Teaching While Black

A powerful read. Lewis offers insight as a practitioner, while stroking her pen with the skill of a poet. Teaching While Black makes the case for culturally-relevant pedagogy and diversity in curriculum. Lewis is the student turned educator who is embedded. She brings you into urban school communities in a way that other writers of education simply cannot. -- Michael Partis * Instructor at CUNY BMCC's Center for Ethnic Studies and Director of Research and Policy at Young Movement Inc. * Ms. Lewis, in this must read tome, highlights how all people are not one identity. * The Huffington Post * I am unaware of any book written in a style that is comparable to Teaching While Black, which focuses on public schools in the Bronx from the perspective of a woman of color on the front lines and in the trenches. Lewis provides educators of color with a better sense of how to advocate for themselves and for the children, parents, and communities they serve. -- Lori Martin * author of Big Box Schools: Race, Education, and the Danger of the Wal-Martization of Public Schools in America * A captivating read. Lewis' real, honest, broad yet thorough approach exposes so much of what must be known about the experiences of teaching in an urban public school setting. Lewis opens a door, not just into her classroom, but into her heart. -- Adam Goldberg * Special Needs educator and Apple Distinguished Educator * Pamela Lewis is a brilliant young writer and teacher. In combining these two loves, Ms. Lewis has brought to the world as authentic urban narrative about life as a teacher in public education as we have ever seen. Her story is far more compelling than many other books written by teachers because Ms. Lewis takes us so vividly through an urban young Black woman's journey from the anticipation of going to college and becoming a teacher. Teaching While Black accomplishes all of this with a purposeful mix of street smarts and intellectual observations that far exceed her years. This is a must read for those who want an insider's view on the real day to day inside the classroom. It is especially useful for those who have either forgotten, or never know what it is like to navigate the rough terrain of public school teaching in the 21st century. -- Stuart Rhoden * Arizona State University * I started teaching decades before Pamela Lewis, Yet I relived those years with joy and sorrow through her account. I also realized how important it is to reverse the dramatic loss of Black teachers in our schools. It's not by accident. This riveting and personal narrative is critical to Black, Brown and White teachers. I can't wait to pass it on to my novice teaching granddaughter. This should be read by every incoming teacher in America. -- Deborah Meier * author of The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem and 50 year veteran teacher * Teaching While Black is one of the most searing, brilliant, heartrending, brutal, but in the end, hopeful reflections on urban education I have ever read. Possessing the analytical insight of a young Du Bois, the psychological depth of a young Fanon, and armed with the poignant cri de coeur of a post-Lemonade Beyonce, Pamela Lewis explores the racial, class and gender elements that shape education for young students of color. Eschewing a mythical color-blind approach to education, and insisting on grappling with the pain and possibilities of radically identifying with one's students--and, ultimately, taking their side in the war against educational inequality and instructional mediocrity--Lewis offers us a dramatic peek into the desires, vulnerabilities, conflicts, defeats, mistakes, and finally, triumphs of the conscientious and committed black female urban teacher. -- Michael Eric Dyson * author of The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America *