Beyond Heroes and Holidays : A Practical Guide to K-12 Anti-Racist, Multicultural Education and Staff Development

An incredible, informative, collection of essays, articles, analysis, interviews, primary documents and interactive & interdisciplinary teaching aids on civil rights, movement building, and what it means for all of the inhabitants of the planet. With sections on Critical Literacy, The Arts, Mathematics, Technology, Science, Geography, Language, School-Wide Activities, Holidays and Heritage, Talking Back, Early Childhood, Readings and Teaching Aids. Packed into nearly 450 oversize pages are photographs, songs, statements, and work form the likes of such great writers, historians, and activists as Bill Bigelow, James Loewen, Peggy Mcintosh, Luis Rodirguez, Kai James, Clem Marshall, Marta Urquilla, Julie Bisson, the editors and dozens more. What a treasure trove. And what a vital (and useful) tool.

Enid Lee consults internationally on language, culture and race as they relate to equity in education and organizational development. She is a public speaker, facilitator, writer, community builder and Director of Enidlee Consultants. Enid has taught school in the Caribbean and Canada and has been writing about racism and education for the last 15 years. Her publications include Letters To Marcia: A Teacher's Guide To Anti-Racist Education and the docudramas "Quick To Judge" and "Food For Thought" in the television series "Many Voices." She advocates for parents in school systems and helps build self-determined Black communities in the cities where she works. Through her consulting firm, Enid assists urban school districts and individual schools to restructure themselves for equitable outcomes for all students. She holds a Masters Degree in Caribbean Literature and Linguistics. Her current area of research is the development of anti-racist school climates. E-mail: enidlee@aol.com Deborah Menkart is the Executive Director of Teaching for Change. She has developed and taught a staff development course for the D.C. Public Schools called "Teaching for Equity: Theory and Practice of Multicultural Education." Deborah has co-edited a number of publications including Teaching About Haiti and Rediscovering America and "Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching. She holds a Masters degree in Curriculum and Instruction from The George Washington University and has taught both high school and adult education classes. E-mail: tfc@teachingforchange.org Margo Okazawa-Rey is Professor at the School of Social Work, San Francisco State University. She works in university, public school and community settings addressing the issue of racism and other forms of oppression through activist scholarship, education , and political organizing. She is particularly interested in the problems affecting peoples of color, especially women of color. Margo's current research/activist project is examining the effects of and organizing against violence against women and child ren by the U.S. military in East Asia, which also includes documenting the experiences of mixed-race children, the offspring of GIs and Asian women. Margo has served on various editorial boards of academic journals and boards of directors of community org anizations and has worked with grassroots organizing groups in Boston and the San Francisco Bay area. Among her most recent publication is Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives (Mt. View, CA: Mayfield Publishing, 1998) co-edited with Gwyn Kirk. E-ma il: mor@sfsu.edu

In Beyond Heroes and Holidays we attempt to expose race and racism as they operate in schools by including lessons that help students, parents, and school staff pay attention to race. For example ‘The Cherokee/Seminole Removal Play’ introduces students to one of the strong alliances formed between Africans and Native Americans in the early 1800s. The lesson Exclusion- Chinese in 19th Century America” looks at the period of the Gold Rush through the eyes of the often-ignored Chinese immigrants who, contrary to the westward movement of European immigrants, began their journey from the west coast of the United States and moved eastward…Through The Institutionalization of Racism” students see the concerted system effort required to institutionalize racism in the United States, which included teaching European immigrants to be white… This lesson also makes clear that racism is not natural” because it requires the force of multiple institutions to establish and maintain it. The analysis of racism conveys hope; if something was constructed, as opposed to being natural, it can be changed.” ---Excerpt from the Introduction