Publications List

Dowdy offers a warm and colorful collection of short fiction that covers a wide range of subjects. Based on intergenerational wisdom passed skillfully to her a wide audience will find them sometimes poignant and thought provoking and even sometimes zany and fun.

This reader found herself immersed in the characters' world.

One special moment I won't forget:

One mother gracefully fed her family a scanty meal and placed one beautiful blossom on the dinner table as she made a "way out of no way".

You may laugh; you may even cry but you will be transformed by these important narratives.

[Pyllis Mc Ewen, University Librarian]

If you were fortunate enough to have a Caribbean Granny in your life, then this collection of memories will settle you into that place where you feel safe and loved.

[Nathalie Taghaboni, Author, CEO, Commess University (Press)]

This colorfully illustrated book tells the inspiring story of a young weightlifter from Trinidad and Tobago, the first to win an Olympic medal in his division for the twinisland republic. The reader learns about the challenges that Lennox Kilgour overcame with the help of coaches, fellow athletes, and his community, and his own determination to succeed. "This book is a moving story of the athletes who were central to the sport of weightlifting at a time which can be described as the golden age of weightlifting in Trinidad and Tobago. It gives insight to the Olympic pioneering efforts with all its complexities, trials and triumphs...in a simple lyrical style to motivate, inspire and educate....This touching biographical journey...ebbs and flows with a Paperback but stinging sincerity of the qualities and experiences which is quite relevant today." Joan Osborne, Deputy Executive Director, National Library and Information System Authority (NALIS), Trinidad and Tobago Olympics, Selfesteem, ESL, Esol, Sports, Team

Istwa Lennox Kilgour se yon istwa, pou jèn lektè, ki rakonte lavi yon jèn altewofil ki kòmanse nan klèb katye li pou li rive ranpòte meday nan konpetisyon olenpik ki te fèt nan vil Èlsenki epi nan lòt konpetisyon. Lektè a ap aprann sou tout peripesi ke Lennox te rankontre epi simonte avèk èd antrenè li yo, ko-ekipye li yo, epi tou kominite li avèk detèminasyon pou li te reyisi nan èspò sa a. Nan finisman karyè li, nan yon jès jenewozite, li te antrene jèn atlèt epi pataje konesans li te resevwa ak talan atletik li te devlope. Liv sa a se … yon istwa touchan sou tout atlèt ki te santral nan devloman èspò altewofili nan peyi Trinidad ak Tobago. Li ba nou bon enfòmasyon sou efò premye atlèt olenpik yo avèk tout konplisite yo, tribilasyon yo, epi siksè yo… nan yon èstil lirik ki senp pou li motive, enspire ak edike Bèl istwa byografik touchan sa … kadanse tankou yon vag ki onèt pou prezante esperyans yon chanpyon olenpik ki ka ede nou menm jounen jodi a. Ti trezò sa a ka motive timoun toupatou sou Latè. Joan Osborne, Direktè Egzekitif Adjwen Libreri Nasyonal ak Otorite Sistèm Enfòmatik (LNOSE) Trinidad ak Tobago Pwofesè Emeritus Joanne Kilgour Dowdy te fèt nan peyi Trinidad ak Tobago. Li se pwofesè Alfabetizasyon Adolesan ak Adilt nan Inivèsite Kent (Ohio) nan depatman Lekòl Nòmal ak Pwogram Èskolè. Li te resevwa yon doktora nan Etid Alfabetizasyon nan Inivèsite Kawolin Dinò-Chapèl Il. Li te resevwa yon Metriz nan Ansèyman Anglè nan Inivèsite Kolonbya, avèk yon Bachelye nan Teyat nan Lekòl Jilyad nan Nouyòk. Anplis plizyè atik ak chapit nan liv, li ekri nèf (9) liv ki egzamine zafè fanm, emansipasyon yo, ak zafè ki konsène Karayibeyen ak tout dyaspora Afriken an. Ewo Olenpik, se istwa eksplwa papa li nan Konpetisyon Olenpik; se premye liv li ekri pou timoun. (Foto Richard Shane Roach) Dillon Sedar gradye nan pwogram Edikasyon Atistik nan Inivèsite Deta Kent. Anbisyon li kòm yon atis edikatè se konstwi yon anbyans nan klas la ki ka ankouraje kritik istorik ak estetik elèv li yo. 

Este libro, ilustrado con vivos colores, cuenta la inspiradora historia de un joven levantador de pesas de Trinidad y Tobago, el primero en ganar una medalla olímpica en su división para la república de las dos islas. El lector conocerá los desafíos que Lennox Kilgour superó con la ayuda de entrenadores, compañeros atletas, su comunidad y su propia determinación para triunfar.

“Este libro es una conmovedora historia de los atletas que fueron fundamentales en el deporte del levantamiento de pesas durante una época que puede describirse como la edad de oro de este deporte en Trinidad y Tobago. Ofrece una visión profunda de los esfuerzos pioneros en los Juegos Olímpicos, con todas sus complejidades, pruebas y triunfos… en un estilo lírico y sencillo que busca motivar, inspirar y educar… Este emotivo recorrido biográfico… fluye con una sinceridad suave pero contundente, destacando cualidades y experiencias que siguen siendo muy relevantes hoy en día.”

Joan Osborne, Directora Ejecutiva Adjunta, Autoridad del Sistema Nacional de Bibliotecas e Información (NALIS), Trinidad y Tobago

Juegos Olímpicos, Autoestima, ESL, Esol, Deportes, Trabajo en equipo

Text Sets: Multimodal Learning for Multicultural Students integrates a multicultural approach to teaching with standards-based instruction and multimodal learning opportunities in a variety of content areas. This unique combination allows teachers to meet the demands of their curriculum while recognizing and honoring the diverse students in their classroom. Each chapter provides an annotated text set with a specific theme, curricular goals, and instructional activities that suggest ways for students to interact with the texts. In addition to providing ready-made text sets, it models a framework for teachers to build their own text sets based on the individual needs of their schools and communities.

The book contributes to improving teaching and learning in a few ways: first, it provides in-service teachers with step-by-step, ready-to-use strategies that facilitate their students’ comprehension and use of content area reading material; second, it aims to help pre-service teachers learn to implement hands-on lessons for their content area; third, apart from strategies offered to the content area teachers in the mainstream, the book also provides teachers of English language learners with strategies that address the literacy needs of their diverse students.

Five Female Leaders from Trinidad and Tobago is a narrative project that illuminates the historical legacy of entrepreneurship, self-employment, and collective economics within the African diaspora, particularly in the lives of five women leaders of African descent from Trinidad and Tobago, in the Caribbean. By using the financial literacy lens as an analytical tool to interpret these biographies, this book documents the journeys of these independent business women, uncovers the literacy skills they employed, and describes the networking skills that they relied upon personally and professionally. The qualitative data collection methods utilized in this project help to identify lessons that will inform professionals, educators, and business and lay persons about the innovative ways in which teaching and learning take place outside of “formal” business schooling. Information gleaned from this study also serves to broaden traditional understandings of entrepreneurship and economic strategies inherited from majority African descended communities. Additionally, this book illuminates the creative and intellectual modes of learning within the Afrocentric communities that foster successful business practices. Finally, these five successful women pass on to interested learners their methods of modeling, encouraging, and celebrating the means by which independent business people make a positive impact on society.

Understanding and addressing social justice concerns has become a central focus in an increasing number of schools as well as teacher education programs. The activities in this book are grounded in the recognition that personal experience and engagement is essential for meaningful intercultural learning and social justice awareness to occur. The authors of these activities, themselves teachers and teacher educators representing a wide range of disciplines, share their favorite and most engaging strategies they have found to be effective at helping students acquire a level of comfort and insight in what can oftentimes be contentious, challenging and sensitive issues. These hands-on activities actively engage preservice and practicing teachers in real-life and simulated experiences, raising awareness and providing a foundation for introspection, reflection and discussion around these critically important issues in the safety of the classroom setting.

This book presents the work from a selection of contributors who aim to provide educators with hands-on activities to encourage reflection, awareness, and dialogue related to social justice issues. Highlighting the need for teachers to intentionally create spaces where students from all backgrounds can work together and appreciate their differences, teachers and teacher educators showcase hands-on literacy strategies that all educators can adapt and use in their own classrooms to enhance social justice awareness.

In what Black Issues Book Review calls “an essential text,” leading education scholars illuminate the crucial role of language in the learning process, uncovering the biases and stereotypes associated with the varieties and dialects of English we speak. With diverse perspectives on topics such as the need for linguistically differentiated instruction, code switching, and the role of personal identity in the classroom, The Skin That We Speak is a vital look at crucial educational issues.

Edited by bestselling author and MacArthur fellow Lisa Delpit and education professor Joanne Kilgour Dowdy, the book includes an extended new piece by Delpit herself, as well as groundbreaking work by Herbert Kohl, Gloria Ladson-Billings, and Victoria Purcell-Gates, and classic texts by Geneva Smitherman and Asa Hilliard.

When children are written off in our schools because they do not speak formal English, and when the class- and race-biased language used to describe those children determines their fate, everyone loses. The Skin That We Speak is a much-needed analysis of the ways that classrooms can accommodate everyone, to the benefit of students, educators, and society.

The collection of essays in this book is a documentation of the many ways in which Black women see themselves as literate, productive citizens. Their stories, as well as their writing of these documents, represent another phase in the journey of Blacks women’s literacy evolution in this country. Whether the women write about functional, school, media, maternal, traditional, workplace, or computational literacy, the writers find themselves seeking ways to share their knowledge and to widen the degree of agency that they exercise in society. Further, the women enumerate the ways in which we must now become aware of the Black woman’s role in the growth of literate practices and the role that literacy plays in the development of all aspects of our society.
As Black women are written off by society if they do not meet the criteria of those in power, and as class- and race-based language is continually used to represent Black literate women, this book offers a cutting-edge look at crucial literacy issues for the 21st century.

This volume of readings reveal the stories of women who are Black, biologically and culturally, who have enhanced their agency through the development of various types of literacy which have allowed them to resolve the issues of life, ranging from such disparate areas as veterinary, political diplomacy, academic education, and professional development and achievement. This volume is a testament to the power of literacy beyond its normal conception and understanding

This is a much needed, unique contribution to the body of literature on the challenges and triumphs of Black women academicians. The life stories that the author captures speak to the tenacity, strength, and sheer will of Black women to persevere in educational environments where they are not always valued.

Racism, Research, and Educational Reform adds to the knowledge base on educational reform, through individual, personal voices. Describing the complexities of multiple levels of engagement, it provides more accessible reading for teachers and the general public than most reform texts. This book also adds to the literature about multiple K-16 partnerships; collaborations between mainstream universities and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU); cross-district school system collaborations; the impact of racism on school reform efforts; communication problems in school collaborations; parent and teacher struggles for equal engagement; and issues of parental equity in school communities of diverse ethnic families.

This book includes strategies for integrating drama in the classroom through the use of creating characters, giving meaning to activities through answering the questions: who, what, when, where, and why about any person and situation under discussion (5 W's), using storyboards, incorporating music, writing radio scripts, and using literature and movies as prompts for improvised enactments. Students will learn how to create characters and apply those creations to different content-area activities, situations, and subject matter. This useful resource describes more than thirty-five scenarios of teachers and students in early elementary grades through graduate school working together to craft drama events that draw out participants’ creative energies, interpretations of curricular topics, and investigations of social, political, and personal concerns. In all of these lesson plans, students collectively explore topics, concepts, themes, or tensions that surface as they navigate their way through the conditions and experiences that unfold in a scene, skit, improvisation, or in interrelated episodes. Drama techniques include role play, scripting, dialogue, audience participation, improvisation, and the strategic use of interaction, space, movement, and gesture.

GED Stories relays the journeys of four Black women who left high school before completing their studies, but returned to the formal classroom to finish their secondary education. A comparison of the four case studies helps to highlight the similarities in the women’s determination to overcome the stigma of living without their high school certificate. The women describe their struggles with low self-esteem and their slow rise to confidence in themselves and their academic ability. Throughout the book there is a strong thread of hope and celebration of the victory over the challenges that being poor, Black, and female represented in the twentieth century.

These are the stories of four arts practitioners from Trinidad and Tobago – a lighting designer, a dancer, a jazz musician and a choreographer – who have made names for themselves internationally. The book centers on their role as educators in their fields; their unique and individual journeys exemplify the classic role artists have (always) played as teachers. Artful Stories is a timely and profound work that captures the teacher-student dynamic. It fills a void by recognizing the contributions of Caribbean artists to U.S. and European artistic scholarship. This book will be a valuable asset for teachers and professors as well as an excellent textbook for undergraduate and graduate classrooms.

Joanne Kilgour Dowdy's photo autobiography takes us through a rich and moving forty year personal life journey. We are made privy to her inner most thoughts growing up as a privileged child in Trinidad, her then meteoric rise to fame as a young thespian in her homeland, and her later struggle with her identity as a black immigrant in the United States.

In each photograph of Joanne from childhood through adulthood we see the challenging eyes of an individual who is wise beyond her years, determined and frankly rebellious.

This book affords the reader an opportunity to look through the lens that reveals the soul of a teacher, and whose seemingly disparate experiences, form the foundation for everything she does. [It is] an insightful portrait of what it means to be a woman of colour in today's society.