Timothy San Pedro

Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies in Higher Education invites readers to reconceptualize the way they think about teaching, learning, and living together in a pluralistic society. Co-written by a teacher educator and his students, this practical resource shares the ways a uniquely positioned graduate course implemented key tenets of culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogy (CRSP) in their teaching and practice, allowing for the reconnection between mind and body, or Embodied CRSP. By weaving together narratives and experiences between the instructor and students, this book not only challenges conventional teaching methods but also underscores the power of stories in creating deep, impactful learning environments. Readers are encouraged to embrace a commitment to storytelling, relational learning, embodied pedagogy, and creating sacred truth spaces—essential and necessary tools for nurturing understanding, empathy, and generative tensions among students from diverse backgrounds. Book Features: Builds on the foundational pedagogical theories of Gloria Ladson-Billing’s Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and Django Paris’ Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies by showing the ways their scholarship was enacted in a graduate-level course. Offers accessible stories from the instructor and students, showing how they engaged in a meta-reflection upon the ways CRSP were both the focus of the course and the pedagogical grounding for teaching collaboratively. Focal chapters feature students’ perspectives that center key details, assignments, concepts, lessons, and strategies that made the learning space so productive and transformative for them.

Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies in Higher Education invites readers to reconceptualize the way they think about teaching, learning, and living together in a pluralistic society. Co-written by a teacher educator and his students, this practical resource shares the ways a uniquely positioned graduate course implemented key tenets of culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogy (CRSP) in their teaching and practice, allowing for the reconnection between mind and body, or Embodied CRSP. By weaving together narratives and experiences between the instructor and students, this book not only challenges conventional teaching methods but also underscores the power of stories in creating deep, impactful learning environments. Readers are encouraged to embrace a commitment to storytelling, relational learning, embodied pedagogy, and creating sacred truth spaces—essential and necessary tools for nurturing understanding, empathy, and generative tensions among students from diverse backgrounds. Book Features: Builds on the foundational pedagogical theories of Gloria Ladson-Billing’s Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and Django Paris’ Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies by showing the ways their scholarship was enacted in a graduate-level course. Offers accessible stories from the instructor and students, showing how they engaged in a meta-reflection upon the ways CRSP were both the focus of the course and the pedagogical grounding for teaching collaboratively. Focal chapters feature students’ perspectives that center key details, assignments, concepts, lessons, and strategies that made the learning space so productive and transformative for them.

Protecting the Promise is the first book in the Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies Series edited by Django Paris. It features a collection of short stories told in collaboration with five Native families that speak to the everyday aspects of Indigenous educational resurgence rooted in the intergenerational learning that occurs between mothers and their children. The author defines "resurgence" as the ongoing actions that recenter Indigenous realities and knowledges, while simultaneously denouncing and healing from the damaging effects of settler colonial systems. By illuminating the potential of such educational resurgence, the book counters deficit paradigms too often placed on Indigenous communities. It also demonstrates the need to include Indigenous Knowledges within the curriculum for both in-school and out-of-school settings. These engaging narratives reframe Indigenous parents as critical and compassionate educators, cultural brokers, and storytellers who are central partners in the education of their children. Book Features:A window into how and why Indigenous resurgence through (and sometimes in resistance to) education can happen. A narrative style of writing that builds accessible stories that are both relatable and connected to larger social issues. An interdisciplinary approach that has implications for pre- and in-service teachers and school administrators, as well as for the communities from which these stories originated. A teacher-friendly Afterword that offers lesson ideas for the classroom and companion questions to the short stories.

Protecting the Promise is the first book in the Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies Series edited by Django Paris. It features a collection of short stories told in collaboration with five Native families that speak to the everyday aspects of Indigenous educational resurgence rooted in the intergenerational learning that occurs between mothers and their children. The author defines "resurgence" as the ongoing actions that recenter Indigenous realities and knowledges, while simultaneously denouncing and healing from the damaging effects of settler colonial systems. By illuminating the potential of such educational resurgence, the book counters deficit paradigms too often placed on Indigenous communities. It also demonstrates the need to include Indigenous Knowledges within the curriculum for both in-school and out-of-school settings. These engaging narratives reframe Indigenous parents as critical and compassionate educators, cultural brokers, and storytellers who are central partners in the education of their children. Book Features:A window into how and why Indigenous resurgence through (and sometimes in resistance to) education can happen. A narrative style of writing that builds accessible stories that are both relatable and connected to larger social issues. An interdisciplinary approach that has implications for pre- and in-service teachers and school administrators, as well as for the communities from which these stories originated. A teacher-friendly Afterword that offers lesson ideas for the classroom and companion questions to the short stories.