City Kids, City Schools: More Reports from the Front Row »

William Ayers is Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Gloria Ladson-Billings is the Kellner Family Professor of Urban Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Gregory Michie teaches in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Illinois State University in Chicago. Pedro Noguera is Professor of Teaching and Learning at New York University.

A follow-up to the classic collection on the realities of teaching and learning in urban schools.

Of the approximately 50 million public school students in the United States, more than half are in urban schools. A contemporary companion to City Kids, City Teachers: Reports from the Front Row, this new and timely collection has been compiled by four of the country's most prominent urban educators. Contributors including Sandra Cisneros, Jonathan Kozol, Sapphire, and Patricia J. Williams provide some of the best writing on life in city schools and neighborhoods. Young people and practicing teachers, poets and scholars, social critics and journalists offer unique takes on topics ranging from culturally relevant teaching and scripted curricula to the criminalization of youth, gentrification, and the inequities of school funding.

In the words of Sonia Nieto, City Kids, City Schools "challenge[s] the conventional wisdom of what it means to teach in urban schools."

Foreword   Ruby Dee     ix
Prologue: "A Talk to Teachers"   James Baldwin     xiii
Introduction     xxiii
City Kids
Introduction   William Ayers     3
from Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago   LeAlan Jones   David Isay     8
from Holler If You Hear Me   Gregory Michie     10
from Push   Sapphire     19
"descendancy"   Mayda del Valle     28
from The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream   Sampson Davis     31
"morning papers"   Marlon Unas Esguerra     37
"Four Skinny Trees"   Sandra Cisneros     41
"To 'See' Again"   Luis J. Rodriguez     43
City Teachers
Introduction   Gregory Michie     55
"Building Community from Chaos"   Linda Christensen     60
"Mr. B"   William Ayers     74
"One of 'These Children'"   Monique Redeaux     85
"Are Those Real?"   Anafaith Lubliner     92
"The Curie 12: A Case for Teacher Activism"   Katie Hogan     97
"daddy in jail"   TyehimbaJess     102
"Everything Flowers"   Lisa Espinosa     104
"Lessons from Teachers"   Lisa Delpit     113
City Classrooms, City Schools
Introduction   Pedro A. Noguera     139
from The Shame of the Nation   Jonathon Kozol     145
"'Yes, But How Do We Do It?': Practicing Culturally Relevant Pedagogy"   Gloria Ladson-Billings     162
"Desde Entonces, Soy Chicana: A Mexican Immigrant Student Resists Subtractive Schooling"   Angela Valenzuela     178
"What Teachers Need to Know About Poverty"   Sue Books     184
"disconnect: 1984 & the failure of education or CPS gets an F U"   Kevin Coval     195
"'Comin' from the School of Hard Knocks': Hip-hop and the Revolution of English Classrooms in City Schools"   Ernest Morrell   Jeff Duncan-Andrade     197
"Parents as Writers: Transforming the Role of Parents in Urban Schools"   Janise Hurtig     207
"NCLB's Selective Vision of Equality: Some Gaps Count More Than Others"   Stan Karp     219
City Issues: Beyond the School's Walls
Introduction   Gloria Ladson-Billings     229
"Education in Our Dying Cities"   Grace Lee Boggs     235
"Unnatural Disasters: Race and Poverty"   Michael Eric Dyson     241
"And What Will Become of Children Like Miguel Fernandez?: Education, Immigration, and the Future of Latinos in the United States"   Pedro A. Noguera     255
"Education and the New Urban Workforce in a Global City"   Pauline Lipman     273
"brooklyn"   Suheir Hammad     287
"Little House in the 'Hood"   Patricia J. Williams     290
"Race War: Policing, Incarceration, and the Containment of Black Youth"   Bakari Kitwana     294
"Remembrance: Keeping Kids at the Center of Educational Policy"   Wayne Au     305
"Putting Education at the Center"   Jean Anyon     310
Afterword: The First Day   Jeff Chang     325
About the Editors     328
Permissions     331
Index     335