Kassia Omohundro Wedekind spent many wonderful years as a classroom teacher and math coach in Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia and now splits her time between being an independent math coach and an editor at Stenhouse Publishers. Her favorite days are spent in classrooms learning from the many ways children talk, listen and negotiate meaning together.

Christy Hermann Thompson is a Literacy Coach in Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia. She has spent her teaching and coaching career particularly focused on listening to and learning from the talk of our youngest students.

"This book challenged me to think about facilitating discussions in a whole new way...So I urge you to gather a few colleagues, read this book together, and waste no time in growing and deepening your practice."

--Elham Kazemi, coauthor of Intentional Talk: How to Structure and Lead Productive Mathematical Discussions and coeditor of Choral Counting & Counting Collections: Transforming the PreK-5 Math Classroom

"This work has the potential to transform learning communities and lift all individuals within the community. Today is the perfect day to get started!"

--Maria Nichols, author of Comprehension through Conversation and Building Bigger Ideas

"[Hands Down, Speak Out] is both a timely book and a timeless book...This is the kind of book that I believe will inform teaching and learning for years to come."

--Vivian Maria Vasquez, author of Negotiating Critical Literacies with Young Children and Getting Beyond "I Like the Book": Creating Space for Critical Literacy in K-6 Classrooms