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As this book closes, the emphasis on realtionships is further revealed. I love when Nussbaum speaks of "love's knowledge", "beteween persons and of persons". Is this not the important knowledge in the world? She also says, "that the process of understanding and learning involve weaving increasingly complex strands of connection with concrete others". Before students will gain anything from being in a classroom, they have to know and believe that the teacher accepts them and wants to be their teacher. This is explained as Rose speaks of "wooing" students. You have to win them over, and have them on your side before anything else. Students must feel safe in their relationships with teachers. It is these relationships with others, both at home, in the community and at school that make up our hyrbid language.

I also gathered from this chapter that the problem is bigger than us as teachers;however, we can start small and embrace our children and their histories. Nussbaum says, "The longer I stay in education, the clearer it becomes to me that some of our basic orientations toward the teaching and testing of literacy contribute to our inability to see." How fitting for how so many teachers execute their classrooms and teachings! We have to assume when students walk into our classrooms at the beginning of the year that we are already rejected. If we approach our teaching approach that way, perhaps we will be more open to students. I found the lines on page 152 to speak directly to so many of us. The right kind of relationships are obviously needed, but so is the support of teachers so that they may focus on students and not the high demands of the testing system. Hicks later again states that she does not find much support for responsive literacy practices in the current educational theory or research. How disheartening. She even says that the struggle facing the practices this book suggests to be the educational system that seems to want to mainstream everyone. She then says this is "devasting" to our working class children like the Lauries and Jakes.

We have to realize it is not a student's fault that they are poor. It is not their fault their parents do not participate in school. It is not the child's fault they live where they do. These parents send us everyday the best that they absolutely have. It is our job, our "moral" duty to accept our students as different, teach them of differences and embrace that we are different.

Finally, on page 154, Hicks addresses what can help teachers move toward more responsive literacy practices. Thank you!! I have been asking this question over and over as we continued to read. What I gathered from her response here is that there is not one specific thing "that works". We must change with the children, learn about them, their community, why they are where they are and how they go there.