Dr. Venetta Whitaker

The compilation of stories described in Teaching Other People’s Children grew out of the experiences of Venetta Whitaker and Venetta Rowles, two widely acclaimed mother and daughter educators who have dedicated their lives to teaching vast and diverse casts of children in elementary, middle, and senior high schools across the nation and in remote corners of the world. These two women offer a persuasive multidimensional tool -narrative teaching - as a springboard to learning. Narrative teaching provides a series of frameworks in the context of instructive storytelling, which addresses the learner’s human sensitivities within and beyond the basics. In short, it puts human faces on the children we teach.​​
 

This commonsense book is grounded in the reality of true and utterly authentic narratives that focus not only on classroom lessons and pedagogical issues, but take into account the human problems children face in our schools today (e.g., dealing with violence, death, bullying and divorce). This literature highlights the absurd challenges teachers face as they prepare the nation’s youth for taking part in an increasingly threatening society. Although the target audience for Teaching Other People’s Children is teachers and educators, the book is a must-read for parents, community organizers, the media workforce, policy-makers, police officers, mental health specialists, politicians, textbook editors, librarians, homeschoolers - and particularly teacher-bashers.​​
 

Other People’s Children speaks to the power of story in the voices of children and teachers. It draws attention to the authors’ appeal for truth in education. Furthermore, it articulates both women’s conviction that the story of teaching and learning must be retold from the anecdotal experiences of students, and those teachers who wake up each morning worrying about other people’s children.