Listening to Understanding

Hearing Their Voices: Teaching History to Students of Color by Kay Traille
Rowman and Littlefield, September 1, 2020

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Kay Traille's Hearing Their Voices: Teaching History to Students of Color is an important, timely read for all educators, not just history teachers. Traille's methodical, research-supported treatise is an invitation for teachers to more deliberately acknowledge, appreciate, and account for students' pre-conceived understanding of their subject areas. Noting that "history as a discipline lags behind subjects like mathematics" in reframing textbooks and approaches around students' misconceptions, Traille's research attempts to fill in that gap while zooming out to articulate a pedagogical approach that will prove useful to history teachers, DEI practitioners, and curriculum designers. Educators looking for guidance on how to approach controversial issues and insight into incorporating social-emotional learning into their curriculum will find many helpful tips and suggestions in this book. Ultimately, this insightful text is a handbook for teachers who want "to understand both how our students think and how our students feel." For educators, there might not be anything more important on which to focus.