I wanted to share a new Self-Help book on Education for parents to share with you. The book is called Working-Class Kids and Visionary Educators in a Multiracial High School: A Story of Belonging written by Karen V. Hansen (Author), Nicholas Monroe. I received the book in exchange for this review. Inside this post is my affiliate links. If you click on the links and make a purchase, I will make a small percentage from the products you purchase.
Education has always been something I’m interested in and love learning about especially from times I didn’t know much about. I share the information with my family. I loved learning what the people in this amazing book did and how they were able to help working-class kids and how the students and teachers collaborated to change things.
They were able to reduce violence which is remarkable. I was excited to find out US Black history and Mexican American literature and increase girls’ access to sports which more Schools need to do. Working-Class Kids and Visionary Educators in a Multiracial High School: A Story of Belonging is a must-read book for parents and educators alike.
About the book:
In the 1960s and 1970s-when many communities resisted school integration and schools held low expectations for working-class kids and constricted teachers’ autonomy-educators and students at a multiracial public high school in California collaborated to achieve something remarkable: they created a cohesive community that gave students a powerful sense of belonging.
Over its 25-year life, the student leaders of Sunnyvale High School worked with visionary staff to reduce violence, broaden and enrich the curriculum to include US Black history and Mexican American literature, and increase girls’ access to sports. Working together, they fostered a collective sense of pride, persistence, and possibility that fed the success of students and graduates in careers and in communities.
How did adults and youth forge such a powerful ethos of engagement and mutual responsibility, enabling so many to thrive? At a time when issues of racial and gender inequality are arguably as heated as they were half a century ago, what lessons does the school offer? In this book, the story of Sunnyvale High School is told by the students and educators who shaped it and made it meaningful. They attest to the lifelong impact of their shared experience.
About the Author: Karen V. Hansen
Karen V. Hansen is the Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University, with appointments in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and History. The author or editor of six landmark books and numerous scholarly articles and chapters, Hansen bridges crucial gaps between gender, class, and kinship embedded within racial hierarchies and bounded communities. Her interdisciplinary practice explores the causes, consequences, and meanings of structural shifts in people’s daily lives.
Hansen’s award-winning monograph, Encounter on the Great Plains, built on fifteen years of sustained ethnographic fieldwork, as she fostered relationships with subjects and gathered oral histories. Listening with respect for voice and struggle, she centered the narratives as a way to develop a fresh approach to settler and indigenous coexistence in the context of Native dispossession.
Hansen’s investigative journey has also mapped the social interactions of workers in antebellum New England and explored the nature of family support systems across class in contemporary California. Her new focus is on cascading, the process by which downward mobility is triggered and accelerated or resisted and prevented.
Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
