What should teachers do on the days after major events, tragedies, and traumas, especially when injustice is involved?

This beautifully written book features teacher narratives and youth-authored student spotlights that reveal what classrooms do and can look like in the wake of critical moments.

Dunn incisively argues for the importance of equitable commitments, humanizing dialogue, sociopolitical awareness, and a rejection of so-called pedagogical neutrality across all grade levels and content areas. By highlighting the voices of teachers who are pushing beyond their concerns and fears about teaching for equity and justice, readers see how these educators address negative reactions from parents and administrators, welcome all student viewpoints, and negotiate their own feelings. These inspiring stories come from diverse areas such as urban New York, rural Georgia, and suburban Michigan, from both public and private schools, and from classrooms with both novice and veteran teachers.

Teaching on Days After can be used to support current classroom teachers and to better structure teacher education to help preservice teachers think ahead to their future classrooms.

Book Features:

Narratives from teachers and students that represent a diverse range of identities, locations, grade levels, and content areas. Examples of days after that teachers remember, including 9/11, elections, natural disasters, gun violence, police brutality, social uprisings, Supreme Court decisions, immigration policies, and more. Examples of days after that K–12 and college-aged students remember, including what their teachers did and didn’t do and how they experienced these moments.

Proceeds will be donated to educational non-profits The Abolitionist Teaching Network and Woke Kindergarten.

Alyssa Hadley Dunn