Foreword: Amy Hofer and Michaela Willi-Hooper

The book you are reading is an open educational resource (OER). That means it’s free to read online, or you can purchase a print copy at cost. Other faculty anywhere in the world can make use of the open license on this book to customize it and use it in their own classes, so that their students can also use no-cost or low-cost materials.

It is also the result of an open pedagogy project, meaning that Liz coathored this book with her community college students. Student perspectives and voices make this book valuable and also make the case for why it is important. The student authors’ writing on issues that have directly impacted their lives, and their reflections on how they have changed their minds on these issues, are informed by personal experience and grounded in deep learning.

You know what is a really good read? The chapter of this book titled “The Authors.” I’m excited for every one of these authors to graduate and bring the care and talent they put into this project to the next stage of their careers.

Amy Hofer

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To create this book, Liz facilitated a yearlong community conversation around the question of “what do families need?” This question engaged many people with many perspectives, and a lot of learning happened. Helping students interweave existing knowledge with their own experiences was one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. The team created a work that is multivoiced yet coherent, easy-to-understand while still reflecting the complexities of our world.  It reflects families in our communities, meets the learning goals of this course, and saves students money.

I hope the larger OER community will improve this, customize it locally, and share it back. Most of the original content the Linn-Benton Community College team created is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Re-users should refer to the attributions and licenses in each section for more detailed information, and note that some chapters have more restrictive licenses. Because important parts of people’s lived experiences are not Creative Commons-licensed^[1] some components are included with permission or under fair use.

Michaela Willi Hooper, M.S.I.
OER & Textbook Affordability Librarian
Linn-Benton Community College