All of us in education can find opportunities to interrupt the status quo that allows inequities to go unchallenged. In Teaching for Racial Equity: Becoming Interrupters, authors Tonya Perry, Steven Zemelman, and Katy Smith show us the way. In this episode of The Write Time, listen to the authors talk about the making and use of this professional text.

Tonya B. Perry is the director of the Red Mountain Writing Project in Birmingham, Alabama. She also is the vice provost of Miles College, a Historically Black College University, and a co-author of Teaching for Racial Equity: Becoming Interrupters. She is the vice-president of NCTE. Her favorite pastime is writing and spending time with family and friends.

Katy Smith is the Chair of the Department of Educational Inquiry and Curriculum Studies and the Director of Graduate Studies at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. She began her association with the Illinois Writing Project (IWP) as a teacher-consultant while she was teaching high school students, and now directs IWP with Steve Zemelman.

Steve Zemelman is a visiting scholar at Northeastern Illinois University and a founding director of the Illinois Writing Project. He promotes student civic engagement and restorative justice in Chicago schools. His books on teaching writing and reading have long been widely appreciated, including Best Practice: Bringing Standards to Life in America’s Classrooms (with Harvey Daniels and Arthur Hyde), and From Inquiry to Action: Civic Engagement with Project-Based Learning.