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A classic collection exploding the stereotypes of city schools. City Kids, City Teachers—now reissued with a new introduction by William Ayers that reflects on how improving urban education is more essential than ever—has become a touchstone for urban educators, exploding the stereotypes of teaching in the city. In more than twenty-five provocative selections, set in context by Ayers and Patricia Ford, an all-star cast of educators and writers explores the surprising realities of city classrooms from kindergarten through high school. Contributors including Gloria Ladson-Billings, Lisa Delpit, June Jordan, Lewis Lapham, Audre Lorde, and Deborah Meier move from the poetic to the practical, celebrating the value of city kids and their teachers. It is a useful guide as well as a call to action for anyone who teaches or has taught in the city, for those considering teaching in urban schools, and for every parent with children in our schools today.

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William Ayers writes, as teacher, parent, student and observer, of the children he has known and of the things that actually happen in the classroom. His collection of vignettes should interest anyone involved in, or concerned with, the art of teaching.
"No one since John Holt has written so thoughtfully about the things that actually happen in the classroom. Ayers has been there and he knows, and he shares what he has learned with tremendous sensitivity . . . Ayers writes so beautifully of children he has known—there are so many unforgettable vignettes—that this book will touch the heart of almost anyone who loves the authenticity of oral history."—Jonathan Kozol.
 

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This book describes strategies, techniques, and principles that teachers can use to improve students' thinking skills. The strategies can generally be adaptated for any grade level or subject area. Chapters provide information on: (1) a rationale for the teaching of thinking; (2) thinking and thinking skills; (3) selecting and defining thinking skills and strategies for teaching; (4) organizing for the teaching of thinking; (5) introducing a thinking skill; (6) guiding practice in and applying thinking skills; (7) transferring and elaborating thinking skills; (8) helping students control and direct their own thinking; (9) assessing student thinking; and (10) teaching implications. References are also provided. 

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A must-read for parents, new teachers, and classroom veterans, Educating Esmé is the exuberant diary of Esmé Raji Codell’s first year teaching in a Chicago public school. Fresh-mouthed and free-spirited, the irrepressible Madame Esmé—as she prefers to be called—does the cha-cha during multiplication tables, roller-skates down the hallways, and puts on rousing performances with at-risk students in the library. Her diary opens a window into a real-life classroom from a teacher’s perspective. While battling bureaucrats, gang members, abusive parents, and her own insecurities, this gifted young woman reveals what it takes to be an exceptional teacher. Heroine to thousands of parents and educators, Esmé now shares more of her ingenious and yet down-to-earth approaches to the classroom in a supplementary guide to help new teachers hit the ground running. As relevant and iconoclastic as when it was first published, Educating Esmé is a classic, as is Madame Esmé herself.

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Marva Collins embodies all that is meant by that hallowed word. . .teacher. She gives of herself tirelessly so that those whose minds are supple may grasp knowledge and power through her love. Indeed love, like that of a mother for her children, is the essence of the Marva Collins Way. . .love of learning, love of teaching, and love of sharing. It charges her mission with an incredible power to heal broken spirits. Discover the power to truly teach, whether it be one child or many. Children don't have to be geniuses to be successful. By the power of the extraordinary teacher, each and everyone can achieve extraordinary success. You can be that teacher or parent.In this book, Marva Collins reveals the secret of her success and the principles which will aid you to duplicate her achievements - first within yourself, then within your classroom or in your own home. Here is an opportunity to expand your teaching ability with the aid of one who has stretched the boundary through her own bold experiments. It works. Go for it. Renew your spirit. The Extraordinary teacher is you.

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The school in the coming decades may develop around one of two visions—as a factory or a temple. If the first vision prevails (and it is the more likely one, given Conant's book and its close relation to current trends), we may envision a fragmentation of the teacher's functions, with the more prosaic tasks being taken over by an army of para-pedagogical personnel. “Master” teachers of various grade levels or subjects will head teams of internes, audio-visual technicians, clerks, programmers, and testers, who will efficiently convey masses of information and concepts to masses of pupils. The alternative is to view the school as temple, as a holy place for forming self-determining individuals. The task of the schools would be to lead the individual child through successive encounters with imaginative and dedicated teachers who would give him an increasingly sophisticated picture of reality and some of the equipment for operating within it. The frightening thing about The Education of American Teachers is the author's inability even to conceive of the school as a temple, which means that his book can lead only to another half-reform that works to prevent achievement of a full one.

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Since its initial publication in hardcover in 2003, Fires in the Bathroom has been through multiple printings and received the attention of teachers across the country. Now in paperback, Kathleen Cushman’s groundbreaking book offers original insights into teaching teenagers in today’s hard-pressed urban high schools from the point of view of the students themselves. It speaks to both new and established teachers, giving them firsthand information about who their students are and what they need to succeed. Students from across the country contributed perceptive and pragmatic answers to questions of how teachers can transcend the barriers of adolescent identity and culture to reach the diverse student body in today’s urban schools. With the fresh and often surprising perspectives of youth, they tackle tough issues such as increasing engagement and motivation, teaching difficult academic material, reaching English-language learners, and creating a classroom culture where respect and success go hand in hand.

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The highly anticipated sequel to the bestselling Fires in the Bathroom—filled with practical, honest advice from middle school students to their teachers. Following on the heels of the bestselling Fires in the Bathroom, which brought the insights of high school students to teachers and parents, Kathleen Cushman now turns her attention to the crucial and challenging middle grades, joining forces with adolescent psychologist Laura Rogers. As teachers, counselors, and parents cope with the roller coaster of early adolescence, too few stop to ask students what they think about these critical years. Here, middle school students in grades 5 through 8 across the country and from diverse ethnic backgrounds offer insights on what it takes to make classrooms more effective and how to forge stronger relationships between young adolescents and adults. Students tackle such critical topics as social, emotional, and academic pressures; classroom behavior; organization; and preparing for high school.

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Combining professional learning communities (PLCs) and action research, this step-by-step guide provides coaches, workshop leaders, and staff developers with strategies, activities, and tools to develop inquiry-oriented PLCs. The authors present essential elements of a healthy PLC, case studies of inquiry-based PLCs, and lessons learned for improving coaching practices. Sample projects and reflection prompts will help readers: Organize, assess, and maintain high-functioning, inquiry-oriented PLCsFacilitate the development of study questionsEnable PLC members to develop, analyze, and share research resultsLead successful renewal and reform efforts.

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Professional Learning Communities at Work presents research-based recommendations drawn from the best practices found today in schools nationwide for continuously improving school performance. Coming from the perspectives of both a distinguished dean of education and one of America s most widely acclaimed practitioners, this resource provides specific, practical, how-to information about transforming schools into results-oriented professional learning communities.

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Lately, our nation’s strategy for improving our schools is mostly limited to “getting tough” with teachers. Blaming teachers for poor outcomes, we spend almost all of our energy trying to control teachers’ behavior and school operations. But what if all of this is exactly the opposite of what is needed? What if teachers are the answer and not the problem? What if trusting teachers, and not controlling them, is the key to school success?
Examining the experiences of teachers who are already trusted to call the shots, this book answers: What would teachers do if they had the autonomy not just to make classroom decisions, but to collectively—with their colleagues—make the decisions influencing whole school success? Decisions such as school curriculum, how to allocate the school budget, and whom to hire.

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New teachers are almost always overwhelmed by everything they need to do. Ten Things New Teachers Need to Succeed helps novice educators focus on and excel at the tasks that get them off to a positive start. This is a quick reference tool on everything from writing rubrics to communicating with parents to planning for the unexpected. Filled with words of wisdom, practical advice, and action steps to achieve success, this powerful little booklet distills the teaching and consulting experience of Dr. Robin Fogarty, an international trainer of teachers.

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Recognizing these are common experiences for teacher educators, the contributors to this book present their struggles and achievements in developing approaches that have successfully guided students to complex understandings of such threshold concepts as White privilege, homophobia, and heteronormativity, overcoming the “bottlenecks” that impede progress toward bigger learning goals and understandings. The authors initiate a conversation – one largely absent in the social justice education literature and the discourse – about the common content- and pedagogy-related challenges that social justice educators face in their work, particularly for those doing this work in relative or literal isolation, where collegial understanding cannot be found down the hall or around the corner. In doing so they hope not only to help individual teachers in their practice, but also strengthen social justice teacher education more systemically. 

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Who controls today's conversation about what education should be in the classroom? Bill Gates? Arne Duncan? Michelle Rhee? Media? Politicians? Who has gained more and more control of what actually goes on in the classroom? Bill Gates? Arne Duncan? Michelle Rhee? Media? Politicians? Why? Where are the voices of the thousands of talented and loved teachers whose classrooms should be models of what works regardless of the socioeconomic environment they are located. I am but one of many. Each of us has gotten to be who we are as teachers through our own set of circumstances. We, like all other professionals learn our craft through our experiences as well as our academic preparation. Some of us get to pass on what we have learned about our craft by becoming supervisors, mentors, or university lecturers. I have mentored new teachers. I have taught a graduate education class. But those endeavours have reached relatively few. I have even spawned new teachers, inspired by me, but those are even fewer. Initially it is why started writing this book. Much of it started as advice to give to my mentees. Then some suggested to me to write a book. So I did!

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Visible Learning for Teachers takes the next step and brings those ground breaking concepts to a completely new audience. Written for students, pre-service and in-service teachers, it explains how to apply the principles of Visible Learning to any classroom anywhere in the world. The author offers concise and user-friendly summaries of the most successful interventions and offers practical step-by-step guidance to the successful implementation of visible learning and visible teaching in the classroom. Visible Learning for Teachers is a must read for any student or teacher who wants an evidence based answer to the question; ‘how do we maximise achievement in our schools?’

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Start Where You Are, But Don t Stay There addresses a crucial issue in teacher training and professional education: the need to prepare pre-service and in-service teachers for the racially diverse student populations in their classrooms. A down-to-earth book, it aims to help practitioners develop insights and skills for successfully educating diverse student bodies.The book centers on case studies that exemplify the challenges, pitfalls, and opportunities facing teachers in diverse classrooms. These case studies of white and African American teachers working (and preparing to work) in urban and suburban settings are presented amid more general discussions about race and teaching in contemporary schools. Informing these discussions and the cases themselves is their persistent attention to opportunity gaps that need to be fully grasped by teachers who aim to understand and promote the success of students of greatly varying backgrounds.

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Provides a clear and powerful agenda for school reform and for the role of teachers in it. Captures the world of a bureaucratic school system that discourages good teaching and learning. Will help everyone in the task of school reform. Chapters: teaching -- the privilege and the price; the politics of space and supplies; building bridges between home and school; teaching and learning in a bureaucratic school; the reality of isolation and the search for collaboration; the teacher in governance; forging stronger cultural bonds; investing in teachers1 growth; putting a premium on good teaching; and keeping good teachers teaching.

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Bel Kaufman's Up the Down Staircase is one of the best-loved novels of our time. It has been translated into sixteen languages, made into a prize-winning motion picture, and staged as a play at high schools all over the United States; its very title has become part of the American idiom. Never before has a novel so compellingly laid bare the inner workings of a metropolitan high school. Up the Down Staircase is the funny and touching story of a committed, idealistic teacher whose dash with school bureaucracy is a timeless lesson for students, teachers, parents—anyone concerned about public education. Bel Kaufman lets her characters speak for themselves through memos, letters, directives from the principal, comments by students, notes between teachers, and papers from desk drawers and wastebaskets, evoking a vivid picture of teachers fighting the good fight against all that stands in the way of good teaching.

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In Comprehension Going Forward, you'll meet up with 17 leading practitioners and researchers for an energetic, personal, and frequently irreverent conversation on what great comprehension instruction looks like, what an amazing range of applications it has for all students, and what we can do better. Not only do figures such as Susan Zimmerman and P. David Pearson include their own chapters, but, like any exciting conversation, they point out their favorite parts of one another's chapters-highlighting discussion topics for teacher study groups along the way.

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Weaving anecdotal narrative with trenchant reflections on his profession, Garret Keizer offers one teacher's answer to the hue and cry over the crisis in education. An English teacher in rural Vermont, he writes of the opposing realities he faces every day: the promise and energy of the young and the oppressive effect of their economic disadvantages; the beauty of the countryside and its people and the harsh, sometimes ugly edge of life there; the need for discipline and the importance of rebellion. In exploring the demands peculiar to his own community, Keizer movingly depicts the difficulties-some triumphantly overcome, some overwhelming-that form the heart of teaching anywhere.

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For parents and teachers who seek productive dialogues and collaborative alliances in support of the learning and growth of their children, this book will offer valuable insights, incisive lessons, and deft guidance on how to communicate more effectively. In The Essential Conversation, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot brings scholarship, warmth, and wisdom to an immensely important cultural subject—the way we raise our children. With the insights she has gleaned from her close and subtle observation of parent-teacher conferences, renowned Harvard University professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot has written a wise, useful book about the ways in which parents and teachers can make the most of their essential conversation—the dialogue between the most vital people in a child’s life.

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Teach Like a Champion offers effective teaching techniques to help teachers, especially those in their first few years, become champions in the classroom. These powerful techniques are concrete, specific, and are easy to put into action the very next day. Training activities at the end of each chapter help the reader further their understanding through reflection and application of the ideas to their own practice.

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The use of protocols has quickly spread from conferences and workshops to everyday school and university settings. Now in its third edition, this popular bestseller features substantial updates that take into account recent developments in the field of facilitative leadership. The authors have also added 11 totally new protocols, including the ''Peer Review Protocol'' and ''Looking at Student Work with Equity in Mind.'' 
''My practice is continuously strengthened by The Power of Protocols, so I greedily picked up this new edition to find out what's new. If you are new to the use of protocols, this book will encourage you to use protocols purposefully. If you have been using protocols for a while, this book will enlarge your thinking about how protocols can help you with change management and issues of equity.'' -- Bena Kallick, Co-Director for the Institute for Habits of Mind and Program Director for Eduplanet21
 

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An account of the author's personal awakening as a teacher, interspersed with the first-person stories of his students. It looks at what it means to be a teacher and a student in urban America, and deals with the critical moral issues teachers must face.

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In Classroom Conversations, two generations of educators—a mother and daughter—point us to the great thinkers who have shaped their beliefs and practices in education, and who continue to influence teachers today. Nineteen essays by educators from Dewey to Delpit offer parents and new educators an education degree in a nutshell. The Milettas frame these touchstone texts with commentary explaining why these writers resonate for them, sharing not only the personal meanings they have derived from the selections but why these writings have endured in the field over time. Brief biographies set each author in context for the lay reader.

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The first edition of Crucial Conversations exploded onto the scene and revolutionized the way millions of people communicate when stakes are high. This new edition gives you the tools to: Prepare for high-stakes situations, Transform anger and hurt feelings into powerful dialogue, Make it safe to talk about almost anything, Be persuasive, not abrasive

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Many teachers enter the profession with a desire to "make a difference." But given who most teachers are, where they come from, and what pressure they feel to comply with existing school policies, how can they take up this charge? Practice What You Teach follows three different groups of educators to explore the challenges of developing and supporting teachers’ sense of social justice and activism at various stages of their careers: White pre-service teachers typically enrolled in most teacher education programs, a group of new teachers attempting to integrate social justice into their teaching, and experienced educators who see their teaching and activism as inextricably linked. Teacher educator Bree Picower delves into each of these group’s triumphs and challenges, providing strategies and suggestions for all teachers along with her in-depth analysis.

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With suggestions on how to build trust and open lines of communication, this text helps prepare teachers for the important task of mentoring.

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Based on The Skillful Teacher framework, this book is targeted to evaluators and supervisors who want a field-tested tool kit of strategies to improve, rather than remove, underperforming teachers. The text includes valuable legal notes and a model contract, case studies, assessment tools, and personal accounts of leaders in action.