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Issue 51 of the Bank Street Occasional Papers Series "Reconceptualizing Quality Early Care and Education with Equity at the Center" is a response to Gunilla Dahlberg, Peter Moss, and Alan Pence's 25-year interrogation of the concept of quality in early childhood education (ECE) (Dahlberg et al., 1999, 2013, 2023). Their groundbreaking work has called early childhood educators to question deeply held assumptions about the universality of childhood and how these shape the standardization of practices in early childhood settings around the world. While quality is typically conceived of as existing primarily in classrooms, the authors in Issue 51 remind readers that the small world of ECE exists within oppressive systems imbued with intersecting racism, classism, sexism, and ableism, and that, therefore, a beyond quality praxis requires nurturing and supporting educators through partnerships (recognizing that resilience is social), developing political commitments and orientations through relationships, and mobilizing these relationships for collective action towards liberatory alternatives. The idea for this issue, which is a part of a broader project to identify and analyze promising, equity-committed early childhood policies and practices, emerged over the past few years.

Issue #49 of the Bank Street Occasional Paper Series, "Indigenous Pedagogies: Land, Water and Kinship," brings together Indigenous educators and researchers to demonstrate how Indigenous teaching and learning takes form across contexts. Indigenous knowledge systems, values, and ways of being are understood and enacted within socio-ecological systems grounded in reciprocal kin relations. This means that for Indigenous peoples, teaching, learning, living, and being in relation with human and more-than-human beings is central to their knowledge systems. The authors worry that forwarding Indigenous pedagogies for educators broadly could result in a romanticization or appropriation of indigeneity, but hope that it will contribute broadly to sustainable and just futures.

Issue #50 of the Bank Street Occasional Paper Series, "Learning With Treescapes in Environmentally Endangered Times Learning with Treescapes in Environmentally Endangered Times," is intended to be hopeful. Articles in this issue contribute to the envisioning of new practices and to an architecture of knowledge to waymark a more sustainable route into the future. Trees are vital for the present and future health of the planet, its inhabitants, and ecosystems. They store carbon and breathe out oxygen. Their leaves filter dangerous pollutants. Their branches provide shade and a shelter for a myriad of other beings, allowing diverse species to thrive. They provide cooling, control erosion, and filter water. Articles in this issue include stories from teachers and their students about learning with trees, and descriptions of how engagements with trees can transform research and ways of thinking, feeling, and being. Across multiple pieces, authors reflect on how connecting with trees facilitates greater connection among humans and between humans and the more-than-human occupants of our planet.

This issue of the Bank Street "Occasional Paper Series" brings together educators and researchers to (re)imagine what it means to teach and learn within the immediacy of the here and now, an orientation crucial to confronting contemporary threats to children's lives, democracy, and the planet. The papers seek to extend and broaden Bank Street College founder Lucy Sprague Mitchell's original conceptualizations by centering the past and future alongside the immediacies of the now, elevating Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) perspectives in children's geographies and exploring potentialities of mapping in analog as well as emerging digital forms. The authors also aim to carry forward her commitments to listening to children with curiosity and care, rooted in a belief that young people know a lot about the world already and that they are fully capable of delving deep into complex processes and problems. As such, this collection situates young peoples' here and now within sociopolitical landscapes, the wider nested systems and structures that constitute and reconstitute land, place, and children's geographies. The authors in this special issue extend, critique, and reimagine what it means to center young people's worlds and ways of knowing to make sense of the here and now.

This issue of the Bank Street "Occasional Paper Series" is authored by an allgirl/womxn cast who brilliantly offers insights into possible futures, considering opportunities to rethink education and abolish the patterns of harm too-often enacted in and by schooling as it currently exists. This special issue begins with four articles authored by Black and South East Asian women who describe researchers' reimaginations of education that center the humanity and ingenuity of Black, Indigenous, and other communities of Color. Next, the issue turns to 10 teachers who identify as Black, Indigenous, and of Color (Latinx and Asian American), as well as a White co-conspirator. They reflect on their practices, identities, and priorities through a North Star logic. In the final section of this issue, five children--Amelia, Fiona, Jojo (Johana), Lela Joy, and Sara--offer their thoughts on what it was like to be schooled during the pandemic. Their work demonstrates that authoring extends to numerous dimensions and modalities beyond letters, words, and other symbols typically associated with literacy in schools and schooling.

This issue of the Bank Street "Occasional Paper Series" is a labor of love. It testifies love for Jonathan Silin, who for 17 years served as Editor-in-Chief. This issue has been designed to exemplify two commitments that have shaped the decades of Jonathan's career and that will resonate with readers of the "Occasional Paper Series": (1) Jonathan's passionate belief in the power of narrative; and (2) Jonathan's devotion to nurturing intergenerational relationships for creating conditions that can welcome newcomers into the extant world. To celebrate the spirit of Jonathan's lifetime of work, this issue has invited scholars to tell stories of education as hospitality, as welcoming the newcomer and the stranger, with all the complexities this involves. To create the issue itself as an act of welcoming, a group of curriculum theorists who are newer to the field --scholars whose voices are emerging as powerful representatives of a new generation of scholars-- were invited to write essays. Each of these theorists were paired with a more senior scholar, who wrote a response to their paired partner. In inviting the senior scholars to respond, they were asked to put narrative to use in welcoming the work of their partner, again exemplifying hospitality, creativity, and care. Invited authors were told that their pieces did not have to directly reference Jonathan's work; some did and some did not. Regardless, what followed from the invitation to contribute was nothing less than a profound testament to the spirit of Jonathan's work, leading to inspired acts of support and generosity shown by our contributors to one another, all occurring during the extreme stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For this edition of the "Bank Street Occasional Paper Series," educators were invited to share stories from their practice: times when they utilized children's literature and conversations to address real life; the difficult topics that children experience through the mirror of their own experiences or the windows of their peers, communities, or world. These stories are the stories of educators who have tried, and sometimes stumbled, and are showing their vulnerabilities. In each story, there is profound learning from the conversations that emerge from books. In the range of stories offered in this issue, there is one commonality: teachers are responding to the challenges that students of all ages face in their lives. These include concerns about gender and sexuality, racism, death and grief, climate change, police brutality, class issues, trauma, family insecurity, and mental health challenges. The essays are arranged in pairs by age/grade levels from preschool, to early elementary, middle elementary, late elementary, middle school, high school, and college, however, every one of these authors offers thoughtful guidance to educators (and non-educators), no matter the level with which they most identify.

Social, emotional, and affective experiences are impossible to separate from thinking, doing, and being in the world. Increasingly, schools and community-based organizations are recognizing this truth through the adoption of programs that focus on the emotional lives of children and youth, especially when emotions are fraught, and lives have been difficult. Programs such as social emotional learning (SEL) frameworks and trauma-informed practices (TIP) are not only popular, they are deemed "essential" in almost every corner of the social services sector. The authors in this issue suggest that these programs often focus on those who are marginalized through race, class, and/or experiences of violence, including family violence, while ignoring the social conditions that create marginalization and its effects, and neglecting the many strengths and strategies deployed by these children and youth. This focus can lead to labeling and/or silencing legitimate expressions of resistance and difference in a quest to elicit specific types of behavioral and cultural conformity for students to be deemed "learning ready." This issue explores the sometimes troubling beliefs and assumptions at work in popular social and emotional learning and trauma-informed pedagogies as well as some of the impacts of this new attention. This special issue begins with five articles that describe how implementations of SEL and TIP shape not only the systems they are set in, but the lives of children and youth who are served within them. The subsequent six articles move toward envisioning how educators and practitioners can rethink this work with and for the children and youth who are most profoundly impacted by SEL and TIP frameworks.

Much of the policy-and practice-focused research on infant-toddler care and education has been concerned with the issue of program quality. That is, what elements constitute a quality program for infants and toddlers that ensures their ongoing developmental success? Researchers have sought to identify the structural and process indicators necessary for young children to receive the kinds of responsive interactions that contribute to positive developmental outcomes. Paradoxically, while a lot is known about what constitutes high-quality care and education for infants and toddlers, most policies ignore the research by regulating a bare minimum of requirements for programs. This situation has resulted in significant variation in what infant-toddler programming looks like, where it is located, and who gets access to high-quality programs. This special themed issue of the "Occasional Paper Series" seeks to highlight and challenge assumptions about infant-toddler care and education. All the pieces in the issue can be grouped around two main themes: (1) the centrality of relationship-based care; and (2) the tensions between local/contextual and larger-scale systems-level approaches. The papers call to everyone in the early education field to advocate forcefully for infant-toddler education, for the communities in which it takes place, and for the workforce that facilitates children's development and family members' ability to work outside the home. This collection offers a vision of new pathways and resources that the field might utilize to address the under-resourcing and inadequate attention given to policy and practice addressing the zero to three space.

Issue 41 of Bank Street's Occasional Paper Series features a collection of papers by authors with a shared affinity for the work of critical mathematical inquiry (CMI). Essays in this issue include: (1) Teaching for Social Justice through Critical Mathematical Inquiry (Steven Greenstein and Mark Russo); (2) Re-designing Mathematics Education for Social Justice: A Vision (Fahmil Shah); (3) Quantitative Civic Literacy (Mary Raygoza); (4) Cultivating a Space for Critical Mathematical Inquiry through Knowledge-Eliciting Mathematical Activity (Debasmita Basu & Steven Greenstein); (5) Collaboration and Critical Mathematical Inquiry: Negotiating Mathematics Engagement, Identity, and Agency (Frances K. Harper); (6) The World in Your Pocket: Digital Media as Invitations for Transdisciplinary Inquiry in Mathematics Classrooms (Lynette DeAun Guzmán and Jeffrey Craig); (7) Power to Change: Math as a Social-Emotional Language in a Classroom of Four- and Five-Year-Olds (Elinor J. Albin and Gretchen Vice); (8) Mathematics for Whom: Reframing and Humanizing Mathematics (Cathery Yeh and Brande M. Otis); (9) Elementary Mathematics and #BlackLivesMatter (Theodore Chao and Maya Marlowe); and (10) The "Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations" and Its Role in Maintaining White Supremacy through Mathematics Education (Laurie Rubel and Andrea McCloskey).

This issue of the "Bank Street Occasional Paper Series" seeks to grapple with the complexity of patriotism, particularly in relation to its workings in the lives of teachers and students in schools. Like it or not, schools teach (about) patriotism implicitly if not explicitly. Therefore, much consideration needs to go into what schools should teach about and how they should enact patriotism. Patriotism is neither simplistic nor arcane, two common tropes. Rather, it is dynamically messy and as relevant as ever, in the present moment of rising populist and nationalist sentiments in the United States and across the world. As the pieces in this issue show, patriotism--and the learning and teaching of it--is complicated and contested, loved and hated, seemingly straightforward but entirely complex. Contents included: (1) Learning and Teaching the Complexities of Patriotism Here and Now (Mark T. Kissling); (2) "That's Quite a Tune": An Interview with Bruce Springsteen (Mark T. Kissling); (3) Loving America with Open Eyes: A Student-Driven Study of U.S. Rights in the Age of Trump (Margaret Nell Becker); (4) Patriotism and Dual Citizenship (Patricia Gándara); (5) Fostering Democratic Patriotism through Critical Pedagogy (Hillary Parkhouse); (6) On Patriotism (William Ayers); (7) This Is about Us: Toward Democratic, Patriotic Pedagogy (Samuel J. Tanner); (8) Military Patriotism and the JROTC (Jenna Christian); (9) Constructed Patriotism: Shifting (Re)Presentations and Performances of Patriotism through Curriculum Materials (Nina Hood and Marek Tesar); (10) Patriotism for People in Diaspora Is Love of Humanity (Ming Fang He); (11) A Love-Hate Relationship: Personal Narratives of Pride and Shame as Patriotic Affects (Mark Helmsing); and (12) Patriotism? No Thanks! (Madhu Suri Prakash). [Individual articles contain references.]

In this issue of the Occasional Paper Series describes practices and policies that impact the early schooling of children of immigrants in the United States. The authors consider the intersectionality of young children's lives and what needs to change in order to ensure that race, class, immigration status, gender, and dis/ability can effectively contribute to children's experiences at school and in other instructional contexts, rather than prevent them from getting the learning experiences they need and deserve. The essays all grapple with the need to approach programs, research, and school practices with respectful, strength-based views of communities. They frame inequities, disparities, and "gaps" as institutional challenges rather than child, family or community deficits. Together the authors articulate an agenda of advocacy for young children of immigrants. Work that engages children and families in strength-based, asset-oriented ways should: (1) Recognize strengths and capabilities of children, families, and communities; (2) Avoid programs, policies, discourses and practices that begin with deficit views of immigrant families and communities; (3) See the children of immigrants as intersectional and complex; and (4) Create programs that begin from the expertise and experience of immigrant families. Contents include: (1) A Vision for Transforming Early Childhood Research and Practice for Young Children of Immigrants and Their Families (Fabienne Doucet and Jennifer Keys Adair); (2) Intersectionality and Possibility in the Lives of Latina/o/x Children of Immigrants: Imagining Pedagogies Beyond the Politics of Hate (Ramón Antonio Martínez); (3) No Room for Silence: The Impact of the 2016 Presidential Election on a Second-Grade Dual-Language (Spanish-English) Classroom (Sandra L. Osorio); (4) Building Safe Community Spaces for Immigrant Families, One Library at a Time (Max Vázquez Domínguez, Denise Dávila, and Silvia Noguerón-Liu); (5) Administrators' Roles in Offering Dynamic Early Learning Experiences to Children of Latinx Immigrants (Alejandra Barraza and Pedro Martinez); (6) Rethinking "Parent Involvement": Perspectives of Immigrant and Refugee Parents (Zeynep Isik-Ercan); (7) Experiential Knowledge and Project-Based Learning in Bilingual Classrooms (Adriana Alvarez); (8) Over the Hills and Far Away: Inviting and Holding Traumatic Stories in School (Lesley Koplow, Noelle Dean, and Margaret Blachly); (9) Building Bridges Between Home and School for Latinx Families of Preschool Children (Gigliana Melzi, Adina R. Schick, and Lauren Scarola); and (10) Building Bridges, Not Walls, Between Latinx Immigrant Parents and Schools (Kiyomi Sánchez-Suzuki Colegrove). [Individual articles contain references.]

Educators concerned with social justice are working in very different social and legal contexts than when they first began to take up the issue of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and questioning (LGBTQ) lives in the school and the curriculum. The growing number of countries that have legalized same-sex marriage, the recent US Supreme Court decision requiring that same-sex couples be allowed to marry wherever they live in the US, and the passage of local and state anti-bullying legislation--all encourage educators to reinvigorate and refocus the conversation around queer curriculum and pedagogy. Rather than assuming that gayness has been "normalized," this issue of the Occasional Paper series takes as its premise that the full inclusion and engagement of LGBTQ youth and families is dependent on work still to come. It will open a new discourse on queer issues. Much of the recent attention on LGBTQ issues in educational settings has focused on the safety of bodies (queer or trans) in schools. Progress has been made for increased safety and inclusion of LGBTQ students in public schools in the United States and in many other countries. These changes include anti-bullying legislation and policies, activism on the part of gay-straight-trans alliances, advocacy by LGBTQ and ally teachers, and legal cases brought by students and parents. Following an "Introduction" by Darla Linville, this issue contains the following essays: (1) The Gift of Hindsight: A Parent Learns About Educating Trans Youth (Denise Snyder); (2) Changing the Shape of the Landscape: Sexual Diversity Frameworks and the Promise of Queer Literacy Pedagogy in the Elementary Classroom (Cammie Kim Lin); (3) Missing Persons' Report! Where are the Transgender Characters in Children's Picture Books? (Ashley Lauren Sullivan and Laurie Lynne Urraro); (4) An Embodied Education: Questioning Hospitality to the Queer (Clio Stearns); (5) Teaching Trans*: Transparent as a Strategy in ELA Classrooms (Joseph D. Sweet and David Lee Carlson); (6) "It's Nonexistent": Haunting in Trans Youth Narratives about Naming (Julia Sinclair-Palm); (7) "White people are gay, but so are some of my kids": Examining the intersections of race, sexuality, and gender (Stephanie Shelton); and (8) Gracefully Unexpected, Deeply Present, and Positively Disruptive: Love and Queerness in Classroom Community (benjamin lee hicks). (Individual papers contain references.)

This issue of the Occasional Papers Series aims to draw attention to the use of storytelling as a medium for provoking dialogue about inclusive classrooms and school communities. It offers readers stories of classroom life that provide insights into understanding the complexities that make up the lives of children with disabilities, their families, and teachers. The nine contributions to this issue include lived narratives and analyses presented from a wide range of useful subject positions: parents, general and special education teachers, researchers, advocates, siblings, and persons who are themselves disabled. The introduction titled, "Disability Studies in Education: Storying Our Way to Inclusion," was written by Joseph Michael Valente and Scot Danforth. The opening essay by Diane Linder Berman and David J. Connor, "Eclipsing Expectations: How A 3rd Grader Set His Own Goals (And Taught Us All How to Listen)," kicks off with a description of an illuminating journey through the eyes of a parent, Diane, who wanted a more inclusive experience for her son Benny. For Diane and Benny, this meant becoming meaningful participants not only in Benny's own classroom community but in the Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings that determined his educational goals. David uses a DSE framework to analyze and highlight the importance of context, as opposed to focusing on the disability condition, in enacting inclusionary practices. The authors argue for an "adhocratic" model of education that views children, educators, and parents as allies. In "Teaching Stories: Inclusion/exclusion and Disability Studies," Linda Ware and Natalie Wheeler-Hatz describe an exceptional collaboration between a university teacher-educator, Linda, and a public school teacher, Natalie. Together they develop a "Teaching Stories" in-service workshop for Natalie's colleagues to learn about disability studies, as well as a curriculum for her fifth grade class. Teaching Stories participants engage in self-reflection to examine personal biases about disability, use media to critically review representations of disability, and learn how to harness the potential of young adult literature to provide illustrative, non-deficit perspectives on disabilities. Louis Olander, an Iraqi war veteran and special education teacher in New York City, crafts a powerful story about his experiences coming to terms with a diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and navigating the quandaries and everyday realities of what he terms "quasi-inclusion." In "Rethinking Those Kids: Lessons Learned From a Novice Teacher's Induction into In/Exclusion," Louis argues for reframing inclusionary practices as pedagogies for equity that attend to the intersectional dynamics of race, class, and disability. He also encourages more local control over the implementation of inclusionary classroom practices. Inspired by Vivian Paley's storying scholarship, the essay "The Unfolding of Lucas's Story in an Inclusive Classroom: Living, Playing, and Becoming in the Social World of Kindergarten," tells stories about a vibrant kindergartner named Lucas through the viewpoints of his mother (Emma), teacher (Carmen), and teacher-educator (Haeny). In this multi-voiced story, the narrative centers on Lucas and shifts outward toward those orbiting Lucas's wondrously playful universe. The magic of Lucas's unfolding story is in the ways it disrupts conventional discourses about labels, interventions, and imposed meanings of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Karen Watson's ethnographic study, "Talking Tolerance Inside the 'Inclusive' Early Childhood Classroom" provides an inside look into what the Australian government calls "inclusive learning communities." This term emerges from a national early-years learning framework that highlights ability and disability as diversity. Following the course of a six-month period in three "inclusive" early childhood classrooms, Karen offers an account of the transformative potential of inclusion in contrast to the harmful effects of teaching tolerance. Tolerance, as Karen's study reveals, preserves the dualism of normal versus abnormal (or Other) and hinders critical reflection about ableist assumptions. "Hitting the Switch: ¡Sí se puede!" takes the reader into the lifeworld of first-grader Jason at Castle Bridge Elementary School, a public, dual-language school in New York City. Written by Jason's teachers Stephanie and Andrea in conjunction with his mother Sandra, this essay puts forward the ethos ¡Sí se puede! (Yes, you can!), which relies on children's empathy and calls for a collective response to inclusion. "Hitting the Switch" concludes with practical suggestions for creating an inclusive space for children who use assistive communicative devices so that they can become meaningful participants in the classroom community. Emily Clark's "I [Don't] Belong Here: Narrating Inclusion at the Exclusion of Others," privileges the voices of families in their quest for inclusive education. Borrowing from narrative research and Disability Studies in Education, Emily tells the story of her adoptive siblings Maria and Isaac, who were orphaned by AIDS. She explores the paradox of inclusion which is that it sometimes, if not oftentimes, fails and results in exclusion. A chief reason for the failure of inclusion, Emily argues, is that children with real and perceived differences challenge the "grammar" of schooling--that is, they stand out for their differences. A beautifully crafted ethnographic description of a rural Midwestern middle school, "Lunch Detention: Our Little Barred Room," by Lisa A. Johnson, pulls back the "facades of inclusion" to reveal emotional violence and deep-seated discriminatory practices against special education students. Lisa, herself blind, describes how she was approached by an administrator to take over the role of lunch detention supervisor for the "little barred room." In a short time, the "little barred room" becomes a place of refuge for Lisa and the other students, who share stories of friendship and create an inclusive space that empowers them to challenge a culture of oppression. Melissa Tsuei's "A Circle With Edges: How Storytime Privileges the Abled Learner," takes a critical look at one of the commonplace features of early childhood classrooms--story time. In her essay, Melissa considers the ways in which story time reinforces unequal power dynamics for diverse learners by privileging the able-bodied learner. In response, Melissa creates and presents the SPHERE model, which promotes active engagement and shared dialogue through collaborative storytelling and nurtures an inclusive literacy-learning environment. Taken together, these essays are intended to offer readers an applied DSE approach to inclusive classroom pedagogy. These essays frame disability and the lives of young children with disabilities in ways that: privilege the self-understandings and experiential knowledge of the children and their families; illuminate oppressive systems, arrangements, and circumstances that deny them opportunities for access to participation and equality; and create opportunities for greater levels of access, participation, and equality for them. It is the hope that these essays will further amplify and provoke unending discussions about how to create and sustain genuinely inclusive classrooms and communities. (Individual papers contain references.)

Confirmation of the current enthusiasm for re-visioning progressive education arrived in inboxes this fall when the Bank Street College of Education received more submissions for this issue than for any other in the journal's 17-year history. From these the editors have selected a range of essays that reflect pre-kindergarten through high-school settings; focus on individual classrooms, entire schools and school districts; and attend to matters of pedagogy and curriculum building or to working within the constraints of the contemporary moment. Following an introduction title "Now is the Time," by Jonathan Silin & Meredith Moore, nine essays were selected. Three of the essays showcase child-centered public schools and present twenty-first century embodiments of progressive principles laid out more than a century ago. Corinthia Mirasol-Spath and Jill Leibowitz explore the benefits of play for students and teachers alike in a New York City elementary school that provides students with time to explore their interests through long-term projects of their choosing in "Reenvisioning the Classroom: Making Time for Students and Teachers to Play." Rachel Seher, Alan Cheng, and Melissa Birnbaum paint a portrait of another school with experiential learning at its core; at "City-As-School: Internship-based Learning in New York City Public Schools," internships take the place of many classroom-based courses. "The Center for Inquiry: Anatomy of a Successful Progressive School" transports the reader to Indianapolis, Indiana, where authors Christine Leland, Amy Wackerly, and Christine Collier were part of the original cohort of teachers and university faculty who founded a progressive magnet school. Premised on inquiry-based teaching and learning, the Center for Inquiry has grown from one to four schools. The second group of essays addresses the ways that progressive education in public schools has shifted and must continue to shift to meet the needs of America's increasingly diverse student population. In "Beyond Child-Centered Constructivism: A Call for Culturally Sustaining Progressive Pedagogy," Alissa Algava argues that twentieth-century constructivist pedagogies are not sufficient to fulfill progressive education's inherently political, activist and democratic potential. She calls for a culturally sustaining progressive pedagogy that critically engages questions of power with both children and teachers. Beatric S. Fennimore confronts the deficit-based talk prevalent in many schools serving marginalized students in "Say that the River Turns: Social Justice Intentions in Progressive Public School Classrooms." She argues that teaching for social justice begins by replacing deficit-based talk with clearly articulated intentions that subsequently transform into actions. Echoing the theme of the power of language, Darrick Smith summarizes efforts to transform the negative and disrespectful culture at a small California high school with a racially diverse student population, in "A Humanizing Approach to Improving School Disciplinary Culture." Here a humanizing approach to discipline, rooted in an affirmation of students and their families, and entailing an alignment of school and family values with the school's mission, has been successful. Finally, incorporating data from an ethnographic case study of a bilingual (Spanish/English) Head Start program serving the children of Dominican and Mexican immigrants, Ysaaca Axelrod explores the tensions in parents', teachers', and administrators' beliefs about language use and the role of play in ""We All is Teachers": Emergent Bilingual Children at the Center of the Curriculum." Balancing these essays on classroom life, the final two essays focus on administrative practices that support progressive education. In "Holding Space for Progressive Practices," elementary principals Abbe Futterman, Dyanthe Spielberg, and Cecelia Traugh use a descriptive review process to share their methods for maintaining educational spaces that are grounded in progressive values, in the face of conflicting mandates from the district or the state. In a provocative counterpoint, Doug Knecht, Nancy Gannon, and Carolyn Yaffe, former New York Department of Education administrators, describe their work adding a quality review process to the accountability system for city schools in "Across Classrooms: School Quality Reviews as a Progressive Educational Policy." Positing that the quality review is itself a progressive process, they argue that it can help schools to focus more on the lived experiences of their students and less on high stakes moments. Together these essays tell that only through a shared commitment of families, teachers and administrators can progressive practices flourish in public schools. They also tell that success requires a combination of hard work in the classroom and savvy political strategizing in the larger systems, along with a deep understanding of the foundational tenets of progressivism and a willingness to reimagine how best to realize them in the twenty-first century. It is the hope that these essays will inspire as they have inspired the writers to continue advocating for more just, engaging, and child-friendly classrooms for all children. (Individual papers contain references.)

In this issue of the Occasional Paper Series, the authors reimagine progressive pedagogy within the framework of digital pedagogy and online practice. The issue begins with "Notes from the Special Issue Editors," Helen Freidus, Mollie Welsh Kruger & Steven Goss. In the first set of essays, "Inside the Online Classroom," the authors present the experiences of educators who have entered the square room but have refused to be limited by its constraints. These are teacher educators who have designed their courses for the online venue. Some enthusiastically chose to teach online; others were mandated to do so. Regardless of how their journey began, each author describes the work she or he is doing to bring constructivist practice online. To the surprise of each of these educators, they find that not only is the work possible, but it leads them to reframe the ways in which they approach their face-to-face teaching. This section begins with "Beyond a Digital Status Quo: Re-conceptualizing Online Learning Opportunities," by Ellen B. Meier. Tamara Spencer, in "Preparing Teachers as Literacy Leaders in a Hybrid Classroom," documents the process of taking new literacies and innovative pedagogy online, moving from a face-to-face to a hybrid course, she details the learning of both students and educator. Robin Isserles, in "Fostering Student Engagement: Creating a 'Culture of Learning' Online," addresses the ways in which distance learning offers possibilities for mitigating inequitable access to higher education--supporting community college students' ability to take ownership of their learning, and encouraging them to think critically about what they are learning. In Fred W. Freking & Jenny D. Ingber's "Teaching Science Teachers in an Online Context with a Constructivist Approach", the authors discuss the development of an online STEM-based teacher education program, providing a template for the inclusion of constructivist practices, such as course activities and student teaching Ramona Cutri, Erin Whiting & Stefinee Pinnegar, in "Activating Emotional and Analytic Engagement in Blended Learning: A Multicultural Teacher Education Example," activate students' emotional and analytic engagement with multicultural education through online classrooms. In "Creating Meaningful Learning Opportunities Online," Hafdís Guðjónsdóttir, Karen Gísladottir & Svanborg Jonsdottir describe the ways in which they have used digital pedagogy to address the loneliness of the distance learner by making their online course more inclusive and interactive. In the second set of essays, "Beyond the Online Classroom," authors describe their experiences in a range of online contexts. These authors came to their work with a vision of how technology might offer new pathways for learning. They ask: what do K-12 classrooms, business school courses, teacher communities of practice, and museum spaces look like when infused with the new opportunities technologies offer? The authors included in this section use constructivist practices to bring new visions to traditional experiences. They find that the outcomes are even richer than they had anticipated. In "Operations Management Outside of the Classroom: An Experiential Approach to Teaching Enabled by Online Learning," Kristen A. Sosulski & Harry R. Chernoff employ online learning as a way to free their students from the confines of the lecture-based classroom. In "Reflection & Technology in Theory and Practice: Teen Engagement in Art Museums," Chelsea Emelie Kelly discusses her experience using digital technologies to extend the young museum-goer's voice beyond the walls of the museum and into online communities. In "Technology as a Tool for Collaboration, Understanding & Engagement," Kai Johnson incorporates multimodal online inquiry to deepen the thinking of children in his elementary classroom. When he sees how engaged his students are in their work, he realizes that this is a true picture of constructivist learning. Marvin Cohen, Babette Moeller & Michelle Cerrone document the ways in which online communities of practice enable teachers to have meaningful conversations sharing practices and discussing the nuances of teaching math in "Constructing Online Communities of Practice." Across these articles, the reader will find educators engaging with the challenges they encountered and emerging with new visions of constructivist practice. Authors who began as skeptics discovered possibilities. Authors who thought they understood the potential of online practice were struck by their students' and their own increased insight. The hope is that the ideas presented in this edition of the Occasional Paper Series will encourage readers to experiment with and document their own forays into online practice. (Individual papers contain references.)

This issue of "Bank Street Occasional Papers" explores the value of time outside of school. Educators have given relatively little scholarly attention to young people's nonschool lives. Ignored or valorized, nonschool spaces show up in educational research only as a backdrop, implying that school learning is the yardstick by which to measure the young people's lives. Even scholars who focus primarily on nonschool spaces are limited by their inability to theorize nonschool learning without framing it in terms of school learning (Sefton-Green, 2012; Teitle, 2012). Yet this myopic view of school outcomes only serves to narrow the purpose and possibilities of nonschool time. Therefore, the editors of "Bank Street Occasional Papers" asked authors to expand the conversation about young people's lives outside of school. Contributing authors both engage with current literature on nonschool spaces and offer new and exciting ways to conceptualize nonschool activity and learning. Articles in this issue include: (1) What (and Where) Is the "Learning" When We Talk About Learning in the Home? (Julian Sefton-Green); (2) Global Childhoods, Asian Lifeworlds: After School Time in Hong Kong (Nicola Yelland, Sandy Muspratt, and Caja Gilbert); (3) Becoming-Belieber: Girls' Passionate Encounters with Bieber Culture (Kortney Sherbine); (4) Building After-School Islands of Expertise in "Wrestling Club" (Victor Sensenig); (5) Mapping the Social Across Lived Experiences: Relational Geographies and After-School Time (Jennifer A. Vadeboncoeur and Louai Rahal); (6) Changing Through Laughter with "Laughter for a Change" (Laurel J. Felt and Ed Greenberg); (7) Enhanced Participation: Creating Opportunities for Youth Leadership Development (Clara Waloff); (8) Witnessing the Power of El Sistema in Urban Communities: Sister Cities Girlchoir (Erika Kitzmiller); and (9) Playing Outdoors: The Importance of the City as a Playground for Skateboarding and Parkour (Michael Jeffries, Sebastian Messer, and Jon Swords). Individual articles contain references.

This issue is a Festschrift in honor of Harriet K. Cuffaro, a Bank Street College faculty member from 1968-1998. A Festschrift--a volume reflecting the values, theories, and passions of a senior scholar in a field--seeks to offer scholarship that builds on these contributions. Harriet Cuffaro has touched and shaped more lives of teachers, scholars, and colleagues than can possibly be counted. A teacher in her soul, and an esteemed scholar of John Dewey, Harriet has "unfolded and connected" essential Deweyan ideas and made them accessible and meaningful in the lives of teachers. This Festschrift reflects the core ideas that Harriet brought to the field of early childhood education and the study of John Dewey. Above all, Harriet reminds others that to teach means to have a philosophy of education, to articulate the whys of what teachers do, and to understand that it is this philosophy that guides and shapes the decisions made in the classroom. Individual essays in this Festschrift include: (1) One Perspective on Harriet Cuffaro: A Story of Engagement and Experience (Celia Genishi); (2) Thinking Through Early Childhood (Jonathan Silin); (3) When Unit Blocks Came to Gardaborg (Kristín Einarsdóttir); (4) The Experience of Working and Learning Together (Jane Clarke); (5) Caroline Pratt: Progressive Pedagogy "In Statu Nascendi" (Jeroen Staring); (6) An Inquiry into the Pedagogical Implications of Dewey's Ecological Thinking (Simon Jorgenson); (7) Doing Dewey (Carol Rodgers) [Contains Appendix: "Whispers on the Moon"]; and (8) Presence in Double Vision (Miriam Raider-Roth). Individual essays include references and figures.

We all want children to become engaged and enthusiastic readers. Yet teachers are often challenged by students who, because of histories with a standardized and irrelevant curriculum, poor pedagogy, or unique learning styles, have become alienated from the written word. Impatient with teachers' ignorance and desiring to be liberated from well-meaning interventions, these so called "struggling" readers often make short shrift of teachers' best efforts. In this provocative and moving essay, Clio Stearns, a Bank Street educated teacher, toggles back and forth between moments with her young daughter who daily grows more attached to books and moments with her fifth grade students who remain disconnected from her carefully chosen texts. Refracted through a psychoanalytic lens and a deeply caring heart, Stearns' description of her classroom practices offers a canny account of all that she must give up in order to see through and past her students' resistance. In a surprising turn of events she learns to join with her students as they become curious readers of the world that really matters to them. Three senior scholars respond to Stearns' essay by reflecting on their lives as curriculum theorists in order to highlight the fundamental dynamics of teaching and learning with other people's children in the following essays: (1) Near & Far; (2) Dirt & Early Reading; and (3) The Pedagogical Use of Loss. This collection of essays reminds the reader that which would be forgotten: Reading and writing are profoundly human activities requiring mindful attunement to the interpersonal relationships through which they are achieved. Individual essays contain references.

Each of the papers in this collection offers a much-needed antidote to the forces that disconnect educators from the places in which they teach, learn, and live. Together, they provide an opportunity to reflect on the power of place in education. This issue offers an opportunity--an invitation--to embrace all that the places both in and outside the classroom have to offer. Individual essays in this paper include: (1) Reclaiming the Promise of Place: An Interview with David Greenwood (Roberta Altman); (2) Playing in Literary Landscapes: Considering Children's Need for Fantasy Literature in the Place-Based Classroom (Sarah Fisher); (3) Guggenheim for All: Museum Education for Students on the Spectrum (Chiara Di Lello); (4) Curtain Up: Place-based Teaching & Learning in the New York City Theater District (Peggy McNamara and Bryan Andes); (5) Place-Based Education: (Re)Integrating Ecology & Economy (Mark T. Kissling and Angela Calabrese Barton); (6) Discovering Place-based Education in the Foothills of the Himalayas (Monimalika Day with Doug Hernandez); (7) Learning Naturally: An Inquiry Study of Streams in Hawaii (Becca Kesler); (8) Nature Preschools: Putting Nature at the Heart of Early Childhood Education (Ken Finch and Patti Ensel Bailie); and (9) Preparing Teachers for Place-based Teaching (Amy Vinlove). Individual essays contain references and figures.

Guest editors Gail Boldt and William Ayers have asked 14 leading educators to address the politics of the teacher accountability movement in America. Who benefits and who is hurt? What is gained and what is lost? How can we move forward with a more hopeful and inclusive vision of our educational future? All of the contributors are motivated by an abiding commitment to democratic ideals and respect for the complex work of teachers even as they encourage the reader to take back the conversation about school reform in America. This publication begins with a preface by Gail M. Boldt and an introduction by William Ayers. Part I contains: (1) Accountability and the Contemporary Intellectual (Greg Dimitriadis and Marc Lamont Hill); (2) The Teacher Accountability Debate (Diane Ravitch); and (3) Educational (Reform) Revolution (Peter Taubman). Part II contains: (4) Racing to the Top: Who's Accounting for the Children? (Celia Genishi and Anne Haas Dyson); (5) "If We Look to Buy the Cheapest Paper, Why Not the Cheapest Teachers?" (Fred Klonsky); (6) Schooling of and for Democracy (Deborah Meier); and (7) The New Orleans Reformed Public School System: National Model? (Raynard Sanders). Part III contains: (1) Silver Linings (Gil Schmerler); (2) Creating the Schools We Need (Pedro A. Noguera); (3) A Glass Half Full (Jeff Duncan-Andrade); and (4) Flip the Script (Kevin K. Kumashiro and Erica R. Meiners). "Coda" by Gail M. Boldt is also included. Individual papers contain references and footnotes.

What would schools and classrooms look like if they truly mirrored our democratic ideals? In this issue of the Occasional Papers, five authors explore current and historical questions related to the inclusion of children with disabilities in public schools. The history of educating children with disabilities--an ongoing civil rights issue--has progressed over the decades from exclusion, to segregation, to access, towards a vision of inclusion that is yet to be universally realized. Too often in the currently polarized educational climate, the debate on inclusion is reduced to questions of funding, improving students' performance on standardized tests, or simply does not occur at all (very little has been written, for example, on the implications of value added assessments for teachers in co-taught classrooms). Inclusion, however, is an ethic not a place, service, or "outcome." The contributors to this volume explore the meaning of inclusion from a range of more nuanced perspectives. They tackle themes related to historical progress, access and collaboration, and take a close look in particular at the complex and changing relationship of general and special educators. The contributors offer exemplary models, surface critical questions, and identify enduring challenges. An introduction by Valentine Burr is followed by individual essays: (1) Inclusion: What Came Before (Judith Lesch); (2) Doing the Civil Right Thing Supporting Children with Disabilities in Inclusive Classrooms (David J. Connor and Kristen Goldmansour); (3) Overcoming Barriers to Co-teaching (Seamus O'Connor); and (4) From Access to Interaction: Prioritizing Opportunities for Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Development for Children with Physical Disabilities in Inclusive Classrooms (Daniel Atkins). Individual essays contain references and figures.

In the second decade of the 21st century, some schools are in trouble and some schools are not. The subject of this Occasional Paper is the preparation of teachers for schools that--lacking sufficient resources, effective leadership, or vocal advocates--are failing to educate their students by any reasonable measures. The teachers and teacher educator contributors to this volume offer a more variegated set of responses grounded in a diversity of local experiences. Their approaches to researching and understanding the immediacy of becoming a teacher are based on decades of working in hard-pressed urban schools and the institutions that supply them with new educators. The multiple authorship of all but one of the essays published here attests the complexity of the task at hand and the need for collaboration at every level of the educational endeavor. This volume contains the following papers: (1) The Right to Learn: Preparing Early Childhood Teachers to Work in High-Needs Schools (Julie Diamond, Fretta Reitzes, and Betsy Grob); (2) No Teaching More Fulfilling: An Interview with Pam Jones (Linda Levine); (3) Preparing Teachers for High-Needs Schools: A Focus on Thoughtfully Adaptive Teaching (Arlene Mascarenhas, Seth A. Parsons, and Sarah Cohen Burrowbridge); (4) Toward 21st-Century Literacy and Civic Engagement: Facilitating Student Documentary Projects (Steven Goodman); (5) No Shortcuts on the Journey to Learning for Students or Teachers (Alison Coviello and Susan Stires); and (6) Beyond the Lone Hero: Providing Supports for New Teachers in High-Needs Schools (Sarah Elizabeth Barrett, Donna Ford, and Carl James). An introduction by Jonathan G. Silin is included. Individual papers contain references.

This paper tells the remarkable and compelling story of Leonard Covello, a ground breaking progressive educator who worked tirelessly to shape public education in New York City during the first half of the 20th century. Covello was the founding principal of Benjamin Franklin High School (BFHS) in East Harlem in the 1930s. The author invites everyone to explore a little known part of the past and frames a critical discussion about what the future might be. The major objective of this study is to examine Covello's work within the twin frameworks of educational leadership and progressivism. It begins by providing a biographical sketch of Covello and then explores his professional and personal philosophy and the way that these played out in his roles as educational and community leader, sociopolitical activist, and community ethnographer. It then examines BFHS as a new paradigm for educational institutions, with an emphasis on its pioneering work in developing student leaders, engaging in community activism, and promoting intercultural education. Finally, it looks at the larger implications of Covello's work in an era of increased emphasis on testing and standardization. By looking back to Covello's work, the author locates the problems of our present situation in schools' retreat from a core progressive goal--the development of social capital within students and community members. (Contains 3 footnotes. Introduction written by Patrick Shannon.)

Teacher leadership is "hard." Many of the reasons are obvious: Teaching is a highly labor-intensive profession to begin with, leaving little downtime for work with other adults. School schedules are notoriously stingy with space for adult collaboration. Teachers are rarely paid to exercise leadership; when they are, they are never paid enough. This volume is a modest attempt to restore the issue of teacher leadership to the prominence it deserves and requires. Although there is considerable overlap among the essays, they have been organized loosely into three categories: "mentoring," to address the essential question of teacher helping teacher; "transforming school culture," to reflect some of the many ways teachers make a difference in the environment immediately beyond their classrooms; and "advocating" for change, to spotlight the voices teacher leaders find ways to project in the interest of creating broader and more enduring change. This issue contains the following articles: (1) Becoming a Teacher Leader within Your Classroom: A Dialogue (Nayantara Mhatre and Jill Stacy); (2) Walking a Hall of Mirrors (Kami Patrizio); (3) Ask Not What FHS Can Do for You, But What You Can Do for FHS (Jessica Endlich Winkler); (4) Empowering Teachers: Developing Meaningful Leadership (Jennifer Groves); (5) Making Sense of Distributed Leadership: A Conversation Among Teacher Leaders (Kathleen Dickinson Rockwood); (6) Leadership and Agency as a Novice Teacher (Clare E. Tin); (7) BETLA Teacher Leaders: An Unselfish Sense of Purpose (Lillian Hernandez and Cristian Solorza); and (8) Leading Without Permission (Robin E. Hummel). Introduction by Gil Schmerler is also included. [This issue of Occasional Papers was supported, in part, by Bank Street's Adelaide Weismann Center for Innovative Leadership in Education.]

Concerned that various reforms promising greater professional autonomy and status as well as student success are actually disempowering teachers, impoverishing intellectual life in schools, and serving as a portal for the marketization of teaching and education, editors invited teachers to respond to the ways in which the proliferation of standards and testing combined with their own loss of professional control is altering the landscape of American education. The editors' goal was to raise questions about whether and how educators are balancing the demands of high stakes testing, scripted curricula, and a focus on performance outcomes with the emotional complexity of classroom life. Selections include: (1) Squeezed, Stretched, and Stuck: Teachers Defending Play-based Learning in No-nonsense Times (Karen E. Wohlwend); (2) Invisible Ink: A Psychoanalytic Study of School Memory (Lisa Farley); (3) Imaginary Stories in School: First Steps towards Literacy (Gillian Dowley McNamee); (4) In Defense of Playfulness (Peter Nelsen); (5) Mouthy Students and the Teacher's Apple: Questions of Orality and Race in the Urban Public School (Alyssa D. Niccolini); and (6) Confounded and Compounded by Language: English Language Learner and High Stakes Testing (Elizabeth Park). (Articles are footnoted and referenced individually.)

Two articles comprise this publication. In "Beyond the Story-Book Ending: Literature for Young Children About Parental Estrangement and Loss," Megan Matt analyzes over 30 books for young children on the topics of abandonment, estrangement, divorce, and foster care. She observes that this loss might appear as an event within the story or as a fear articulated by a young child. She states that, as an educator, she hopes that she can make the children realize that their own stories are "real" and legitimate, no matter what messages they might encounter or fail to encounter in the media. In "Walking the Walk: Linking Teaching and Advocacy," Danielle Morrison recounts her experiences teaching a civil rights curriculum to third graders at a progressive private school in Manhattan. As a young teacher, she believed that she should be neutral and present information to her students, not interpret it. She found that when her school changed their civil rights curriculum from one centering around skin color to one that was more global and current, leading to a social action project and advocacy, the students became more engaged. She learned that it is her job as a teacher to inspire students to want to build a better world, that it is okay for her to express her opinions, share her experiences, and to model ways for her students to participate. She found that it takes a different kind of hard work, dedication, and time to teach children to care about advocacy. [Occasional Paper Series editor: Jonathan G. Silin.]

Alternative routes to teacher preparation are clearly here to stay. A growing research literature on non-traditional pathways suggests the complexity of the task ahead. This report offers new teachers the opportunity to tell their own stories in their own words. In "Alternative Certification and Alternative Pathways: A Personal Take on a Core Policy Dilemma," Jon Snyder sets the scene with an insightful and provocative essay that identifies the key issues from a public policy perspective. While he has serious reservations about many alternative programs, he also has been instrumental in developing the Partnership for Quality, a collaboration between schools in the South Bronx and Bank Street College. This alternative program only allows candidates to become teachers of record after establishing the capacity to work successfully with children. In addition, candidates participate in on-going mentoring with experienced teachers in schools where they and the entire staff receive support from the College. The essays which follow Snyder document the experiences of four novice teachers. These essays are: (1) "I Hope This Will Be a Good Year for Me..." A Career-Changer Stumbles on the Fast Track to Teaching (Miranda Barry); (2) Collaborations for Success: Teachers, Families, and Funders Working Together (Sarah Samuels); (3) Getting Off the Fast Track for the Long Haul: Becoming a Teacher (Ariel Sacks); and (4) Learning a Tough Lesson: My Life as a NYC Teaching Fellow (Allen Ellenzweig). Five themes weave their way through these personal essays and remind us of the spectrum of fundamental issues that frame life in schools. These themes are: collaboration and isolation; educational vision and pedagogical skills; theory and practice; leadership and silence; and resources and barren landscapes. While offering distressing pictures of some alternative route programs, these essays also shed light on the elements that make schools work and allow new teachers to learn their craft: collaboration among peers and between professionals and families; vision informed by appropriate practices; theory offering insight into the lived realities of students and teachers; leadership that creates reliable, safe environments; rich resources. [Preface by Jonathan G. Silin.]

Developed by the Education Development Center and Bank Street College of Education, this professional development program shows general and special education teachers how to collaborate to provide a high-quality, standards-based mathematics education to all students, including those with disabilities. The Math for All learning experiences detailed in the corresponding facilitator's kit help teachers: (1) Assess students' strengths and needs; (2) Use multiple instructional strategies to teach specific math concepts; and (3) Tailor lessons based on individual students' strengths and needs to help them achieve high-quality learning outcomes in mathematics. This program emphasizes how the neurodevelopmental demands of a math lesson interact with individual students' strengths and needs. The authors provide step-by-step guidance for adapting materials, activities, and instructional strategies to make lessons accessible to all students. This participant book includes the handouts and reproducibles for the program. The corresponding kit includes a facilitator's guide and a corresponding DVD. A preface is included.