Change Is Gonna Come: Transforming Literacy Education for African American Students

Language and Literacy

by Patricia A. Edwards, Gwendolyn Thompson McMillon, Jennifer D. Turner

While many books decry the crisis in the schooling of African American children, they are often disconnected from the lived experiences and work of classroom teachers and principals. In Change Is Gonna Come , the authors look back to go forward, providing specific practices that K–12 literacy educators can use to transform their schools. The text addresses four major the fight for access to literacy; supports and roadblocks to success; best practices, theories, and perspectives on teaching African American students; and the role of African American families in the literacy lives of their children. Throughout, the authors highlight the valuable lessons learned from the past and include real stories from their own diverse family histories and contemporary classrooms. “Edwards, McMillon, and Turner have hit a grand slam. This is a page-turner that you won’t be able to put down.”
― Diane Lapp , San Diego State University
“Patricia Edwards, in opening this book, seamlessly integrates her own personal narrative of growing up in the segregated Jim Crow South with the intellectual history of our nation’s efforts to address the achievement gap in literacy. Her story is powerful because it embodies a core set of principles about human learning, which is based on a strong body of empirical evidence.” ―From the Foreword by Carol D. Lee , Northwestern University, President, American Educational Research Association, 2009–2010

Genres: Education

224 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2010