"Upending deficit narrative of learning loss, combating broken approaches to racial equity, and wading deep into the contested waters of democratic principles of learning within today’s schools, Dr. Skerrett and Dr. Smagorinsky offer an accessible guidebook for making our classrooms sites of justice and joy. Perhaps most importantly, theirs is a book that reveals classroom practices as they really are--the voices of teachers are situated as co-authors in this important journey. I cannot think of a more timely or relevant book for English educators than Teaching Literacy in Troubled Times." — Antero Garcia, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education, Stanford University Relevant instruction to move education forward instead of "back to normal" Educators often bemoan the so-called learning gap that followed the upheaval to schooling in 2020, but the real learning gap will occur if the watershed events and social shifts of the early 2020s are not integrated into school instruction and learning. For today’s learning to be relevant to today’s students, it must reflect their lives and the true social worlds they inhabit. But how? Teaching Literacy in Troubled Times empowers educators to engage students in critical thinking, literacy activities, and inquiry to investigate the personal and social issues of pressing importance to today’s middle and high school students. Six units of study, each co-authored by a teacher who road-tested the activities in their own classroom, guide teachers through the process of teaching literacy around the topics of identity, social inequity, global justice, empathy, racism and racial literacy, and conflicting ideas of patriotism. This urgent, timely guide to creating a relevant classroom includes: Instructional methods, content knowledge, and learning activities for each unit that engage students in critical inquiry and social action. Insights and guidance from teachers who put the full unit plans in action with students. Reflection questions to help teachers envision the work in their own classrooms. Templates, rubrics, examples of student work, and other tools that help teachers to plan and implement activities that grow students’ capacity to understand and act in society. Prime your students with the critical thinking, investigative, and communicative skills they need to connect themselves to broader social movements and create a new generation of educated changemakers.

"Upending deficit narrative of learning loss, combating broken approaches to racial equity, and wading deep into the contested waters of democratic principles of learning within today’s schools, Dr. Skerrett and Dr. Smagorinsky offer an accessible guidebook for making our classrooms sites of justice and joy. Perhaps most importantly, theirs is a book that reveals classroom practices as they really are--the voices of teachers are situated as co-authors in this important journey. I cannot think of a more timely or relevant book for English educators than Teaching Literacy in Troubled Times." — Antero Garcia, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education, Stanford University Relevant instruction to move education forward instead of "back to normal" Educators often bemoan the so-called learning gap that followed the upheaval to schooling in 2020, but the real learning gap will occur if the watershed events and social shifts of the early 2020s are not integrated into school instruction and learning. For today’s learning to be relevant to today’s students, it must reflect their lives and the true social worlds they inhabit. But how? Teaching Literacy in Troubled Times empowers educators to engage students in critical thinking, literacy activities, and inquiry to investigate the personal and social issues of pressing importance to today’s middle and high school students. Six units of study, each co-authored by a teacher who road-tested the activities in their own classroom, guide teachers through the process of teaching literacy around the topics of identity, social inequity, global justice, empathy, racism and racial literacy, and conflicting ideas of patriotism. This urgent, timely guide to creating a relevant classroom includes: Instructional methods, content knowledge, and learning activities for each unit that engage students in critical inquiry and social action. Insights and guidance from teachers who put the full unit plans in action with students. Reflection questions to help teachers envision the work in their own classrooms. Templates, rubrics, examples of student work, and other tools that help teachers to plan and implement activities that grow students’ capacity to understand and act in society. Prime your students with the critical thinking, investigative, and communicative skills they need to connect themselves to broader social movements and create a new generation of educated changemakers.

Despite limitations and challenges, teaching about difficult histories is an essential aspect of social studies courses and units across grade levels. This practical resource highlights stories of K–12 practitioners who have critically examined and reflected on their experiences with planning and teaching histories identified as difficult. Featuring the voices of teacher educators, classroom teachers, and museum educators, these stories provide readers with rare examples of how to plan for, teach, and reflect on difficult histories. The book is divided into four main sections: Centering Difficult History Content, Centering Teacher and Student Identities, Centering Local and Contemporary Contexts, and Centering Teacher Decision-making. Key topics include teaching about genocide, slavery, immigration, war, racial violence, and terrorism. This dynamic book highlights the practitioner’s perspective to reveal how teachers can and do think critically about their motivations and the methods they use to engage students in rigorous, complex, and appropriate studies of the past. Book Features: Expanded notions of what difficult histories can be and how they can be approached pedagogically.Thoughtful pictures of practice of some of the most complex histories to teach. Stories of K–12 teachers and museum educators with the research of leading scholars in social studies education. Examples from a wide range of educational contexts in the United States and other countries. Resources useful to teachers and teacher educators. Contributors include LaGarrett J. King, Cinthia Salinas, Stephanie van Hover, Amanda Vickery, Sohyun An, H. James (Jim) Garrett, Christopher C. Martell, and Jennifer Hauver.

"Progressive educators have always been better at critique than at possibility. This book promises not to ignore critique, but to favor possibility. It is most rare and greatly welcomed." Richard Quantz, Miami University "The editor argues that in a material world, depicted by consumerism, spiritual nihilism and conspicuous consumption, there is need to offer a new vision and direction in education that would promote a more harmonious, holistic values-oriented schooling that transforms persons into moral beings, who care for others.... In terms of innovative ideas and approaches to pedagogy and theorizing about schooling, this volume is at the top of pedagogical discourses and thinking." Joseph Zajda, Australian Catholic University (Melbourne Campus) Education and Hope in Troubled Times brings together a group of the best and most creative educational thinkers to reflect on the purpose and future of public education. These original essays by leading social and educational commentators in North America attempt to articulate a new vision for education, especially public education, and begin to set an alternative direction. This is a time of crisis, but also of renewed possibility—one that offers the opportunity to radically reconsider what is the meaning of education for a generation that will bear the brunt of grappling with the extraordinary dangers and challenges we confront today. At its core this volume questions what will it mean to be an educated human being in the 21st century compelled to confront and address so much that threatens the very basis of a decent and hopeful human existence. Carrying forward a project of redefining and reshaping public discourse on education in the U.S., it is a critical catalyst and focus for re-thinking public policy on education.

In the Great Recession of 2007-2010, Americans watched their retirement savings erode and the value of their homes decline while the unemployment rate increased and GDP sank. New demands emerged for unprecedented government intervention into the economy. While these changes have a dramatic impact on society at large, they also have serious implications for the content and teaching of economics. Teaching Economics in a Time of Unprecedented Change is a one-stop collection that helps pre- and in-service social studies teachers to foster an understanding of classic content as well as recent economic developments. Part I offers clear and teachable overviews of the nature of today’s complex economic crisis and the corollary changes in teaching economics that flow from revising and updating long-held economic assumptions. Part II provides both detailed best practices for teaching economics in the social studies classroom and frameworks for teaching economics within different contexts including personal finance, entrepreneurship, and history. Part III concludes with effective strategies for teaching at the elementary and secondary school levels based on current research on economic education. From advice on what every economics teacher should know, to tips for best education practices, to investigations into what research tells us about teaching economics, this collection provides a wealth of contextual background and teaching ideas for today’s economics and social studies educators. Additional information and resources can be found at the authors’ website neweconteaching.com.

We began the call for this book by asking authors to ideate on activism -to take up and seek to extend- the interbraided values from the Curriculum and Pedagogy group’s espoused mission and vision, collocating activist ideologies, theoretical traditions, and practical orientations as a means of creatively, reflectively, and productively responding to the increasingly dire social moment. This moment is framed by a landscape denigrated beyond even Pinar’s (2004) original declaration of the present-as-nightmare. The current, catastrophic political climate provides challenges and (albeit scant) opportunities for curriculum scholars and workers as we reflect on past and future directions of our field, and grapple with our locations and roles as educators, researchers, practitioners, and beings in the world. These troubled times force us to think critically about our scholarship and pedagogy, our influence on educational practices in multiple registers, and the surrounding communities we claim to serve. This is where the call began: from a desire to think through modern conceptions regarding what counts as activism in the fields of education, curriculum, and pedagogy, and to consider how activist voices and enactments might emerge differently through curriculum and pedagogy writ large. A guiding source of inspiration for this book, weaving among the emerging themes between the collected manuscripts, reflections, and poems, was a passage in Sara Ahmed’s (2013) book, The Cultural Politics of Emotion. In this passage, Ahmed works through the complicated relationship between the testimonies of pain that injustice causes, the recognition of this pain, and the potential of these wounds to move us into a different relationship with healing (p. 200). The chapters, reflections, and poems within this volume, thus, effect a collective ideation on how specific cultural politics and deleterious ideological formations – racism, colonialism, homophobia, ableism, to name only a few – persist and mobilize. The authors seek to expose and name some of these injustices, asking readers not only see and hear these experiences, but to inhabit our complicities in their promulgation. It is important to acknowledge that these named social troubles do not exist in isolation, and will enmesh, weave, wind, and entangle with one another. The section headings parallel Ahmed’s (2013) own ideations: testimony, recognition, and wounds, not as a formula to follow as an activist call, or as a model for a means to a more just end, but as a way to engage in these issues as a trope of activist confrontation of readers who are, as many of our authors suggest, complicit in maintaining many of these social troubles. The chapters do not need to be read in any particular order, though the ordering of the chapters moves from the naming of social troubles, to showing how teaching, research, and theory ask us to take a more active role in recognizing and acknowledging the prevalence of these issues, and then theorizing ways to engage the wounds.

This volume presents a scholarly conversation about education in troubled times across different temporal and spatial contexts. The concept of troubled times in this book refers to situations of serious challenges or crises that affect the practice of education at community, national and global levels. It examines how education operates across a wide range of challenging circumstances, from the COVID-19 pandemic, political manipulations, and the neoliberal economy to conflict and post-conflict situations. The volume also considers the measures national governments should take to contain and mitigate their effects, and how effective these measures are in curbing such challenges. By addressing these questions, it also suggests ways to overcome the identified challenges and crises in their respective contexts.