Brooklyn Dreams: My Life in Public Education

by Sonia Nieto

Overview

In Brooklyn Dreams, Sonia Nieto—one of the leading authors and teachers in the field of multicultural education—looks back on her formative experiences as a student, activist, and educator, and shows how they reflect and illuminate the themes of her life’s work.

Nieto offers a poignant account of her childhood and the complexities of navigating the boundaries between the rich culture of her working-class Puerto Rican family and the world of school. Brooklyn Dreams also chronicles her experiences as a fledgling teacher at the first bilingual public school in New York City—in the midst of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville strike—and the heady days of activism during the founding of the bilingual education program at Brooklyn College and later in establishing and running an alternative multicultural school in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Along the way, Nieto reflects on the ideas and individuals who influenced her work, from Jonathan Kozol to Paulo Freire, and talks frankly about the limits of activism, the failures of school reform, and the joys and challenges of working with preservice and in-service educators to deepen their appreciation of diversity.

Brooklyn Dreams is an intimate account of an educator’s life lived with zest, generosity, and warmth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781612508566
Publisher:	Harvard Education Press
Publication date:	11/10/2015
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Dr. Sonia Nieto has devoted her professional life to questions of diversity, equity, and social justice in education. A native of Brooklyn, New York, she began her teaching career in 1966 in an intermediate school in Brooklyn, moving two years later to P.S. 25 in the Bronx, the first fully bilingual school in the Northeast. She later taught in the Puerto Rican Studies Department at Brooklyn College before moving on to the University of Massachusetts, where she taught preservice and practice teachers for twenty-five years before retiring in 2006.

Her research focuses on multicultural education, teacher education, and the education of students of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. She has written or edited eleven books as well as dozens of journal articles and book chapters on these topics. She has received numerous awards for her scholarly work, teaching, activism, and advocacy, including six honorary doctorates. She has been a visiting scholar at various universities in the United States, as well as in Puerto Rico and Spain, and in 2012 she served as the Wits-Claude Distinguished Scholar at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. In addition, she was elected as a Laureate of Kappa Delta Pi (2011) and a member of the National Academy of Education (2015).

She is married to Angel Nieto, a poet, children’s book author, and former middle and high school teacher. Together, they have raised two daughters, Alicia and Marisa, and their granddaughter, Jazmyne. They are the proud grandparents of twelve grandchildren.

Table of Contents

Introduction Mi Fortuna 1

Part I Growing Up 11

Chapter 1 From La Isla del Encanto to the Streets of Brooklyn 13

Chapter 2 PS 55 Learning English, Learning School 39

Chapter 3 JHS 246 Ascent to the Middle Class 59

Chapter 4 Erasmus Hall Navigating Adolescence and Identity 77

Chapter 5 St. John's University New Friends, New Horizons 95

Part II Becoming an Educator 115

Chapter 6 NYU Interlude in Spain 117

Chapter 7 JHS 178 The First Year of Teaching 129

Chapter 8 PS 25 The Bilingual School: Somos Pioneros! 153

Chapter 9 Brooklyn College An Activist in Accidentia 171

Chapter 10 UMass and the Che-Lumumba School Learning to "Read the World" 191

Part III Research and Writing 207

Chapter 11 Life as a Professor 209

Chapter 12 Affirming Diversity and Beyond 227

Epilogue Jubilation 251

References 255

Acknowledgments 257

About the Author 261

Index 263

Editorial Reviews

Brooklyn Dreams: My Life in Public Education, by Sonia Nieto, makes a major contribution on issues of economic inequality in education as well as the strengths and necessity of bilingual and multicultural education.—Jacqueline J. Saindon, EdD, Journal of Language Literacy Education



Nieto’s autobiography encourages the reader to reflect on the forces that shape one’s own life as an educator and education activist.—Deborah Menkart, Allyson Criner Brown, Zanso Dalili, Bill Bigelow, and Jody Sokolower, Rethinking Schools



"Nieto's memoir is more than a record of her experiences; it is a powerful book raising questions of social justice and equality. For anyone with a vested interest in public education, Nieto offers a message of hope and optimism for the future in the face of inequalities and discrimination." —Amy Kelly, Multicultural Perspectives

From the Publisher