Honoring Identities
Subtitle
Creating Culturally Responsive Learning Communities
"Honoring Identities" argues that creating culturally responsive learning communities is a process which begins with building community, cultivating certain student and teacher dispositions, nurturing social justice, leveraging the power of talk and dialogic exchange, using Cultural Identity Literature (CIL) to build bridges and to normalize difference, and fostering a culture of civil discourse. "Honoring Identities" provides both theory and practice to advance the important mission of building culturally responsive mindsets and to ensure that all students feel like they have a place at the learning table.
Bio
After earning her PhD in curriculum and instruction from ASU in 2011 with an emphasis in English education, Miller has taught in and directed teacher training programs. She currently serves as an adjunct instructor, educational consultant, co-director of Writing Projects Under the Big Sky, and manager of thinkingzone.org. Her research interests revolve around issues of literacy sponsorship.
Praise for this book
Donna Miller’s Honoring Identities gives busy teachers and teacher educators numerous strategies for enacting critical thinking and multicultural literacies instruction in their classrooms. With suggestions for self-reflection and classroom activities, readers will find much to gain through the tried-and-tested strategies Miller outlines. This book is a must-have for teachers and teacher educators who have long searched for practical activities that can launch serious inquiry into means for accomplishing culturally relevant and culturally sustaining pedagogies.
Heather E. Bruce Professor emerita, English education; former director of the Montana Writing Project, University of Montana
This book is reminiscent of Harold Wong’s First Days of School, in that it provides detailed resources on how to meet the needs of students in ways that set up the teacher and students, both, for success. "Honoring Identities" is a useful book from one of our nation’s most experienced experts!
James Blasingame Executive director of the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the National Council of Teachers of English
