Logan, J. (1997). Teaching stories. New York, NY: Kodansha America.

In this book, Judy Logan writes a first person account of some of her
teaching experiences.  Logan has been a middle school teacher for over
thirty years and her book gives us an in depth look at how she has
incorporated multicultural education into her English and social studies
curriculum. Since Logan is a self-proclaimed "feminist", the curriculum she
writes about in this book tended to focus a good deal on women's studies and
less on other forms of multicultural education.  Regardless, this book is
very engaging and will give the reader insights into the life of a teacher
and some good ideas for multicultural class activities.

For example, while teaching about women in history, she had each student
select a woman from history (or even a woman the child knew) and write a
short biography about her.  The women were from widely varying cultural
backgrounds.  Then each student created a quilt patch with a picture of that
woman.  When the project was complete, the class had created an entire quilt
honoring women in history.

I originally selected this book because I had just decided to become a
teacher and was eager to read any first hand accounts of this profession.
Logan's stories are a quick read, very entertaining, and quite informative.
I would recommend it for anyone who has decided to teach.

Questions for Judy Logan, the author:

1. What kind of class activities or assignments did you use to incorporate
other areas of multicultural education (i.e. Black or Asian studies)?

2. Were the majority of your students Caucasian?  What percentage, on a
yearly basis, were children of color?

3. When you taught writing, were you confronted with many children who had
great difficulty with standard English?  If so, how did you work with them
to learn it?  Did you place value on their "native" form of English, and if
so, how did you link the two?

4. Do you think you might have stepped out of bounds when you performed the
puberty ritual for one of your students?

5. Did you ever feel challenged to move out of your comfort zone (the school
you taught at for the majority of your time) and go to a school where the
majority of students were non-white?

Submitted by Kerrie Henegar

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