Help for kids the education system ignores
1,713,248 views | Victor Rios • TED Talks Live
Define students by what they contribute, not what they lack -- especially those with difficult upbringings, says educator Victor Rios. Interweaved with his personal tale of perseverance as an inner-city youth, Rios identifies three straightforward strategies to shift attitudes in education and calls for fellow educators to see "at-risk" students as "at-promise" individuals brimming with resilience, character and grit.
Define students by what they contribute, not what they lack -- especially those with difficult upbringings, says educator Victor Rios. Interweaved with his personal tale of perseverance as an inner-city youth, Rios identifies three straightforward strategies to shift attitudes in education and calls for fellow educators to see "at-risk" students as "at-promise" individuals brimming with resilience, character and grit.
This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.
Donate to Dignity in Schools, an organization that challenges the systemic problem of pushout in our nation's schools and works to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline.
Volunteer with CURYJ (Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice), an organization that promotes initiatives aimed at restoring young people's dignity and well-being.
About the speaker
Victor Rios seeks to uncover how to best support the lives of young people who experience poverty, stigma and social exclusion.
Vajra Watson | Routledge, 2011 | Book
Learning to Liberate
Vajra Watson presents compelling community-based approaches to school reform. Drawing on over three years of ethnographic research, Vajra Watson explores the complicated process of reaching and teaching today's students. She reveals how four nontraditional educators successfully empower young people who have repeatedly been left behind. Watson provides key strategies for educators to utilize as they work with at-promise students.
Wayne Au | Rethinking Schools, 2014 | Book
Rethinking Multicultural Education
This volume includes incredible articles dealing with race and culture in the classroom. Moving beyond a simplistic focus on heroes and holidays, and foods and festivals, it demonstrates a powerful vision of anti-racist, social justice education. Practical, rich in story, and analytically sharp, Rethinking Multicultural Education reclaims multicultural education as part of a larger struggle for justice and against racism, colonization, and cultural oppression in schools and society.
Lis Delpit | The New Press, 2006 | Book
Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom
Lisa Delpit develops ideas about ways teachers can be better "cultural transmitters" in the classroom, where prejudice, stereotypes, and cultural assumptions breed ineffective education. Delpit suggests that many academic problems attributed to children of color are actually the result of miscommunication, as primarily white teachers and "other people’s children" struggle with the imbalance of power and the dynamics plaguing our system.
Angela Maier and Amy Sandvold | Routledge, 2010 | Book
The Passion-Driven Classroom: A Framework for Teaching and Learning
The authors want to turn the conversation about the achievement gap into a conversation about how increasing passion in the classroom can create transformative change in students’ lives.
A. Wade Boykin & Pedro Noguera | Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, 2011 | Book
Creating the Opportunity to Learn: Moving from Research to Practice to Close the Achievement Gap
Boykin and Noguera maintain that it is possible to close the achievement gap by abandoning failed strategies, learning from successful schools, and simply doing more of what the research shows is most effective. Success is founded on equity, but equity involves more than simply ensuring students have equal access to education; equity also entails a focus on outcomes and results.
bell hooks | Routledge, 1994 | Book
Teaching to Transgress
Hooks writes about a new kind of education, education as the practice of freedom. Teaching students to "transgress" against racial, sexual, and class boundaries in order to achieve the gift of freedom is, for hooks, the teacher's most important goal.
Trevor Gardner | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2016 | Book
Discipline Over Punishment
Gardner demonstrates the transformative potential of restorative discipline practices in schools, ranging from the micro-level of one-on-one interactions with students to the macro-level of re-routing the school-to-prison pipeline and improving life outcomes for young people. Gardner, who continues to teach high school in Oakland, Ca, has spent nearly 20 years innovating, struggling, and succeeding to implement various restorative justice practices in classrooms and schools around the Bay Area. Using classrooms and schools where he has taught and students, families and educators with whom he has worked, Gardner examines how restorative justice, as a set of beliefs and practices can be a force for justice and equity in our classrooms, schools, and beyond.
| Watch
Gang Member-Turned-Ph.D. Mentors Youth on the Fringes
PBS News Hour produced a piece on Victor’s story and the work he does with young people
Lou Fancher | Mercury News | Article
"Teachers can make huge difference in creating peaceful classrooms, productive young lives"
The Mercury News discusses Victor’s work with Educators
This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.
Donate to Dignity in Schools, an organization that challenges the systemic problem of pushout in our nation's schools and works to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline.
Volunteer with CURYJ (Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice), an organization that promotes initiatives aimed at restoring young people's dignity and well-being.