Yuma, Guide to Bias in Elementary Education: Ableism

"I just cannot write" or "I am not a good writer" are familiar complaints from students in academia. Many of them claim they cannot express themselves clearly in written text, and their lack of this skill impedes them in their academic career. In this book, Nancy A. Wasser argues that teachers can help solve this when they start viewing writing not as secondary to reading, but as the equally important side of the same coin. Those who cannot read, will not be able to write. Combining the focus on individual and group expression in writing lessons, students can trace and reflect on their own life transformations through their writing process. Good writers are not born that way, but made through effort and practice. Changes in curriculum may not only lead to better-expressed citizens, but also to more balance between teacher and children voices.

In our media-saturated environment, how can we teach students to distinguish true statements from those that are false, misleading, or manipulative? How can we help them develop the skills needed to identify biases and stereotypes, determine the credibility of sources, and analyze their own thinking and its effect on their perceptions? In Teaching Students to Decode the World, authors Chris Sperry and Cyndy Scheibe tackle these questions as they introduce readers to constructivist media decoding (CMD), a specific way to lead students through a question-based analysis of media materials.

Bringing together a set of first-person accounts of physical education from the perspectives of disabled children and adults, this book puts disabled people's voices in the foreground. The book provides a rich set of case study material that deepens our understanding of the experiences of disabled people and challenges students, researchers, and practitioners to reflect critically upon their own positionality. The first part of the book discusses how disability has been conceptualized, how the voices of disabled people have sometimes been marginalized, and how nondisability power has historically framed the narratives of disabled people in physical education literature. It also discusses the innovative methods used in this book--such as storytelling through recorded conversations and drawings in addition to more traditional chapter writing--to empower disabled children and adults to act as authors of their own stories.