2014 Winner
“We Can’t Lead Where We Won’t Go: An Educator’s Guide to Equity”
Gary Howard
(Corwin Press, 2014)
Gary R. Howard has over 40 years of experience working with issues of civil rights, social justice, equity, education, and diversity, including 25 years as the Founder of the REACH Center for Multicultural Education. He is a keynote speaker, writer, and workshop leader who has worked extensively throughout the United States and Australia. His landmark book, We Can’t Teach What We Don’t Know: White Teachers/Multiracial Schools, Second Edition (2006), published by Columbia University, is considered a groundbreaking work examining issues of privilege, power, and the role of White leaders and educators in a multicultural society.
His current work, which is documented in this publication, centers on providing schools with the internal capacity to strengthen the cultural responsiveness of their practices and build long-term systemic change strategies for achieving greater equity and social justice in their outcomes. In his speeches and workshop presentations, Mr. Howard draws on a wide range of experiences and travel exploring equity and social justice issues with leaders from many cultures around the world. His presentations employ rich imagery and stories drawn from his annual white water workshops on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. Gary is a long time member of the NAME family, promoting NAME wherever he goes and always answering the call!
2013 Winner
“Becoming a Multicultural Educator: Developing Awareness, Gaining Skills & Taking Action”
William A. Howe and Penelope L. Lisi, Sage Publications, Inc.
Dr. Bill Howe is the program manager for multicultural education at the Connecticut State Department of Education. He is also an adjunct professor of education at the University of Connecticut, Albertus Magnus College and Quinnipiac University. He is Chair of the Connecticut Asian Pacific American Affairs Commission. For thirteen years he served on the board of NAME and is a Past President. He has been an educator for over 35 years in the U.S. and Canada.
In addition to numerous articles, he was a coauthor of the Handbook for Achieving Gender Equity through Education, 2nd Edition. In 2006 he was named the G. Pritchy Smith Multicultural Educator of the Year at the Annual NAME Conference in Phoenix, AZ. He was an Honoree at the 11th Annual “Immigrant Day” at the State Capitol in 2008, a day to honor immigrants from throughout Connecticut who have made valuable contributions to their communities and/or professions. In 2012 he was recognized with an award from the Pakistani American Association of Connecticut (PAACT) for his service to the community.
He is on the boards of several organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League’s Making Diversity Count Advisory Board, the National Advisory Board for the STEM Equity Pipeline, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Welcoming Schools National Advisory Council, Native Village Board of Advisors, and Senior Advisory Council for The National Association of Asian American Professionals (NAAAP) Connecticut.
He has been happily married for 35 years to his favorite psychotherapist, his wife Dianne.
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Dr. Penelope L. Lisi, is a Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at Central Connecticut State University. Dr. Lisi also teaches annually in CCSU’s masters degree program at Sam Sharpe Teachers College, Montego Bay, Jamaica. Her scholarly work focuses on leadership for social justice, leadership for teaching and learning, and leadership in international school settings.
In 2000, Dr. Lisi received a semester-long Fulbright Scholar Award to teach at the University of Iceland. Since that time, she has made more than 20 trips to Iceland to investigate educational leadership in an environment of school change. Dr. Lisi has delivered more than 45 peer-reviewed papers at conferences in the United States, England, Finland, Portugal, Hungary, Switzerland, Jamaica, and Iceland. She is an adjunct faculty member in the Global Education Program through The College of New Jersey, teaching summer courses since 2005 in Palma de Mallorca.
At CCSU, Dr. Lisi also serves as Director of the Center for Multicultural Research and Education. She has been a primary sponsor of the annual New England Conference for Multicultural Education (NECME). Prior to her work at CCSU, Dr. Lisi taught at the elementary, middle, and high school levels in the United States and, for three years, in international schools in Scandinavia. She received her bachelors degree in education and French at DePauw University, her masters degree at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and her doctoral degree at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Since 1998, Dr. Lisi has served as editor of Multicultural Perspectives, the official scholarly publication of the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME).
2012 Winner
Jason G. Irizarry
The Latinization of U.S. Schools: Successful Teaching and Learning
in Shifting Cultural Contexts
Publisher: Paradigm
This book breaks the mold of presenting Latino/a students as riddled with deficiencies and incapable of academic success. Instead, Jason Irizarry and his high school co-authors provide readers with an insightful, inspiring, and powerful view of the capabilities and, yes, the brilliance of these students. Articulating what many of us know from experience but do not find reflected in the studies we read on Latino education, these essays confirm that what students need is the support to achieve, and a belief in their abilities. Teachers and schools would do well to heed this message.
2011 Winner
Mollie V. Blackburn
Acting Out: Combating Homophobia Through Teacher Activism
Ohio State University
Acting Out facilitates, documents and studies a teacher inquiry group comprised of educators who are committed to combating heterosexism and homophobia in classrooms and schools through literature and film. Ms. Blackburn’s work is qualitative, critical and activist, evidence of her commitment to engaging in research for positive social change.
2010 Winner
Muslim Voices in School: Narratives of Identity & Pluralism
Öslem Sensoy and Christopher Stonebanks, Editors
Sense Publishers, 2009
“Muslim Voices in School: Narratives of Identity and Pluralism” makes a key contribution to the literature in multicultural education, as well as to teachers’ and researchers’ knowledge about Muslim students’ experiences in the West. Drs. Sensoy and Stonebanks describe the book as “a collection of readable, accessible, compelling, varied, voiced, passionate, real, textured, multi-faceted, hybrid, fearless, fearful, cautious, bold, modest, and inspired accounts of living Islam in relation to mainstream schooling in the West. The book helps to make the diverse experiences of Muslim students (from elementary through university student through professor) both contextual and complex. The politics and education about Islam, Muslims, Arabs, Turks, Iranians and all that is associated with the West’s popular imagination of the monolithic “Middle-East” has long been framed within problematic. The goal of this book is to push back against the reductive mainstream narratives told about Muslim and Middle Eastern heritage students for generations if not centuries, in mainstream schools. The chapters are each authored by Muslim-acculturated scholars”.
2009
Reel Diversity: A Teachers’ Sourcebook
Authors: C. Brian Johnson and Skyra Blanchard
Publisher:Peter Lang, Inc. 2008
Reel Diversityis a primary source used in Lebanon Valley College’s annual Social Justice Institute – a three day intense diversity leadership conference that helps students to build a foundation in social justice issues. In addition, it is an excellent resource that can be used in a variety of educational, corporate and non-profit settings. The book is engaging, and attempts to deconstruct the lexicon of diversity and social justice in terms that are understandable for the beginner as well as the advanced. Authors Brian C. Johnson and Skyra C. Blanchard have created an impressive body of work that encompasses the powerful medium of film and pop-culture to address issues of diversity and social justice in American Society.
2008 Winner
Black Ants and Buddhists
Author: Mary Cowhey
Publisher: Reuters University Press, 2006
In “Black Ants and Buddhists” Ms. Cowhey challenges the commonly held misconception that social justice issues can only be tackled by secondary school and college level teachers and students. Her stories spring directly from her classroom practice to illustrate the power of first and second graders who are engaged in civic and political issues that effect their lives. This book brings multicultural theory to life!
Past Winners
1994 – Ron Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America
1995 – Russell M. Peters, Clambake
1996 – Stacey J. Lee, Unraveling the Model Minority Stereotype: Listening to Asian-American Youth
1997 – James and Cherry McGee Banks (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education
1998 – Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria and Other Conversations About Race
2000 – Sarah Warshauer Freedman, Elizabeth Radin Simons, Julie Shalhope Kalnin, Alex Casareno and the M-Class Teams, Inside City Schools: Investigating Literacy in Multicultural Classrooms
2001 – Robert Moses and Charles E. Cobb, Jr., Radical Equations
2002 – Joy L. Lei, Global Constructions of Multicultural Education: Theories and Realities
2003 – Eileen Gale Kugler, Debunking The Middle-Class Myth: Why Diverse Schools Are Good For Kids
2004 – Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching: A Resource Guide For K-12 Classrooms, Editors: Deborah Menkart, Alana D. Murray, Jenice L. View – A Publication of Teaching For Change and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC)with contributions from Rethinking Schools, 2004.
2005 – Rosa Hernandez Sheets, Diversity Pedagogy: Examining the Role of Culture in the Teaching-Learning Process
2006 – Community and Difference: Teaching Pluralism and Social Justice, Robert A. Pena, Kristen Guest & Lawrence Y. Matsuda, Eds. Peter Lang Pub. Inc. (2005)
2007 – Double Happiness (dual winners)
——- New Roots in America’s Sacred Ground: Religion, Race and Ethnicity in Indian America, Khyati Joshi, Rutgers University Press, 2006
——- The Children Hurricane Katrina Left Behind: Schooling Context, Professional Preparation and Community Politics, Sharon P. Robinson and M. Christopher Brown II, Peter Lang Publishing, 2006