Abbott Elementary Reading List

Image credit: Prime Timer

If you're like me, Abbott Elementary was the type of comedic reprieve that poked fun of the absurdity of the American educational system while leaving you with a smidge of hope. I think a show that can make you laugh without hitting you over the head with social issues takes a lot of storytelling gusto. I want more of Abbott Elementary type shows please!!! And, I was so happy that Abbott Elementary was recognized during the award season for its craftsmanship-writing and acting.

As an educator I saw so many themes that I couldn't help myself. Yeah this show is that good. If you can take anything away from the show, it should be that we need to invest in education and also support educators. 

My ode to the show's return was to pair Season 1's episodes with book(s). Yes, I cracked open my grad school syllabi to pull together lists 😋

Episode 1 Pilot | Episode 2 Lightbulb | Episode 3 Wishlist | Episode 9 Step Class 

We Want To Do More than Survive by Bettina L. Love

Drawing on her life’s work of teaching and researching in urban schools, Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements. She argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color. Instead of trying to repair a flawed system, educational reformers offer survival tactics in the forms of test-taking skills, acronyms, grit labs, and character education, which Love calls the educational survival complex.

To dismantle the educational survival complex and to achieve educational freedom—not merely reform—teachers, parents, and community leaders must approach education with the imagination, determination, boldness, and urgency of an abolitionist. Following in the tradition of activists like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer, We Want to Do More Than Survive introduces an alternative to traditional modes of educational reform and expands our ideas of civic engagement and intersectional justice.

Episode 4 New Tech 

Being Bad: My Baby Brother and the School-to-Prison Pipeline by Crystal T. Laura

Being Bad will change the way you think about the social and academic worlds of Black boys. In a poignant and harrowing journey from systems of education to systems of criminal justice, the author follows her brother, Chris, who has been designated a “bad kid” by his school, a “person of interest” by the police, and a “gangster” by society. Readers first meet Chris in a Chicago jail, where he is being held in connection with a string of street robberies. We then learn about Chris through insiders’ accounts that stretch across time to reveal key events preceding this tragic moment. Together, these stories explore such timely issues as the under-education of Black males, the place and importance of scapegoats in our culture, the on-the-ground reality of zero tolerance, the role of mainstream media in constructing Black masculinity, and the critical relationships between schools and prisons. No other book combines rigorous research, personal narrative, and compelling storytelling to examine the educational experiences of young Black males.

Book Features:

• The natural history of an African American teenager navigating a labyrinth of social worlds.
• A detailed, concrete example of the school-to-prison pipeline phenomenon.
• Rare insights of an African American family making sense of, and healing from, school wounds.
• Suggested resources of reliable places where educators can learn and do more.

Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique W. Morris

Chronicles the experiences of Black girls across the country whose intricate lives are misunderstood, highly judged—by teachers, administrators, and the justice system—and degraded by the very institutions charged with helping them flourish. Called "compelling" and "thought-provoking" by Kirkus Reviews, Pushout exposes a world of confined potential and supports the rising movement to challenge the policies, practices, and cultural illiteracy that push countless students out of school and into unhealthy, unstable, and often unsafe futures.

Street Data: A Next-Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and School Transformation by Jamila Dugan and Shane Safir

Radically reimagine our ways of being, learning, and doing

Education can be transformed if we eradicate our fixation on big data like standardized test scores as the supreme measure of equity and learning. Instead of the focus being on "fixing" and "filling" academic gaps, we must envision and rebuild the system from the student up―with classrooms, schools and systems built around students’ brilliance, cultural wealth, and intellectual potential. Street data reminds us that what is measurable is not the same as what is valuable and that data can be humanizing, liberatory and healing.  

By breaking down street data fundamentals: what it is, how to gather it, and how it can complement other forms of data to guide a school or district’s equity journey, Safir and Dugan offer an actionable framework for school transformation. Written for educators and policymakers, this book

· Offers fresh ideas and innovative tools to apply immediately

· Provides an asset-based model to help educators look for what’s right in our students and communities instead of seeking what’s wrong

· Explores a different application of data, from its capacity to help us diagnose root causes of inequity, to its potential to transform learning, and its power to reshape adult culture

Episode 5 Student Transfer | Episode 6 Gifted Program

Ungrading Why Rating Students Undermines Learning edited by Susan D. Blum

The moment is right for critical reflection on what has been assumed to be a core part of schooling. In Ungrading, fifteen educators write about their diverse experiences going gradeless. Some contributors are new to the practice and some have been engaging in it for decades. Some are in humanities and social sciences, some in STEM fields. Some are in higher education, but some are the K–12 pioneers who led the way. Based on rigorous and replicated research, this is the first book to show why and how faculty who wish to focus on learning, rather than sorting or judging, might proceed. It includes honest reflection on what makes ungrading challenging, and testimonials about what makes it transformative.

Episode 7 Art Teacher | Episode 13 Zoo Balloon 

I Wish My Teacher Knew by Kyle Schwartz

One day, third-grade teacher Kyle Schwartz asked her students to fill-in-the-blank in this sentence: "I wish my teacher knew _____." The results astounded her. Some answers were humorous, others were heartbreaking-all were profoundly moving and enlightening. The results opened her eyes to the need for educators to understand the unique realities their students face in order to create an open, safe and supportive place in the classroom. When Schwartz shared her experience online, #IWishMyTeacherKnew became an immediate worldwide viral phenomenon. Schwartz's book tells the story of #IWishMyTeacherKnew, including many students' emotional and insightful responses, and ultimately provides an invaluable guide for teachers, parents, and communities.

Episode 8 Work Family | Episode 10 Open House

Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools (Transgressing Boundaries: Studies in Black Politics and Black Communities) by Amanda E. Lewis & John B. Diamond  

On the surface, Riverview High School looks like the post-racial ideal. Serving an enviably affluent, diverse, and liberal district, the school is well-funded, its teachers are well-trained, and many of its students are high achieving. Yet Riverview has not escaped the same unrelenting question that plagues schools throughout America: why is it that even when all of the circumstances seem right, black and Latino students continue to lag behind their peers?

Through five years' worth of interviews and data-gathering at Riverview, John Diamond and Amanda Lewis have created a rich and disturbing portrait of the achievement gap that persists more than fifty years after the formal dismantling of segregation. As students progress from elementary school to middle school to high school, their level of academic achievement increasingly tracks along racial lines, with white and Asian students maintaining higher GPAs and standardized testing scores, taking more advanced classes, and attaining better college admission results than their black and Latino counterparts. Most research to date has focused on the role of poverty, family stability, and other external influences in explaining poor performance at school, especially in urban contexts. Diamond and Lewis instead situate their research in a suburban school, and look at what factors within the school itself could be causing the disparity. Most crucially, they challenge many common explanations of the 'racial achievement gap,' exploring what race actually means in this situation, and why it matters.

An in-depth study with far-reaching consequences, Despite the Best Intentions revolutionizes our understanding of both the knotty problem of academic disparities and the larger question of the color line in American society.

Episode 11 Desking

Why are All the Black Kid's Sitting Together by Beverly Daniel Tatum 

Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? How can we get past our reluctance to discuss racial issues?

Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about communicating across racial and ethnic divides and pursuing antiracism. These topics have only become more urgent as the national conversation about race is increasingly acrimonious. This fully revised edition is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand dynamics of race and racial inequality in America.

Episode 12 Ava vs Superintendent

The Politics of Education by Paulo Freire 

Contributes to a radical formulation of pedagogy through its revitalization of language, utopianism, and revolutionary message. . . . The book enlarges our vision with each reading, until the meanings become our own. Harvard Educational Review

Constitutes the voice of a great teacher who has managed to replace the melancholic and despairing discourse of the post-modern Left with possibility and human compassion. Educational Theory.

Season 2 premieres on September 21, 2022 at 9:00 p.m. EST 

Happy Reading and Viewing!!!