It’s Not About Grit: Trauma, Inequity, and the Power of Transformative Teaching

Speaking out against decades of injustice and challenging deficit perceptions of young learners and their families, It’s Not About Grit pulls back the veil, revealing the social systems that marginalize and stigmatize mostly poor, urban students of color and their communities. At the same time, author Steven Goodman, for nearly 35 years founder and director of NYC’s highly acclaimed Educational Video Center (EVC), shows the tremendous intelligence, resilience, and sense of agency of these students. Through the students’ in-school and out-of-school experiences, enhanced with curriculum guides and award-winning video clips from EVC, Goodman encourages educators to make a difference and demonstrates how to create safe and inclusive spaces where their teaching responds to students’ culture, race, gender, sexual orientation, language, housing status, and ability. Teachers will use this book to develop a pedagogy of transformative teaching.

*2018 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Gold Award in Education

*2019 PROSE Award in Education Finalist