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As a rule I do not give recommendations for books, events, and other resources.  When I find provocative resources (either in a positive or negative way) I will share and excerpt and let the readers decide themselves.  However, today, and one more time next week, I am going to flat out recommend a book for your consideration. Today I am strongly encouraging you to take a look at the latest publication of the National Black Child Development Institute, Being Black is Not a Risk Factor:  A Strength-Based Look at the State of the Black Child (which can be downloaded for free on the NBCDI website).  In introducing this resource, NBCDI President, Felicia DeHaney observes...

"This publication... is personal for me, and it should be personal for you too, regardless of your own skin color.  Our children will inherit this world together.  And we don't believe that some of those children — the Black ones — are wrong.  We don't think they are bad.  We don't believe they are doomed to failure.  We fully understand the crisis.  We work with our children.  We talk to the parents.  We read the statistics — the poverty rates the test scores, the health outcomes — and we are broken hearted.

"But we also know our strengths and our successes.  We know the stories behind the statistics.  We may not have all the answers, but we, collectively, have some of them.  There are things that work — and there are things that don't.  You can't call a father an 'ineffective parent' and then wonder why he doesn't show up to your parenting education event.  You can't tell a child she's never going to amount to anything, and then wonder why she doesn't.  The words we use; the expectations we hold; the beliefs in our hearts — all of these things matter.  Ensuring that we provide sufficient and equitably distributed resources?  This matters too.  Morally, yes, but also because research says these things matter in achieving better outcomes for our children."

Hearing Everyone's Voice is a collaborative manual which coordinates stories and songs around the tehem of building democratic community with young children.  Democratic practice includes concerns of peace and justice, caring about and inclusion of others, relationships and power.  Participation in this work crosses many barriers including age, ethnicity, class, culture, gender, and others as we do our best to learn from one another about hte many good wasy to really hear each other.

This manual includes sections which contain theoretical discussions around children's social development, program ideas and strategies, children's issues in their own voices and images, obstacles for adults to overcome, and many resources including organizations, children's and adult books, video and audio resources, and an appendix with supplemental information and program examples.

"Hearing Everyone's Voice is a MUST HAVE resource guide for adults filled with many practical straegies addressing how young people can learn to live together.  Through examples of stories, music, poetry, cooperative games, and the integration of three curriculums - Peace Education, Anti-Bias/Diversity Awareness, and Democratic Practice - one has the rationale plus encouragement to put inot practices concepts of social equality."

~Marilyn Pearce, First Grade Teacher and Peace Camp Volunteer

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