What would it mean to truly “get free” as an educator? How can we identify and challenge bias in our reading and writing curriculum and instruction? How can we support students in becoming empathetic, engaged individuals who can read and write the world with compassion and deep thinking? Answering these questions requires deep personal reflection and intentional daily practice — and it’s crucial today more than ever, when students are overwhelmed with misinformation and disinformation. 

Drawn from decades of classroom experience and founded on the scholarship of social justice educators, Get Free provides a framework that can help teachers implement transformative, anti-bias literacy instruction in middle- and high school classrooms.

Get Free offers educators —

• Strategies for scaffolding literacy instruction in ways that center students’ identities and experiences, and help them develop a more inclusive understanding of literature and writing
• Classroom structures and routines that support critical listening and open, authentic conversation and writing responses
• Invitations for teachers to re-examine curriculum and instructional practices, based on a deeper sense of who we are and what we bring to every reading and writing experience 

To develop stronger reading, writing, and critical thinking skills, antibias literacy instruction is essential. This is the book for teachers, new and experienced, who know that classrooms can be transformative, liberatory spaces where students better understand themselves, others, and the world.

ON OUR BELIEFS…

Our beliefs matter. What we believe about ourselves and others—and what we believe constitutes a “just” society—matters. Our beliefs (and biases) drive our behaviors. Our behaviors drive our practices. Our practices drive our pedagogy. Our pedagogy drives the curriculum, which becomes policy. Policies drive impact, and our impact determines outcomes. The outcomes we see—academic and socio-emotional—are neither accidental nor inevitable, but rather the indirect and direct result of all the beliefs we hold about children and learning.

from Chapter 1, Starting With Ourselves

ON BUILDING COMMUNITY…

Every time we invite students to feel part of a community where they feel seen and valued, we protect students against the loneliness and fear that can leave them vulnerable to those who would gladly take advantage.

Every time we teach against the societal bias that favors rugged individualism at the expense of community, we are not only engaged in imagining a better world but actively creating one with our students.

from Chapter 2, Creating Brave Spaces

ON STORYTELLING…

Storytelling is a superpower. And like all superpowers, storytelling can be used for good and for harm. When we allow students the opportunity to write their own lives, to imagine themselves as they want to be imagined, to take control over their stories, they become authors—they claim authority over who they are and who they want to be. For so many students who have been rendered voiceless, or who come from communities that have been silenced or marginalized, storytelling is a revolutionary act.

from Chapter 3, Unpacking Multitudes