Half an Inch from the Edge

Noah Borrero’s scholarship is grounded in the belief that the cultural strengths of communities provide unique opportunities for teaching, learning, and social transformation. He teaches courses in bilingual education, critical pedagogy, action research, learning theory, and teaching for diversity and social justice.Patrick Camangian engages in grassroots and professional efforts to advocate for humanizing, socially transformative education as a university professor, district and school-based educator, and community organizer. Currently, he is turning to both critical theory and research in the health sciences to inform his research findings on systemic harm, social resistance, and health and well-being in education. Rick Ayers’ research and writing focuses on social justice and critical pedagogy in education. He is author or co-author of a number of books, including Teaching the Taboo, An Empty Seat in Class: Teaching and Learning After the Death of a Student, and You can’t fire the bad ones: And 18 other myths about teachers, teachers unions, and public education.Sharim Hannegan-Martinez is a first generation doctoral candidate in Education at UCLA. Her research, which is heavily influenced by her experiences as a Chicana growing up on the San Diego/Tijuana border and her time as a teacher in Oakland, focuses primarily on the role of loving relationships in helping young people cope with, navigate and heal from traumatic stressors in the context of urban classrooms.Esther Flores is a teacher committed to continuously improving her practice in order to provide young people with a relevant and rigorous education that empowers them to build a more just society. She currently teaches Ethnic Studies and World History at Mission High School in San Francisco. She earned her Masters in Teaching and single-subject bilingual Social Science teaching credential from the Urban Education and Social Justice program at the University of San Francisco in 2014.

• ForewordPrefaceIntroduction: Socially transformative teaching: Disrupting White supremacyChapter One: Notes to Mr. G: Making an entirely new storyChapter Two: Reflections on Mr. G: Humanizing connections through relevant dataChapter Three: Autoethnographies with Esther: Building community and self-disciplineChapter Four: Reflections on Esther: Assessment – authentic vs. repressiveChapter Five: Reading the World and the Word with Sharim and Cam: The power of performance poetryChapter Six: Reflections on Sharim and Cam: Youth voice, student literaciesChapter Seven: Routines for liberation with Ms. A: Classroom community in third gradeChapter Eight: Reflections on Ms. A: Revisiting the purpose of schoolingChapter Nine: Socially transformative pedagogy and the tasks for urban teachersReferencesAbout the Authors

This wonderfully readable, highly insightful, text gets at the heart of socially transformative pedagogy. Written with affectionate regard for both the lives of early-career teachers and their students, the key is a critical pedagogy of self-reflection and analysis that leads them to invest deeply in their students’ lives, and in so doing, re-define teaching as less a career and more a way of life where radical hope and possibility reside.