Making K-12 Literacy Instruction Culturally Sustaining

Examples That Bridge the Theory to Practice Divide

Abstract

Heeding the call toward Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies (CSP) put forward by Django Paris (2012) more than ten years ago, Culturally Sustaining Literacy Pedagogies: Honoring Student’s Heritages, Literacies, and Languages seeks to address the lack of robust pedagogical examples of what CSP looks like specifically during literacy instruction in K-12 educational spaces. Chapter authors present real-world examples across elementary, middle, and high school U.S. contexts. These examples not only highlight diverse and creative approaches to culturally sustaining literacy pedagogies (CSLP) situated within the practical constraints of K-12 schooling, but also showcase how chapter authors acknowledge, discuss, and account for their own positionality within CSLP work. The overall aim of the book is broad – to envision classrooms in which students’ heritages, literacies and languages are honored. The chapters presented herein are accessible and highly engaging to the reader, though some may wish for more nuanced detail and a more explicit focus on honoring language(s) within the examples presented. However, this book is meant to serve as an impetus toward further, deeper, and more nuanced pedagogical conversations across K-12 spaces regarding what CSP can look like when enacted in the daily and diverse lived realities of literacy instruction.