Miller 2022


Educational Renaissance Vol. 11 (2022)

Teacher  Educat ors as Cr it ical St oryt ellers: Ef fect ive 
Teachers and Windows and Mir rors

Libbi R. Mil ler , EdD. School of Education, Cal Poly Humboldt 

     email: elizabeth.miller@humboldt.edu

Review of Teacher Educators as Critical Storytellers: Effective Teachers and Windows and Mirrors

Edited by: Antonio L. Ellis, Nicholas D. Hartlep, Gloria Ladson-Billings, David O. Stovall

$90.00, Hardback (ISBN: 9780807765159)
$29.95, Paperback (ISBN: 9780807765142)
$29.95, eBook (ISBN: 9780807779460)

Book Review

In their book, Teacher Educators as Critical 
Storytellers: Effective Teachers and Windows and 
Mirrors, editors Antonio L Ellis, Nicolas D. Hartlep, 
Gloria Ladson-Billings and David O. Stovall curated 
a collection of stories that pushback against the 
dominant and historical narratives that ?good? 
teachers are young, white and female (Haberman, 
2012). Through the use of personal stories, the 
book successfully contributes to a broader, 
inclusive and culturally sustaining narrative of 
teaching and education related professions. The 
book includes professional and personal 
narratives from highly accomplished educators, 
educational researchers and leaders who were 
invited to tell the story of their most memorable 

teacher using indigeneity, race, and/or ethnicity 
lenses.

The book draws on Style?s (1996) ?windows? and 
?mirrors? as a framework for disrupting the single 
story of teachers and teaching. Through this 
framework, effective educators serve as both 
?windows? and ?mirrors? for students. Students 
must see themselves reflected racially and 
culturally through the mirror of the teaching 
population. While at the same time, students 
must be able to look through the windows of their 
teachers and their experiences to see 
opportunities beyond their current contexts. Style 
(1996) contends that context influences education 
in a way that is impossible to disentangle. 

Abst ract  

Teacher Educators as Critical Storytellers: Effective Teachers and Windows and Mirrors is a collection 
of curated of stories that pushback against the narratives that define a ?good? teacher. Told through 
through critical storytelling methodology, the book draws on the ?windows? and ?mirrors? framework 
to invite multiplicies into the understanding of teachers. The book successfully contributes to a 
broader, inclusive and culturally sustaining narrative of teaching and education related professions 
and can be implemented as a text for learning with both preservice and inservice teachers. 



M ILLER| REVIEW: TEACHER EDUCATORS AS CRITICAL STORYTELLERS

?Windows? and ?mirrors? recognize and validate 
this relationship between meaning-making and 
context, which allows for participants to then 
engage in larger dialogues between themselves 
and the world. The ?windows? and ?mirrors? of this 
collection invite multiplicies into the definition(s) 
of a ?good? teacher. These multiplicies broaden 
and complicate the discourse around who is the 
ideal teacher. 

Through deeply rich and personal stories, the 
authors included in the book employ ?critical 
storytelling? methodology to explore the 
intertwined experiences of race, gender, lived and 
learned experiences in schools. Critical storytelling 
is a form of auto-ethnography that creates a space 
for participants to tell their stories and validate 
their experiences (Bolen, 2015). The storytelling 
aspect of this methodology invites reflexivity, 
which progresses movement towards social justice 
(Fasset & Warren, 2007). Bolen (2015) notes that 
risks and vulnerability are associated with critical 
storytelling, but contends that there are also risks 
with silence. The risk of silence is particularly 
present in stories such as these that have 
traditionally been kept out of social science 
inquiry. 

Teacher Educators as Critical Storytellers: Effective 
Teachers and Windows and Mirror   is divided into 
four parts: 1) African American Perspectives: 
Toward ?Demographic? and ?Democratic? 
Imperatives, 2) Asian American Perspectives: 
Beyond Blackness and Whiteness, 3) Native 
American Perspectives: Indigeneity is Not Race, 
and 4) Latinx Perspectives: The Latinization of 
Education. In the collection, authors tell 
descriptive stories of their experiences with 
educators who maintained high standards while 
also acknowledging the strengths, experiences 
and funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) that the 
students brought with them to the learning 
environment. A critical component of the book is 
its position that optimism in itself will not lead to 
social change, but change requires critical 
interrogation of the systems that oppress   which 
includes educational systems and spaces.

Each story in this book interweaves an analysis 
that draws on research in education, psychology 
and human development. Throughout the text, 
the authors employ research and theoretical 
frameworks to explore their experiences from a 
broader perspective, while maintaining personal 
elements of their story. For example, author 
Antonio Ellis explores their experience with their 
high school music teacher, Mr. McCloud, through 
the lens of Ladson-Billings (2009) ?dreamkeepers?. 
Judy Alston analyzes their teacher Sister Mary 
Regis as a ?tempered radical? (Meyerson, 2001) 
and a ?refined revolutionary? (Alston, 2018). 
Nicholas Hartlep shares the story of their school 
counselor, Mr. Smith, through lenses of ?primary 
needs? (Maslow, 1943), ?gentle teaching? 
(Haberman, 2008), ?presentism? and ?active 
listening.? The storytelling component humanizes 
and brings to life educational research in a way 
that allows the reader to become immersed and, 
while limited by positionality, deepen their 
understanding of the experience. 

The intended audience of this collection is a broad 
range of educators including preservice and 
prospective teachers, inservice educators and 
administrators in both K-12 and higher education, 
teacher education scholars and researchers, as 
well as those working in educational policy. This 
text is highly recommended for use in educator 
preparation programs with preservice teachers 
and leaders, as well as inservice mentors. Sections 
of the text provide short lists of recommendations 
for preservice and inservice teacher development. 
This book has potential to be highly impactful for 
preservice and inservice teachers, as they are able 
to read and engage with the text to develop 
recommendations and/or next steps in 
collaboration with their own community of 
practice.  

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M ILLER| REVIEW: TEACHER EDUCATORS AS CRITICAL STORYTELLERS

References

Alston, J. (2018, February). #TimesUp: Stepping out 
of the boat to lead. Moving from tempered 
radical to refined revolutions [Lecture]. MACH 
III: Building on Resilience Lecture Series at 
Prairie View A& M University, Prairie View, TX. 

Bolen, D. M. (2015). Critical Stories, Critical 
Imaginations, and Critical Possibilit ies. In 
Hartlep, N. D., & Hensley, B. O. (Eds.). Critical 
storytelling in uncritical times. (pp. xi - xv). 
Springer. 

Fassett, D. L., & Nainby, K. (2017). Critical 
communication pedagogy. In Handbook of 
Instructional Communication (pp. 248-259). 
Routledge.

Haberman, M. (2008). Gentle teaching in a violent 
society. Educational horizons, 86(4), 238-246.

Haberman, M. (2012). The myth of the ?fully 
qualified? bright young teacher. American 
Behavioral Scientist, 56(7), 926-940. 

Ladson-Billings, G. (2009). The dreamkeepers. 
Successful teachers of African American Children. 
Jossey-Bass.

Maslow, A (1943). A theory of human motivation. 
Psychology Review, 50(4), 370-396. 

Meyerson, D. E. (2001). Tempered radicals: How 
people use difference to inspire change at work. 
Harvard Business School. 

Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. 
(1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using 
a qualitative approach to connect homes and 
classrooms. Theory into practice, 31(2), 132-141.

Style, E. (1996). Curriculum as window and mirror. 
Social science record, 33(2), 21-28.

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