Culturally Responsive and Sustaining STEM Curriculum as a Problem-Based Science Approach to Supporting Student Achievement for Black and Latinx Students

This article explores the tenets of culturally responsive STEM curriculum, providing an innovative look into STEM teaching and learning, which illuminates student agency, prior knowledge, and positive connections with their teachers. It seeks to answer the question, what happens when students experience informal STEM learning spaces as positive ones that enable them to develop a sense of agency, voice, and academic achievement.

Self-Work before Toolkits: An Interview with Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz about Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education

This interview highlights how Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education can be utilized to consider new possibilities for and address inequities in urban schools. It discusses the importance of positive teacher identity as a prerequisite for effective CR-SE and Dr. Sealey-Ruiz's framework of the Archeology of Self, which she describes as a framework that encourages educators to dig deep, peel back their layers, and explore how issues of race, class, religion, gender, sexual orientation live within them.

I am more than just a box: Latinidades for a pluralistic vision of culturally sustaining education

This article explores what culturally sustaining education means for Latinx students. Drawing on the concept of Latinidades, the authors suggest that culturally sustaining education for Latinx students necessitates problematizing the boundaries of this term altogether and making visible the tensions and multiple axes of oppression around what it means to be Latinx. They take inspiration from Latinx students—including one of the authors of this article—who are challenging bounded notions of culture (such as "affinity groups") and instead foregrounding questions about equitable practices in the day-to-day context of schools.

The Struggle

This essay identifies some of the challenges staff development providers may encounter and identifies ways to approach the work to ensure the greatest impact on students. This includes clearly defining the boundaries and permeability of the work, looking for various entry points, and explicitly addressing adults' mindsets. For teacher educators who support teachers and administrators looking to dismantle or challenge white supremacy in schools, the work can feel overwhelming but, through deliberate strategies, the work is always possible.

An Unwavering Commitment To Culturally Responsive Sustaining Education & Social Emotional Learning

Through an analysis of both SEL and CR-SE practices at an urban school and a social skill building afterschool program conducted through outside support staff, this paper demonstrates the process of providing social-emotional supports with a culturally responsive lens. The authors suggest, without a culturally responsive-sustaining lens, social and emotional supports can lack the trust and connection needed to meet students where they are while acknowledging their unique identities and cultures.

The Journey of a Culturally Responsive Teacher Educator

This interview explores what it means to be a culturally responsive teacher educator in today's world and why it is crucial to advocate for a culturally responsive and sustaining education for all students. It shares how one exceptional individual became a culturally responsive elementary teacher, and how she has become a culturally responsive teacher educator and educational consultant.

The Potential of CR-SE for K-12 Computer Science Education: Perspectives from Two Leaders

This interview examines the close connection between equity and computer science (CS), and Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education (CR-SE). The conversation speaks with emergent leaders in CS and provides insights into how they are bringing CS education to New York City's 1.1 million students, and how they understand and enact CR-SE practices in their work.

#NormalNeverWorked: The Fight for Black Liberation in the context of Education and COVID 19

The impact of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) highlights familiar inequities across U.S. institutions that are integral to social well-being. While longing for a return to "normal" is expected in a time of unprecedented loss of human life and the relinquishing of routines and comforts, equity-minded individuals understand that "normal" has been and continues to be oppressive at its core. Interested in the ways that COVID-19 has disrupted the normalcy of oppression and inequity, and the possibilities for Black liberation in this new context, we sat with educators and asked them to consider the urgency and possibility of now in the context of ongoing racial uprisings, persistent anti-Blackness, and the global impact of COVID-19. This article focuses on the themes that emerged, commenting on the opportunities and challenges of Black liberatory practices, whiteness, self care, metacognition about practices, and culturally responsive-sustaining education. While the disproportionate impacts of everyday educational violence on Black students, educators, families, and communities continue to be overlooked, these educators offer hope and a way forward, one rooted in the humanizing love that CR-SE and Black liberatory practices offer.

Protecting Students' Civil Rights: The Federal Role in School Discipline

This article takes a careful look at political and policy tools that presidential administrations have at their disposal for ameliorating educational inequalities. These tools, the authors suggest, include issuing federal guidance that informs and supports states and districts as they work to implement policies and practices that comply with federal law. However, as the authors point out, the extent to which administrations have chosen to leverage these opportunities to advance educational equity has varied over time.

Twenty Years, Ten Lessons: Community Schools as An Equitable School Improvement Strategy

This article features two leaders of the contemporary community school movement who share their reflections on key lessons learned by community school practitioners and advocates over the past two decades and outline ideas about the challenges facing the field in the years ahead. They offer a brief history of community schools in the United States and provide an update on the evidence of the strategy's effectiveness, particularly in high-poverty urban schools. They also explain how the current "generation" of community schools has addressed two specific shortcomings of earlier iterations of this holistic approach to education. Acknowledging that today's political climate creates both opportunities and obstacles for education reformers, the authors argue that the community school strategy is increasingly recognized as a compelling alternative to the neoliberal dream of public-school privatization.