Is This English?

by Fecho, Bob; Ladson-Billings, Gloria

• ISBN13: 9780807744079
• ISBN10: 0807744077
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-12-01
• Publisher: Teachers College Pr

Summary

This is the story of a white high school English teacher, Bob Fecho, and his students of colour who mutually engage issues of literacy, language, learning, and culture. Through his journey, Fecho presents a method of "critical inquiry" that allows students and teachers to take intellectual and social risks in the classroom to make meaning together and, ultimately, to transform literacy education. Featuring the voices, beliefs, and struggles of urban adolescents and their teachers, this important book: describes how critical inquiry enabled students and teachers to cross cultural boundaries and enact a pedagogy that empowers students; provides a much-needed alternative to current best practice thinking and educational mandates that demean teacher knowledge and alienate adolescent students; and demonstrates how difficult realities can and should enter the classroom, showing teachers how to channel them into language, discourse, and classroom projects that improve students' literacy and thinking.

Author Biography

Bob Fecho is an associate professor of reading education at the University of Georgia.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	ix
FOREWORD BY GLORIA LADSON-BILLINGS	xi
1. A Sense of Beginning; A Beginning of Sense	1	(11)
2. Hopelessness and Possibility	12	(14)
3. Two's Company; Three's a Small Learning Community	26	(13)
4. Some of My Best Friends Are Theorists	39	(12)
5. Yo, Wazzup?	51
6. Why Are You Doing This?	11	(80)
7. Learning as Aaron (with Aaron Green)	91	(22)
8. Refusing to Go Along with the Joke	113	(25)
9. In Search of Wise Beauty and Beautiful Wisdom	138	(21)
NOTES	159	(2)
REFERENCES	161	(4)
INDEX	165	(8)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR	173