Teaching and Learning in the Face of Adversity
Strategies That Inspire
- Michelle L. Trujillo - TruEd Consulting
- Douglas Fisher - San Diego State University, USA
- Nancy Frey - San Diego State University, USA
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” —Maya Angelou
Adversity is all around us. Although we can't always avoid it, we can prepare ourselves and our students to respond in a healthy and hopeful way.
Teaching and Learning in the Face of Adversity is a practical and heartfelt book that empowers educators with applicable strategies to respond to challenges, inspire students, and foster a positive school environment. The authors share the critical skills that educators and students can cultivate to elevate the ability to respond to barriers, challenges, and setbacks, plus:
- Practical strategies, insights, and reflection prompts
- Menus of practices to promote student agency, belonging, relationships, and repair harm
- The voices of real teachers, students, and educational leaders
- The range of challenges that can arise in our work and effective ways to respond
Adversity may be ever-present, but with the resources in this book, we can empower ourselves, our colleagues, and our students to persevere in the face of it.
"Teaching and Learning in the Face of Adversity offers teachers and administrators tangible tools for reflecting on their ability to ignite, cultivate, and grow relationships in the classroom with students and among faculty in a school or district. Trujillo, Fisher, and Frey blend their own experiences with interviews from teachers and current research on learner agency, relationship-building, and instilling a sense of belonging, resulting in a humanizing yet practical approach to supporting learners who've experienced adversity. They model the vulnerability and mindfulness we all need to validate and acknowledge the lived experiences that students, their families, and their teachers bring into our schools while offering pragmatic recommendations for challenging students to be their best selves."
