For Parents / Educators

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of "race," a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men--bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?
Recommended by YWCA Madison

National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson and two-time Pura Belpré Illustrator Award winner Rafael López have teamed up to create a poignant, yet heartening book about finding courage to connect, even when you feel scared and alone.

A Different Mirror for Young People brings ethnic history alive through primary sources, the words of people, including teenagers, who recorded their experiences in letters, diaries, and poems.

Merging real stories with theory, research, and practice, a prominent scholar offers a new approach to teaching and learning for every stakeholder in urban education. Drawing on his own experience of feeling undervalued and invisible in science classrooms as a young man of color, Christopher Emdin offers a new lens on and approach to teaching in urban schools.

From origin stories to contemporary struggles over treaty rights and sovereignty issues, Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal explores Wisconsin’s rich Native tradition. Each chapter is a compact tribal history of one of the state’s Indian nations—Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Oneida, Menominee, Mohican and Brothertown, and Ho-Chunk—and the book relies on the historical perspectives of Native people.

Learning for Justice (formerly Teaching Tolerance) provides free resources to educators—teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners—who work with children from kindergarten through high school.

In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope

At Teaching for Change, we are proud of our carefully selected booklists that highlight titles by and about people of color as well as social justice themes. Teaching for Change is proud to offer a diverse selection of titles that encourage children and adults to question, challenge, and re-think the world beyond the headlines.

"The We Are Kidlit Collective works to create materials and opportunities to recognize the humanity of Indigenous and People of Color (IPOC) in youth literature. Our work is premised upon the principles of social justice, equity, and inclusion and centers IPOC voices in children’s literature in order to identify, challenge and dismantle white supremacy and both internalized and systematic racism."  

Drawing on her life's work of teaching and researching in urban schools, Dr. Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements.

NPR and Sesame Workshop collaborated to offer this segment on the importance of talking about race and other social categories with kids, and provide parents with some helpful strategies.