As teacher educators, we wrote SSFABW for the express purpose of using it with the future elementary educators that we work with. Below you'll find ways that we and other teacher educators have used SSFABW as a part of social studies methods coursework. If you use SSFABW in your teacher preparation program and have struggled to get copies, please note that as of September 2023, the book is no longer published/in print by W.W. Norton and is now published by Routledge. The new ISBN is 9781032597102 and the eBook ISBN is 9781032677941.
SSFABW author Noreen has used the book in her elementary social studies methods classes at Michigan State, CU Boulder, and Iowa State University. Find her semester plan here.
In Chapter 2, we reference Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "The Danger of a Single Story" TED Talk. However, Adichie has made statements that have been viewed as transphobic and, shortly before our book's publication, was in a public feud with a trans writer who was her former student. The second edition of SSFABW will no longer include Adichie, but in the meantime, we want to highlight alternatives to Adichie's talk that are ideal for use in teacher education classrooms and professional development spaces. Here are some recommendations:
Ariel Cornett (Georgia Southern University) uses several reading check-ins in her undergraduate social studies methods course and was kind enough to share! Click the links below to access her Word documents:
Kim Weber Hall (CSU Long Beach) describes how she uses the book in her teacher ed classroom and a specific activity to support preservice teachers after reading Chapter 8:
Thank you again for writing SSFBW. It has been a complete game-changer for my elementary social studies/history methods course. I've never had students truly enjoy reading a text as much as they have enjoyed all semester working through your book.
Today, I had my students come to class having read your last chapter (How to Teach Anti-Oppressive Social Studies and Not Get Fired). In class, I asked them to participate in the Four As Text Protocol. Over this last semester I have participated in some PD work, and a couple of different presenters have shared new to me "equity-minded" reading, text and discussion protocols. The Four As Text Protocol really challenged and stretched students to dive deeper into yours and Katy's premise/thesis, and think thoughtfully and carefully about what you wrote, what we've discussed in class all semester, and how to really apply, and in the case of the protocol, "ASPIRE" to do, or "Act" upon in their own future classrooms.
90% of my teacher candidates this semester will be student teaching in the fall. The combination of your final chapter, and the text protocol, revitalized and boosted my students' desire to continue on their paths toward a teaching career. This was the first semester this set of students were taking classes back in person; our elementary teacher program has been exclusively online from March 2020 through Fall 2021! To say this was as equally challenging a semester as any of the previous 3 semesters for these students is an understatement.
I share this with you because I think returning to campus and being in person, while scary at first, was really good for each of them. But SSFBW (and therefore you and Katy) gets some of the credit, too, for helping build and enhance my students' confidence and passion for teaching. Without making a gross generalization, here in California we probably don't face as many obstacles as other states' educators do to plan and design anti-oppressive curriculum. Your book, however, validated what many of my students felt was the "right" way to teach, and you presented it in a way that seems attainable and sustainable for them as they begin teaching.
Teacher Educators Cara Ward (University of North Carolina Wilmington) and Elizabeth Bellows (Appalachian State University) asked their preservice teachers to use pages from SSFABW to create blackout poetry to represent their vision for teaching social studies. Behold their incredible work!
