What Every Teacher Should Know About Diverse Learners.

WHAT EVERY TEACHER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT DIVERSE LEARNERS. Donna Walker Tileston. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2004. 82 pp. Paperback, $18.95. Donna Walker Tileston, the author of What Every Teacher Should Know About Diverse Learners, taught for 27 years and is now the president of Strategic Teaching, a consulting firm that works with schools throughout the United States and Canada. Her many years of experience working with schools gives her the background knowledge to know what works in the classroom for various environments.

This book, which is part of a series by Tileston, outlines strategies for teachers of diverse students. Tileston addresses problems that classroom teachers face and provides strategies that can assist in solving them. The book's three sections cover: 1) the existing diversity in the classroom and how the teacher can plan for it effectively, 2) the existing bias that is keeping students from achieving, and 3) the continuous widening of the achievement gap.

The author begins with a brief description of what has happened in education in the last 50 years in terms of diversity, moving on to an explanation of the diversity in learning modalities, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity that can be found in the classroom. Tileston then discusses several signs of bias and suggests ways the teacher can eliminate such bias. In addition, Tileston discusses stereotyping, exclusion, unreality, selectivity, linguistic bias, and isolation. Linguistic bias refers to students being laughed at because of their inability to pronounce and use proper English, for example.

Experienced teachers tend to leave poorly equipped, run-down urban schools to teach at schools where there are ample resources, including technology. Urban schools, then, must make do with teachers who are new to the teaching profession and who must work with limited resources. Thus, the achievement gap widens. To close that achievement gap, Tileston suggests examining one's beliefs, prohibiting bias in the classroom, creating activities that allow students to know each other, building resiliency, and promoting diversity in the classroom (pp. 37-42). Tileston also outlines such effective teaching strategies as establishing and maintaining high student expectations, helping students evaluate and monitor their own learning, and matching instruction with the needs of the classroom culture.

Teachers who are new to the teaching field or who have limited experience working with diverse learners can use this book as a resource tool and a reference guide. The book's strongest feature is the set of strategies offered by Tileston to ensure the success of diverse learners. The appendices include a teacher's checklist for working with diverse students, a vocabulary summary, and a post-test to help readers review key concepts and assess their own background knowledge on the topic of diversity. Readers can compare their posttest results to the results from the pre-test located at the beginning of the book, which the author suggests completing before reading the book. While many references are not up-to-date, they include works of well-known scholars in the diversity field, such as Marzano and Cummings. Teachers entering the teaching profession or teachers seeking an overview on diversity would benefit from this book. Reviewed by Victoria G. Jobe, Assistant Principal, Mission Middle School, Riverside, CA