Educators of young students who want to invigorate relationships with students' families and boost student literacy can do so by cocreating culturally sustaining texts. A culturally sustaining text seeks to sustain a reader's cultures, literacies, and backgrounds. The author shares step-by-step instructions on how to make a culturally sustaining…

Walk a Day in My Shoes is a curricular project designed to provide a starting point for teachers to cultivate cross-cultural understanding among elementary-age students. In this curricular project, students created their own digital stories about a day spent in their shoes. Through photography, writing, and digital storytelling, each student…

Teachers can capitalize on the overwhelmingly visual nature of contemporary society for learning and teaching through integrating photography in their classroom instruction. In offering an alternative pathway for acquiring and expressing knowledge, photography has the potential to strengthen instruction across disciplines by drawing on multiple…

Connects some of the author's classroom discoveries and reflections--made during 10 years of practitioner research--to educational literature. Explains transformations in a classroom which resulted when the teacher focused on "good things." Proposes that teachers make discoveries when they pay attention to details. Notes that teachers also make…