Books Shaping My Pedagogy with

Culturally Responsive & Abolitionist Teaching

“Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”

Understanding why students may choose to self-segregate in both social and academic settings is important for educators in implementing culturally responsive pedagogy. This “20 Years” reflection piece that shares some of Tatum’s thoughts is crucial to understanding the evolving discourse around contested concepts like “culturally responsive” or “abolitionist teaching.” Connects to UDL through the UDL Guideline Engagement Checkpoint 7.1 Optimize individual choice and autonomy, emphasis on the autonomy for students whose socio-culture is different than their teachers’.

Mad at School

Chapter 2: Ways to Move

This chapter introduces what Price calls kairotic space; “I definite a kairotic space as one characterized by all or most of these criteria:

1. Real-time unfolding of events

2. Impromptu communication that is required or encouraged

3. In-person contact

4. A strong social element

5. High stakes” (p. 61).

Price goes on to state that these spaces are understudied. For UDL in an inclusive classroom, kairotic space is a “flexible approach to normative time frames” (p. 62). I think this is really important for all students, but when UDL invokes the “use of space,” these five criteria as criteria to de-construct norms in a general education classroom are most relevant. Consider students with autism or severe/profound disabilities.

A Disability History of the United States

Nielsen’s work is a must-read for people who work alongside people with disabilities. As educators, I think we have a unique role to actively deconstruct the historical wrongs that were outrightly done (and in some instances, are still done) to our students. Specifically for EC teachers, Nielsen’s Chapter 5 I Am Disabled, And Must Go At Something Else Besides Hard Labor; this chapter frames what’s at stake for EC teachers and their students. This might be readily appropriate for students with transition plans and post-secondary life in view. But the work as a whole provides a history that gets at the DuBosian double consciousness that our students may encounter. This connects to UDL because non-inclusive practices and any reversion to previous practices goes against the recent deinstitutionalization phase of the US disability, and that’s ableist and should be unacceptable for teachers.