Teachers Bridging Difference

Exploring Identity with Art

Teachers Bridging Difference describes how educators can move out of their comfort zones and practice connecting with others across differences to become culturally responsive teachers. Based on a course developed for preservice teachers, the book illustrates how educators can draw on the visual arts as a resource to explore their own identities and those of their students, and how to increase their understanding of the ways our lives intersect across sociocultural differences.

Drawing on scholarship from multiple disciplines and from her own experience, Marit Dewhurst identifies four stances designed to help educators connect with students in today’s multicultural classrooms. To practice these stances, the book introduces eight arts-based activities that can be used by educators in multiple contexts. Ranging from community maps and conversation portraits to scenario comics and reflection zines, the activities are designed to be accessible to even those with little arts experience and can be executed with a wide variety of materials and media.

Unique and timely, Teachers Bridging Difference is an arts-based tool kit for teachers interested in exploring issues of identity and difference as a foundation for creating a more just and equal society.

Book Cover

Praise for Teachers Bridging Difference

“The narratives and art of the educators and preservice teachers in this book give us hope for what education (not schooling) can and should be.”

From the foreword by
Dorinda J. Carter Andrews
Assistant dean of Equity Outreach Initiatives and associate professor of Teacher Education, Michigan State University

Teachers Bridging Difference offers a powerful testimony supporting the belief that art is an educational necessity because it serves as our lifeline to examine our collective humanity while searching for meaning within ourselves and our communities, particularly in this tumultuous period of injustice. As Dewhurst asserts, as parents, educators, scholars, and stakeholders, we need to access every available modality in order to cocreate spaces that center belonging and critical consciousness. Our future depends on it.”

Marcella Runell Hall
Vice president for student life and lecturer in religion, Mount Holyoke College

Upcoming Event

January 21, 2019 10am–12pm
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Artwork by Christopher Rose