It sounded too good to be true when I first heard about the Tel-Aviv School in a short televised report: inner-city children from all over the world are thriving within an inclusive, accepting pedagogy, respectful to all and lead by empowered teachers? Long term research documented the processes and products of the school and the children and proved that by rethinking schooling and its traditional mechanisms, we can find a better way to reach and teach all students. No excuses.

Dissertation. Hofstra University. MI: UMI Dissertation Services. 2003.

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In E.L. Brown & P. Gibbons (eds.) International Advances in Education: Global Initiatives for Equity and Social Justice, Vol. 2: Ethnicity and Race, pg 285-308. Information Age Publishing, 2011.

Under the prevailing deficit approach, students who are different from mainstream in terms of race, ethnicity, language, appearance, sexual orientation, children who come from low income families, from the wrong side of the tracks, or those labeled with any kind of ‘dis’ability, are considered less able to succeed in school. But the diversity of students can be used to enhance teaching and learning if we allow voices, experiences, lives, interests and strengths from outside of school to be brought into the school discourse.  A pedagogy of abilities acknowledges and makes use of the myriad colors in every classroom to paint possibilities of meaningful education for all students.

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 Reading Today, Vol. 25(5), April/May, 2008.

When we (those who can do school well) negatively label our students (to ‘their’ benefit for special services, we say), they become that label and often cannot shake it from their own consciousness or from the eyes of society for the rest of their lives.

Can we possibly find a better way to serve our students through practices of positive acknowledgment, respect and inclusion?

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Students Finding Voice in a College Classroom:
Reflections on a Teaching/Learning Journey
Curriculum and Teaching, Vol. 23(1), 2008

Most students come to Developmental Reading classes considering reading a book to be a form of severe punishment. To counter such aversion, I developed a counter-hegemonic, inclusive and caring pedagogy that informs a curriculum relevant to the students’ lives allowing them to revalue reading and its potential for self-empowerment. By semester’s end many students describe themselves as readers, having begun to realize their inherent powers in negotiating texts.

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Continue reading Students Finding Voice in a College Classroom

Today I am proud of myself: Telling stories and revaluing lives
In D. Caracciolo & A. Mungai, (eds.) In the spirit of Ubuntu: Stories of teaching and research. Sense Publishers, 2009.

In a weekly literacy class at a home for recovering women we worked on critically reading texts that led to writing lives. Writing down experiences, becoming aware and thinking about events critically, allowed the participants to rethink their stories and revalue themselves , their families and their experiences.

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