Teachers Bridging Difference

Teachers Bridging Difference describes how educators can practice connecting with others across differences to become culturally responsive teachers. The book illustrates how educators can draw on the visual arts as a resource to explore their own identities and those of their students, and how to increase their understanding of the ways our lives intersect across sociocultural differences. Drawing on scholarship from multiple disciplines, Marit Dewhurst identifies four stances designed to help educators connect with students in today's multicultural classrooms. To practice these stances, the book introduces arts-based activities, ranging from community maps and conversation portraits to scenario comics and reflection zines, adapted to be accessible to even those with little arts experience and which can be executed with a wide variety of materials and media. Dewhurst provides an arts-based toolkit for teachers interested in exploring issues of identity and difference as a foundation for creating a more just and equal society. "The narratives and art of the educators and preservice teachers in this book give us hope for what education (not schooling) can and should be." --From the foreword by Dorinda J. Carter Andrews, assistant dean of Equity Outreach Initiatives and associate professor of Teacher Education, Michigan State University "Teachers Bridging Difference offers a powerful testimony supporting the belief that art is an educational necessity because it serves as our lifeline to examine our collective humanity while searching for meaning within ourselves and our communities, particularly in this tumultuous period of injustice. As Dewhurst asserts, as parents, educators, scholars, and stakeholders, we need to access every available modality in order to cocreate spaces that center belonging and critical consciousness. Our future depends on it." --Marcella Runell Hall, vice president for student life and lecturer in religion, Mount Holyoke College Marit Dewhurst is the director of art education and an associate professor in art and museum education at City College of New York, where she also directs City Art Lab, a free afterschool art program for teens.