Sonia Nieto and Alicia Lopez Nieto in Person

Join us on Wednesday, March 26 at 7 PM as Sonia Nieto and Alicia Lopez Nieto talk about Teachers Speak Up!: Stories of Courage, Resilience, and Hope in Difficult Times, which they co-edited.

About the Book

n the past several years, we have witnessed unprecedented political, racial, economic, and health-related ruptures in society. The resulting turmoil has had an inevitable and negative impact on students, teachers, the profession of education, and especially marginalized and vulnerable populations. Academics and policymakers have had their say on how to address today's volatile issues, but teachers and other practitioners closest to students have not had the same visibility or access. This volume is an attempt to remedy that absence, resulting in a compelling picture of education today. Chapters highlight essays written by a diverse group of K-12 classroom teachers who share their visions for education and describe their empowering classroom practices. At times hopeful and full of joy, at other times angry and full of frustration, these essays speak to what classrooms and schools based on social justice might mean for our nation. Teachers Speak Up presents a bold vision of what education could be if teachers were to have a more direct influence on the purpose and aims of learning and teaching.

About the Editors

SONIA NIETO: A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Education, Sonia Nieto is Professor Emerita of Language, Literacy, and Culture, College of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research on multicultural education, teacher education, literacy, and the education of students of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds has resulted in dozens of journal articles and book chapters and 16 books. She is also the editor of the Visions of Practice series (Teachers College Press). The first edition (1992) of her classic text, Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education, was selected for the Museum of
Education Readers’ Guide as “one of the 100 books that helped define the field of education in the 20th century.” Dr. Nieto has received dozens of awards for her scholarly
work, teaching, activism, and advocacy, including 9 honorary doctorates.

ALICIA LOPEZ NIETO: Alicia Lopez Nieto has been in education for 30 years, first as a teacher and now as an elementary school assistant principal. She taught French, Spanish and English as a Second Language and has taught grades 5-12. Alicia was a lecturer in the Mount Holyoke ESL Licensure program in the Professional and Graduate Education program, and she is currently a doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts (College of Education/Teacher Education/School Improvement concentration). Alicia holds a B.A. from Wellesley College and an M.A. in Education from UMass Amherst. She is the co-author with Sonia Nieto of the books Teaching: A Life’s Work, a Mother-Daughter Dialogue and of Teachers Speak Up! Stories of Courage, Resilience and Hope in Difficult Times (Teachers College Press)