published 2008
This is a book primarily about teachers and the dynamics of the classroom. It is written because it seems to me that the No Child Left Behind legislation has impoverished the national discourse about education and teaching. That law, by legitimizing a stark, one-size-fits- all, industrial model of education, has denied the inherent complexity and richness of what teachers do. This book is about teaching as a personal connection between the teacher and the students in the classroom.
This book is not a report of the “state of education.” There are no tables, no statistics, and no exhaustive surveys. Statistics and surveys certainly have their place, but not here. This is a report of observations made over the course of thirty-five years of experience in eighth to twelfth grades at an embarrassing number of public, community, and independent schools. I started off as a youngster, with maybe a little bit of promise if I survived, and, with the help of hundreds of teachers, have magically been transformed into one of the senior faculty. Along the way, I’ve talked to, and listened to, teachers, good and bad, effective and ineffective, about who they are, what they do, and why they do it that way. It has been a fascinating conversation. This book is an effort to report on what was said.
Much of what I report is well known to master teachers. However, Peter Drucker points out that “teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the ‘naturals’; the ones who somehow know how to teach.”1 Master teachers certainly know how to teach. Maybe some of it comes naturally, but some of it is clearly learned. First-year teachers are rarely master teachers. This book is about that part of being a master teacher that can be learned.
This is not a book of recipes. There is no yellow brick road to teaching success. The outcome of any recipe is, within narrow limits, specified. As will be seen, excellent teaching is an extraordinarily complex, adaptive enterprise undertaken at the edge of chaos where creativity and invention are maximized. Every master teacher teaches in his own inimitable style. No recipe can possibly be successful; it cannot begin to produce the varieties of excellent teaching.
Really excellent teaching may occur at the edge of chaos but is not chaotic. While the details are always different, there are patterns common to being a master teacher. The patterns connect the components of effective teaching in ways that give meaning and stability to the classroom. This book is an exploration of those patterns that al- low master teachers to get up morning after morning and make a genuine, positive difference in students’ lives.
The book is organized into sections starting with questions of who teaches, why they teach, and how they become teachers. The middle sections focus on what and how to teach. The fourth and fifth sections look at how to manage the process of teaching, and how to survive being a teacher. The final section is about making a difference outside of the classroom.
This is not a coldly dispassionate report. I am a teacher. I cannot imagine earning a living in any other fashion. I admire people who do other things for a living. I just do not want to be them even when I covet their paychecks. I’ve tried other careers, but teaching allows me to get up in the morning and play all day.
NOTE
1. “Teachers and Teacher Quotes.” Retrieved January 15, 2008, from http://thinkexist.com/quotations/teachers_and_teaching/3.html.
Table of Contents
Introduction vii
- Becoming a Teacher 1
- What to Teach 23
- How to Teach 47
- Managing the Classroom 89
- Managing the Process 117
- Beyond the Classroom 143