Of the approximately 50 million public school students in the United
States, more than half are in urban schools. A contemporary companion to
City Kids, City Teachers: Reports from the Front Row, this new and
timely collection has been compiled by four of the country's most
prominent urban educators. Contributors including Sandra Cisneros,
Jonathan Kozol, Sapphire, and Patricia J. Williams provide some of the
best writing on life in city schools and neighborhoods. Young people and
practicing teachers, poets and scholars, social critics and journalists
offer unique takes on topics ranging from culturally relevant teaching
and scripted curricula to the criminalization of youth, gentrification,
and the inequities of school funding.
In the words of Sonia Nieto, City Kids, City Schools "challenge[s]
the conventional wisdom of what it means to teach in urban schools."