when negative attitudes and disparaging perceptions of ability position students as outsiders? Following the lives of adolescents at home and at school, the author makes visible the disabling language, contextual arrangements, and unconscious social practices that restrict learning regardless of special education services. She also showcases how young people resist disablement to transform their worlds and pursue pathways most important to them. Educators and scholars can use this important resource to recognize and change disabling practices that are often taken for granted as a natural part of schooling. Book Features: Offers concrete ways that students, schools, and teachers can unlearn disabling behaviors. Illuminates how social processes of disablement take place, rather than simply describing their influence. Looks at settings where students encounter more flexible ideas of ability and intelligence. “AnnMarie Baines shows us how LD can be rephrased, readdressed, and reworked. LD can be a good idea again, but the labels have to be tied to conditions of growth, identity enhancement, and institutional change.” —From the Foreword by Ray McDermott, professor, Stanford Graduate School of Education "Through compelling narrative vignettes and clear expository commentary, the author makes a persuasive case that adolescents' ‘abilities’ and ‘disabilities’ are situational, not fixed. The moral of her stories is this: change the social situations of learning to foreground and affirm ability rather than disability.” —Frederick Erickson, George F. Kneller Professor of Anthropology of Education, emeritus, University of California, Los Angeles “This book will touch everyone. The stories ring with familiar pain, strategies of persistence, and the randomness of what counts for success or failure. Valuable resources are lost to labels given too lightly for far too many; this volume tells us how to recoup and to protect these resources and to restore hope by doing so.” —Shirley Brice Heath, Margery Bailey Professor of English and Dramatic Literature and professor of linguistics, emerita, Stanford University AnnMarie Darrow Baines is an assistant professor in the department of secondary education at San Francisco State University.

Providing both a theoretical framework and practical strategies, this resource will help teachers, counselors, and related service providers develop understanding and empathy to improve outcomes for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students with disabilities. The text features narrative portraits of six immigrant families and their children with disabilities, including their cultural histories and personal perspectives regarding assessment, diagnosis, Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings, and other instances in which families engaged with the special education process. Using guiding questions for reflection and “Talk Back” comments from preservice students throughout the text, readers are encouraged to reflect on their own positionality and to develop nuanced and dynamic understandings of CLD children, youth, and families—countering persistent and stereotypical deficit views. “A long-overdue textbook that proactively contributes to preparing teacher candidates to know more about and better understand the diverse students they will teach.” —From the Foreword by Maria de Lourdes B. Serpa, professor emerita, Lesley University “Accessible and innovative. It will be valuable to students, teachers, and family members.” —Philip Ferguson, professor emeritus, Chapman University “This powerful and much-needed book highlights the cultural misunderstandings and systemic inequities that can occur when disability intersects with race.” —Maya Kalyanpur, University of San Diego

Clear, actionable steps for you to build new values, experiences, and perspectives into your organizational culture, infusing it with the diversity, inclusion, and belonging employees need to feel accepted, be their best selves, and do their best work. Bypass the faulty processes and communication styles that make change impossible in so many other organizations; access these practical tools and ideas for increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in your company. Filled with actionable advice Alida Miranda-Wolff learned through her own struggles being an outsider in a work culture that did not value inclusion, and having since worked with over 60 organizations to prioritize DEI initiatives and all the value and richness it adds to the workplace, this roadmap helps leaders: Learn why creating an environment where everyone feels belonging is the new barometer for employee engagement. Develop an understanding of the key terms around DEI and why they matter. Assess where your organization is today. Define and take the small steps that build new muscle memory into an organizational culture. Increase employee engagement, collaboration, innovation, communication, and sense of belonging. Build confidence in how to solve future DEI-related challenges. Get buy-in from colleagues (and even resisters) who can clearly see how to move forward and why. Overcome any limiting work environment and build all new processes and communication priorities that allow your employees to be a part of something greater than themselves while your organization learns to value and embrace the unique experiences and perspective that each employee brings to the company.

This book offers future teachers, current teachers, and educational leaders an array of research-based strategies for delivering culturally competent, responsive, and inclusive instruction. It provides teaching tactics in the form of action-oriented practices that help educators continually hone their effectiveness in the classroom. Rather than prescribing a rigid set of practices, the text details principles that allow teachers to adapt the material to fit the needs of their students.--

"The authors examine the importance of equitable family advocacy in special education professionals' work, in order to redress inequities that often challenge children's and families' rights to sufficient and equitable educational outcomes. Harry and Ocasio-Stoutenburg draw on intersectionality to inform the work of advocacy. In the words of the authors, "our purpose is to change the language of advocacy from its original meaning of one who speaks for-to one who speaks with." Advocacy is not a "one size fits all" kind of work. The authors examine the socio-historical context of advocacy work, its further development in the Civil Rights Era, and provide grounded examples of doing advocacy work at the school/community level, as well as at the policy level. The book intends to provide a working model of co-constructed advocacy to benefit all families"--