Books

• Lisa Arrastia and Marvin Hoffman, Starting Up: Critical Lessons from 10 New Schools (NY: Teachers College Press, 2012).

These are educators who recognize that although urban public schools are often deeply flawed and dysfunctional, they don’t have to be, and they are educators who act on the belief that it is possible to create schools that nurture and support the hopes and aspirations of those they serve.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                        — From the Foreword by Pedro Noguera, UCLA

How might we reimagine our schools? This book offers a guide from those who have experienced firsthand the trials and tribulations of trying to create a school from the bottom up. It asks all the right questions, both the practical and the pedagogical. It feels like essential reading as we reconsider how our urban schools should look and function. 
                                                                                                                                  — Alex Kotlowitz, bestselling author of There Are No Children Here and The Other Side of the River

Starting Up is a collection of first-person accounts by some of the best-known founders of new schools in America. Providing the kind of knowledge that only experience can teach, it is an invaluable resource for anyone in the process of or thinking about opening a new school, as well as those interested in the politics of today’s era of new school development. The authors share how they worked to make their educational aspirations a reality while wrestling with social and economic obstacles, such as the distressed state of the communities in which these schools operated and the constant competition for resources. Starting Up tells real stories that capture the rich sense of possibility that currently exists for urban education.

Book Chapters

• "Love Pedagogy: Teaching to Disrupt." Eds. Niobe Way, Alisha Ali, Carol Gilligan, and Pedro Noguera. The Crisis of Connection: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions (New York: New York University Press, 2018).

• “Should I Stay or Should I Go Now.” The Colors of Excellence: Hiring and Keeping Teachers of Color in Independent Schools. Eds. Pearl Kane and Alfonso J. Orsini. New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 2003. 101-112.

Articles

• “Schools Can No Longer Be Our Social Safety Net,” Common Dreams (17 August 2020).

• “Teaching Under Covid: NY School-Reopening Guidance Highlights the Need for a Radical, Uniform National Response to Covid-19,” Common Dreams (19 July 2020).

• “Love Pedagogy: Disrupting the Contemporary Education Economy,” Overland 231 (Winter 2018).

• "Love Pedagogy." Huffington Post (18 April 2016).

• "The Bridge Back to Blackness: Chris Johnson and the Art of Social Transformation." Exposure: The Journal for the Society for Photographic Education (spring 2014): 4-17.

• “Capital’s Daisy Chain: Exposing the Chicago Corporate Coalition.” Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies 5.1 (May 2007).

• “This is American and Strange: Mediated Responses to the (American Indian) Child.” The Capilano Review. Series 2.47 (fall 2005): 79-83.

• “Gangster.” XCP: Cross-Cultural Poetics 15/16 (2006): 210.

• “Killing the Dark Bodies: Execution as Market Sustainability and State Redemption.” Monthly Review Zine (25 December 2005).

Interviews & Reviews

• A Curriculum of Imagination in an Era of Standardization: An Imaginative Dialogue with Maxine Greene and Paulo Freire by Robert Lake. Teachers College Record (14 March 2014).

• With Cathryn Merla Watson and Richa Nagar. Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles by Laura Pulido. Antipode 39.5 (November 2007): 943-947.

• Ties that Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom, by Tiya Miles. XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics 17 (Summer 2007): 123-131.

• “Ties that Bind: An Interview with Tiya Miles.” Monthly Review Zine (5 March 2007).

• Soy Cuba (I am Cuba), dir. Mikhail Kalatozov. Upstate Films 79 (Winter 1995).

• Fresa y Chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate), dir. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. Upstate Films 80 (Winter 1995).

• Hoop Dreams, dir. Steve James. Upstate Films 81 (Spring 1995).

Minor Publications

• Lisa Arrastia. Recipe for Change: A Guide for Teachers Meeting the Challenge of Diversity. Kingston, NY: Hudson Valley Foundation for Health and Human Solutions of Family of Woodstock, 1996.