News

Many of the wonderful authors who have read at Busboys and Poets, where Teaching for Change operates the bookstore, can now be seen online. Here are a few that are well worth watching from the comfort of your home and/or using for educational presentations.

Ronald Takaki spoke about the new edition of A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America while in town for an in-depth on-line interview on CSPAN. In his talk at Busboys and Poets he read and analyzed excerpts from President Obama's Inaugural speech.





Alice Walker read from We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness at Busboys and Poets during the Inaugural weekend on January 19, 2009. She was in town for the Inaugural Peace Ball. Her full reading can be viewed on-line at CSPAN2- Book-TV.
Photo of Alice Walker by Nicole Young, Busboys and Poets Events Team.

Bill Ayers gave a powerful talk on education, hosted by Teaching for Change and DC VOICE. View online at CSPAN-Book TV. This moving and informative presentation is very useful for teachers, policy makers and parents. (Note that the film clip starts mid-paragraph.) Ayers followed the talk, held at All Souls Unitarian Church, with a book signing for The New Press publication, CityKids, City Schools: More Reports from the Front Row.

Howard Zinn gave a rousing keynote speech to teachers at the National Council for the Social Studies Conference this past fall. The full speech can be viewed online on the Zinn Education Project website. The talk is an excellent resource for professional development. Zinn also spoke to standing room only audience at Busboys and Poets in DC on February 2 about the current economic crisis and the film based on Voices of a People's History which is close to completion. More news about the Zinn Education Project is in the February 2009 newsletter (PDF).

We regret to report that we cannot afford to sustain the Teaching for Change print catalog and webstore. This catalog played a vital role in promoting progressive teaching resources for 16 years.

Teaching for Change’s board and publications staff tried everything imaginable to sustain the catalog/webstore, but the challenges were substantial, including:

School cutbacks that have made textbooks the almost exclusive (yet sadly limited and biased) source of “knowledge”; Amazon.com, which entices customers with steep discounts and free shipping; Decreased attendance at national conferences and higher exhibit costs; Increasingly centralized school purchasing procedures; and, on top of it all, The broader economic crisis.

In November, 2008, a Teaching for Change Board Task Force was formed to research viable alternatives to the catalog but the myriad reasons (listed above) led us to the sad conclusion: we cannot sustain the catalog in the current marketplace. However, we are committed to finding ways to promote progressive teaching resources. And we’ll still fill purchase orders through our bookstore.

Closing the catalog has required laying off the person who worked on distribution for the past 8 years, Carolina Valencia. We honor and deeply appreciate her years of service, passion for Teaching for Change’s mission, and dedication to the catalog.

We will continue to sell our own TFC publications (Beyond Heroes and Holidays, Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching, Caribbean Connections series, etc.) and enhance our non-profit bookstore operations at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C.

The Brighter Side at Teaching for Change
On a more hopeful note, Teaching for Change’s other program work is going strong, including:

Parent organizing in public schools with our Tellin’ Stories Project;

Collaboration with Rethinking Schools on the Zinn Education Project;

Leadership development through our Early Childhood Equity Initiative;

Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching curriculum and professional development in McComb, Mississippi; and

A growing bookstore and quality events at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C.

When in DC, please make your book purchases at our non-profit bookstore at Busboys and Poets. We can special order any title and, as mentioned above, fill purchase orders. Teaching for Change staff operate the bookstore, and you can enjoy our carefully selected collection of thousands of progressive books for children, young adults, educators, and the broader community.

Appreciation to Our Supporters
We are deeply grateful for the outpouring of concern and appreciation from hundreds of educators across the country, who have asked what else could be done. We are fairly confident that, with help from many colleagues, that we have left no stone unturned. Below are some examples of efforts made:

	A full-page plea for help ran in the Fall 2007 issue of Rethinking Schools. Bill Bigelow wrote: “We are in danger of losing a vital institution in the social justice education movement. The Teaching for Change catalog — far and away the best and most comprehensive resource focusing exclusively on critical, multicultural teaching materials — is in dire financial distress.” Read full text here.
	Cutting costs on the print catalog: the 32-page print catalog was reduced to 4 pages as we moved its design in-house.
	To discourage people from using our catalog as a shopping list to buy the items elsewhere, we offered free items with each order. However, instead of increasing orders, a lot of people requested many free items along with a purchase of one small item.
	Upgraded the webstore and increased online marketing increased online orders but mostly with very small orders—sustaining the catalog requires a significant number of large purchase orders each month.
	Special opportunities to promote the catalog to new audiences netted few orders.
	June 2008: inclusion of the catalog in 4,000 free Zinn Education Project packets distributed to educators in all 50 states.
	September 2008: Teaching Tolerance released an article we submitted on stereotypes in children’s literature about Africa, listing Teaching for Change as the source to buy the recommended books.
	Conference coordinator Lauren Cooper’s careful analysis of how to pare down costs at conferences included driving to Chicago and Florida to save on shipping and receiving costs.
	Many groups and individuals offered in-kind outreach support:

	Teachers and educators distributing the catalog to their students; Rethinking Schools listed Teaching for Change as the source for many recommended books; Teaching Tolerance linked to our webstore for many titles and themes; Philadelphia School Notebook provided a free banner ads on their website; EdChange listed us as the key link for book purchases; Teachers 4 Social Justice in the Bay Area and Teachers for Social Justice in Chicago provided free conference booths and services; NYCORE member Bree Picower had all her education students buy one of their course books from our catalog; The Georgetown Day School Equity Collaborative and the SFUSD Teacher Intern Program gave gift certificates to participants in their training; Publishers (including New Press, Syracuse Cultural Workers, and Rethinking Schools donated books to use as our free item incentive; Authors promoted their book for sale on our webstore, including Peniel Joseph with Waiting ‘til the Midnight Hour and Nizam Ali with Ben’s Chili Bowl; Many individuals donated to Teaching for Change to support the catalog.

We are exploring alternative ways to continue to provide lists of carefully selected progressive teaching resources. We just will not be able to distribute them through our webstore.

Contact Lauren Cooper or Deborah Menkart if you have questions or suggestions.

Barack Obama made his first visit to local Washington as President-elect with a meal at Ben's Chili Bowl on January 10th. Obama joins a long list of politicians and celebrities who frequent Ben's Chili Bowl. Ben's is operated by  Nizam Ali (Teaching for Change board member ex-officio) and his family. Ben's just celebrated its 50th anniversary as a DC landmark. Thanks to the generosity of the Alis, a portion of the proceeds of the photo book commemorating the history of Ben's Chili Bowl are being donated to Teaching for Change.

Parents in the Immokalee, Florida Public Schools made a quilt of family stories, using the approach they learned from the Teaching for Change Tellin’ Stories Project. School district representative Kristin Millet reported that most of the stories were about the experience of leaving their home country and coming to the United States.

Once the quilt was complete, the school district held a formal ceremony to recognize the parents and hear their stories.

Here is one parent's story about her quilt square: "This is my story. The house symbolizes my parents’ house in Mexico where I grew up. It was difficult for me to part from my house because I really enjoyed living there with all of the family and my mother didn’t want me to leave home. I decided to go the United States to be with my husband who left one year before me. To arrive to the USA, I had to walk for four days through the desert. The trees represent the shade where I rested when not walking. There are two flags, the Mexican flag represents my family and our family’s traditions and the American flag represents my children’s country and their future. I am thankful that I made it to the United States where my two children were born healthy and are receiving a good education."

Enid Lee, co-editor of Beyond Heroes and Holidays, received the Pritchy Smith Multicultural Educator Award at the 2008 National Association of Multicultural Education (NAME) Annual Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. Here is an excerpt from her remarks: "I accept this award on behalf of the children of Katrina whom we have lost and also for the children who have been left behind by Katrina and other national examples of neglect and injustice; children whom we must reach and teach to the best of our abilities. I recognize the challenge of receiving the award at this moment in world history with the election of Barack Hussein Obama as the first African American president of the United States of America; and I embrace the opportunity that this moment offers us all for collective action in the name of equity and social justice. Yes We Can! Yes We Must! Yes We Will!"

Enid is pictured, right, with her sister Robertine Chaderton, left. (Photo by Mike Trokan.)

Many people in the U.S. and worldwide have been experiencing an economic crisis for a long time. But recent events have spread the crisis and made it front page news. Here is a list of a few teaching resources to (as one of the books is titled) "teach economics as if people mattered."

Sonia Nieto, internationally respected scholar on multicultural education, is donating a portion of the royalties from her latest book, Dear Paulo: Letters to Teachers Who Dare Teach to Teaching for Change and Seeds of Solidarity. Nizam Ali and Tracey Gold Bennet are donating the royalties from the 50th anniversary Ben's Chili Bowl photo book, and Mario Bencastro donated copies of his young adult novel, A Promise to Keep.

Teaching Tolerance's Fall 2008 issue features the article I Didn't Know There Were Cities in Africa! submitted by Teaching for Change. Co-authored by Brenda Randolph of Africa Access Review and Betsy deMulder, the article critiques the stereotypes in popular children's books and films and provides a list of recommended titles and more resources.

Teaching for Change and Rethinking Schools are pleased to release the distribution demographic report for 4,000 free Zinn Education Packets. 

Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor, a former student of Howard Zinn, 4,000 educators from across the country have received Zinn Education Packets in the first phase of the project. Read more at www.zinnedproject.org.

The National Education Association (NEA) produced a 10-minute film about the work of Tellin' Stories. Check out the film online.

The film was produced for a 3-day NEA/Maryland State Parental Information and Resource Center (MD PIRC)-sponsored training institute that our staff provided to teacher and parent teams from across the country.