Talking Back and Looking Forward: An Educational Revolution in Poetry and Prose - Hardcover

Paul C. Gorski is an activist, author, and educator whose life revolves around social justice, environmental justice, and animal rights causes. He teaches in the Social Justice and Human Rights program at George Mason University. He lives in Falls Church, Virginia, with his two cats, Unity and Buster.

Rosanna Marķa Salcedo is a Latina artist, writer, educator, parent, and activist. She teaches Spanish and currently holds the position of Dean of Multicultural Affairs at Phillips Exeter Academy, a preparatory school in New England.

Julie Landsman is a retired teacher, writer and teacher trainer. Her book A White Teacher Talks About Race is in its third printing. She enjoys working in schools and teaching creative writing to all age groups. Her latest book is Growing Up White: A Veteran Teacher Reflects On Racism. She believes student voices can drive educational change.

Talking Back and Looking Forward is a brilliant counter to lists of best practices that race to the top. This wonderful book evokes the transformational power of the arts to reclaim the identities, experiences, and injuries that standardization-policed-by-testing tries to erase from schools. (Christine Sleeter, president emerita, National Association of Multicultural Education, author, White Bread: Weaving Cultural Past into the Present)

Sometimes the spirit of resistance speaks, sometimes it sings--but always in unison with the voices of the oppressed, the excluded and those marginalized by injustices systemic to neoliberal capitalist society. And sometimes this spirit is amplified by educators advocating for them. This is a book in which the spirit of resistance is present in all of its polyvalent glory. It is a book that sings, that laughs, that weeps and that screams in fierce harmony with those forebearers of social justice who have over the decades forged a path towards liberation with both creativity and unyielding resolve. I hear their suffering and their joy echoed throughout every page of this book. I feel the stirrings of a new pedagogy of the heart. (Peter McLaren, Honorary Chair Professor and Director of the Center for Critical Studies, Northeast Normal University, China)

So-called education reformers have tried to convince the public that neo-liberal policies and no-excuses rhetoric are the answers to the problems of public education, particularly the problem of educational disparities. This volume takes on these so-called palliatives and speaks through the voices of real people to the problems of real people. (Gloria Ladson-Billings, Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education and professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies, University o)

In this moment when the narratives and debates about educational “reform” seem only to constrict, we need the arts more than ever to rattle and expand, and this is precisely what we find in this powerfully moving new book by Gorski, Salcedo, and Landsman, who have assembled educators and activists to speak through poetry and prose against the moment and towards a future yet untold. Passionate, illuminating, troubling, and inspiring, their words will sit with you as they stir you to action. Read it today. (Kevin Kumashiro, dean,University of San Francisco School of Education, author of "Bad Teacher!: How Blaming Teachers Distorts the Bigger Picture")

Reading this book was an inspirational breath of fresh air in the often stifling struggle for social justice in education. Hearing from fellow teachers and from students is a much needed break from the dialogue of well-meaning scholars who, though impassioned, are not in the classroom. I can see applications for this book both in my classroom and in my work as a teacher mentor. (Angela Cunningham, English teacher and Equity and Reflective Coach, Branham High School)

Poetry, like life itself, is about the world around us, and the world within. In this volume, teachers, students, and activists express with deep feeling what education should be, both in the world around us – our classrooms, schools, and communities – and within us – our hearts, minds, and souls. May all teachers and students hear the powerful messages about social justice, the current state of public education, and what we can do to change it, from the poetry in this heartfelt collection. (Sonia Nieto, Sonia Nieto, Professor Emerita, Language, Literacy, and Culture, College of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst)