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TEACHING & LEARNING
Wade’s
Text Teaches Students to Side with Social Justice
Social Studies Education Professor
Rahima Wade’s
new book, Social Studies for Social Justice: Strategies for
Teaching in the Elementary Classroom, is the result of interviews
with 40 teachers from around the country.
“These 40 teachers are from small towns, big cities,
rich schools, poor schools, kindergarten through sixth-grade
classrooms,” Wade said. “The diversity they represent
makes the ideas they talk about accessible to any teacher
anywhere.”
The book, published by Teachers College Press, is part of
the Teaching for Social Justice book series. Intended for
elementary school teachers and elementary social studies methods
students, the book has two main aims.
First, Wade hopes the book will help teachers foster a socially
just classroom, which involves socially just relationships
between teachers and students and helping students develop
inclusive behaviors in their interpersonal relationships.
Second, Wade hopes her book will give teachers tools to help
their students live socially just lives and work for social
justice in their world through cooperation, problem solving,
an awareness of bias, persuasive writing, and participation
in their communities.
“In a sense, it’s making borders between the
classroom and the community fluid, so the sense of community
isn’t just a classroom community or a school community,
but much wider,” Wade said.
In her foreword to the book, Sonia Nieto, a premier multicultural
educator, writes that the ideas in Wade’s book can have
a major impact.
“One of this powerful book’s greatest lessons
is that teachers can make a life-defining difference in the
lives of their students by teaching them to stand on the side
of social justice,” Nieto wrote.
Fi
Joins Math Education Faculty
Fi Brings his fire for math back to his alma mater. |
Originally from Tombia, Nigeria,
Cos D. Fi has returned
to The University of Iowa, where he earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics
Education, to help lead the reinvigorated program.
“Cos comes back to us from the University of North
Carolina at Greensboro, where he distinguished himself as
both an excellent teacher and one of the fine young researchers
in mathematics education,” said Professor Gary
Sasso, department chair of Teaching and Learning.
Fi also has experience teaching high school mathematics in
Illinois and in Iowa, working with prospective secondary school
mathematics teachers, facilitating professional development
the country’s teachers of school mathematics, and as
a provost visiting faculty at Michigan State University.
“Iowa City was my first home in the United States,
some 17 years ago, and The University of Iowa has been good
to me,” Fi said. “I return to Iowa in gratitude
to the splendid faculty, programs, and focus on teaching and
learning, in all its manifestations.”
Fi said that “Iowa grows on you and has a way of going
through you to shape, mold and fortify your senses, both physical
and metaphysical. I stand on the shoulders of giants and am
very excited to be part of the re-negotiation of the mathematics
education of Iowa’s students for the 21st century.”
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