Full Description
This classroom narrative explores how teachers can build and sustain an intellectually and emotionally fulfilling teaching practice while changing the way students experience school. Written by an English and history teacher in a Philadelphia public high school, this book presents a framework of teaching for a living democracy-supporting learners to produce intellectually rigorous and creative work by designing instruction that intersects with students' lives and interests. The text offers project-based units of study and classroom practices that allow students to reconfigure understandings of themselves, their capabilities, and their roles in the world. Packed with student voices and the work of youth, this book provides a rich window into classroom practices that challenge authoritarian tendencies while cultivating dignity and agency.Book Features:
Shares a vision of project-based inquiry learning that is rooted in systemic understandings of social change.
Provides a pragmatic framework and tools to help teachers develop their practice in creative and sustainable ways.
Shows how to support diverse learners, with a special focus on the experiences of students who struggle.
Includes many classroom scenes and examples of curriculum design strategies.
Offers the realistic perspective of a teacher working in an urban public high school.
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
1. Reframing School Learning
Teaching for a Living Democracy
Changing the Grammar of Schooling
My Teaching Context and Background
Agency and Possibility
2. Designing Curriculum for Deeper Learning
Immigration Oral History Projects
Advanced Essay Process
Modern Day de Tocquevilles
3. Elevating Student Voices and Truths
Acknowledging and Honoring Students' Realities
Bulding Cohesive Classroom Communities
Making Learning Complex and Real
Prioritizing Student Voices, Decentralizing the Classroom
4. Envisioning New Roles for Teachers
Reframing Teacher Voice
Teachers as Facilitators
Teachers as Lead Collaborators
Teachers as Consultants and Scholars
5. Decolonizing School
Insights from Aotearoa, New Zealand
Biculturalism and Creating Space in Schools
The Re-PLACE-ing Project
Our Philadelphia, Our America
6. Engaging Multiple Realities of Teaching for a Living Democracy
Art in the Open
The Messy Process of Creation
Navigating Intolerance
Engaging Issues of the World
Epilogue: For Teachers
Appendix: Additional Classroom Resources
References
Index
About the Author
