The Magnitude of Us: An Educator’s Guide to Creating Culturally Responsive Classrooms.
Teacher's College Press, Columbia, 2024
Available for preorder now: https://www.tcpress.com/the-magnitude-of-us-9780807769881
The Book
This teaching guidebook will help educators navigate emerging best practices to center historically marginalized voices and perspectives in middle, secondary, and post-secondary learning spaces. The author provides an accessible blueprint for utilizing histories, culturally responsive teaching, and community responsive pedagogy to build collaborative and equitable classrooms. Inspired by research steeped in oral histories, Bunch brings forth lessons from educators, merged with voices of students, to share impactful classroom practices. The un/HUSH framework asks us to unlearn the “hush” often associated with marginalized histories and stories. The framework considers the following guiding principles: (H) using histories not told to inform teaching practices, (U) unlearning behaviors and practices that do not empower marginalized voices, (S) creating classrooms and spaces that allow for stories to be shared, and (H) encouraging healing to occur from connection, collaboration, and relationships. Part narrative, part guidebook, this resource harnesses the collective power of us to improve outcomes for students.
Book Features:
-
Guidance for novice and veteran teachers, with elements specifically designed for preservice educators.
-
The use of histories and student voices to inform best practices for creating lessons and activities for middle, high school, and college classrooms.
-
A teaching framework for amplifying student voices through perspective sharing and cultural responsiveness.
-
An abundance of user-friendly scaffolding, graphics, lesson plans, and resources for implementation.
-
A foreword by Dr. Joyce Ladner, civil rights activist, educator, and sociologist.
-
Poetry by renowned poets Claudia Rankine, Evie Shockley, Ashley Jones, Jordan Stempleman, Cole Swensen, Maxine Chernoff, Emily Pettit, and others.
Bunch’s un/HUSH framework and guidebook can help all educators be guided by the voices of past educators. History, stories, unlearning, and healing are all aspects that work toward empowering children and sustaining them to not only learn unimpeded but gives them encouragement to be deeply involved in their own education and learning.
~ Dr. Joyce Ladner, Civil Rights Activist, Educator, Sociologist
I learned early on what it meant to be misunderstood and miseducated, this is why I looked to teachers for guidance. I am confident that my experiences in Dr. Bunch’s classroom have shaped me into the curious and knowledgeable woman I strive to be. I believe that this book will help create similar experiences for students across the world and help shape the future of our educators.
~Xyanne Purnell, Former Student
The Magnitude of Us is a masterful text that brings to light once marginalized stories of the past to inspire our work in classrooms. Magisterially written and replete with resources and inspiring histories, Dr. Marlee Bunch weaves a rich tapestry of struggle, celebration, and inspiration that few scholars can achieve in a book that promises to improve our praxis.
~Dr. Jon Hale, Professor, Author of The Freedom Schools and The Choice We Face
University of Illinois
College of Education
Becoming unHushed means moving, through pedagogy and instructional planning, toward the deepest elements of education: compassion, self-reflection, perspective-taking, critical analysis. It means challenging assumptions and positionalities. And it means believing in the power of story to make a difference, to sew the first patch in a quilt of awakened understanding.
~Brittany Collins, Educators, Author of Learning from Loss
Dr. Bunch’s un/HUSH framework is a wellspring of inspiration for educators. Her research, pedagogical framework and reflection questions are powerful tools to help in-service and pre-service teachers examine their positionality and apply an equity lens to their lesson planning. Lessons from the past guide the way to create empowering learning environments for students in K-12 and higher education. Activities centering storytelling and healing motivate and sustain educators in the critical work of maximizing cultural responsiveness in their classrooms and communities.
~Carol Berner, Lecturer, Smith College Department of Education and Child Study
Dr. Bunch’s framework and guide provides important and critical ways for educators and students to delve into processes of unlearning the silences of those who have been historically marginalized. This is an important step towards corrective action for culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies, and applicable across the K-12 spectrum.
~Dr. Yoon Pak, Professor and Head
Education Policy, Organization and Leadership
College of Education | University of Illinois
About the Founder
Bringing equity and innovation to the classroom.
Dr. Marlee Bunch is an educator, author, researcher, and lifelong learner. Her research examines the oral histories of Black female educators in Hattiesburg, Mississippi who taught between 1954-1971, and the implications that integration had on their lives and careers. She has two forthcoming publications on university presses celebrating the voices and histories of these women. The first publication, with Teacher's College Press (Columbia), "The Magnitude of Us: An Educator’s Guide to Creating Collaborative & Culturally Responsive Classrooms," is due out in 2024.
​