This book offers educators actionable models for creating responsive, affirming learning environments that cultivate student agency, joy, and commitment to social transformation.
These essays show how pre-K12 educators enact culturally sustaining literacy pedagogies (CSLP)drawing on students cultural and linguistic knowledge to foster identity, critical consciousness, and academic skills.
Each chapter features a practitioner coauthor and highlights concrete classroom strategies that challenge whiteness and center the experiences of communities of Color. The authors also provide a practical discussion of how each teaching practice can be levelled across the grades, and what it might look like when used with different age groups. Topics range from family and community literacies to critical language practices and multimodal assessment.
With many user-friendly tools, Making Student Voices Matter is a valuable resource for inservice professional learning, teacher preparation programs, and equity-centered coaching.
Book Features:
Bridges Critical Theory and Everyday Practice: Theoretical conceptssuch as critical consciousness, cultural humility, and reflexivityare translated into concrete, classroom-tested practices. Centers Practitioner Voices and Lived Experience: Teacher-authored chapters offer firsthand accounts of implementing CSLP in real-world school contexts. Expands the Definition of Literacy: Offers an interdisciplinary and multimodal understanding of literacy that includes language, arts, digital media, oral traditions, and nature-based literacies. Disrupts Whiteness in Instructional Practice: Shows how educators can actively challenge whiteness, white ideology, and curricular erasure by affirming the identities of students from historically marginalized communities. Includes User-Friendly Features for Immediate Application: Provides tools such as instructional snapshots, classroom vignettes, student work samples, and reflection prompts.
Contents
Foreword Doris Walker-Dalhouse ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction
Olivia Ann Williams, Julia A. Lynch, Brooke Ward Taira, Sara A. Field,
Shuling Yang, Judy Paulick, and Rachelle S. Savitz 1
1. The Journey to Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Literacy: Using
a Critical Community of Practice to Transform Teaching 23
Abigail A. Amoako Kayser, Brian R. Kayser, Carly Dirghangi, Sharlene Chang,
and Michele Yeaton
2. These Are the Things No One Taught Me: Critical Literacy to Center
Black Student Experiences 43
Janell Miller, Caitlin Donovan, and Myriama Smith-Traore
3. Centering Criticality in Practice in Special Education: Realizing
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies Through Critical Compassion 59
Antonio L. Ellis and Keisha Woods
4. Decolonizing the Early Childhood Classroom: Using Critical Language
Awareness to Support Identity Development and Sustain Culture 79
Jessica Hiltabidel and Chrystena Hill
5. Bridging Privileged Distances: Developing Critical Literacy in a Grade
12 English Literature Class 97
Manuel Lorenzo M. Aldeguer IV
6. Making Their Mark: Reading Stamped in 9th-Grade English Language Arts
113
Sarah Fleming and Catherine De Forest* (Pseudonym)
7. Strengthening Community Connections Through ina-Based Education 127
Paul Balazs, Janelle nela Matsuura, and Rainbow Pharaon
8. Black Oral History Experience: Creating a Culturally Sustaining History
Lesson 143
Elizabeth McCauley McDonald and Tara V. R. Dozier
9. And They Lived Happily Ever After: Translanguaging Fairy Tales in an
International School 159
Catherine McDougall, Sarah Ratcliffe, Katelyn Cuny, and Ashley Sawyer
10. Fostering Asset-Based Literacy Practices Through Community Asset
Mapping 175
Ching-Ching Lin, Kayla Benton, Youngmi Joo, Cielo Inicio Pezo, Camila
Minaya, and Renata Nadia Bajana Yepez
11. Centering Students Lives in Their Texts: Writing Culturally Relevant
Texts With Emerging and Uninspired Readers 193
Gabriella M. Diaz and Mary E. Lyons
Afterword: Vibrating Freely for the Classrooms of Tomorrow Antero Garcia
209
Index 215
About the Editors and Contributors 227
Rachelle S. Savitz is an associate professor at East Carolina University and a former K12 literacy coach/interventionist.
Judy Paulick is an associate professor at the University of Virginia and a former elementary literacy specialist.
Olivia Ann Williams is a literacy researcher and a high school English teacher in Virginia.
Brooke Ward Taira is an associate professor at the University of Hawaii at Mnoa.
Julia A. Lynch is a Black-poet-assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
Shuling Yang is an assistant professor at the University of Maryland.
Sara A. Field is high school teacher and an adjunct professor at George Mason University.
