Full Description
All teachers face challenges—from the daunting and unexpected, like teaching during a pandemic, to nagging doubts about daily interactions and teaching practices. If there were ever a time for sharing teacher personal and professional breakthroughs—the ways teachers have successfully and courageously turned a corner—that time is now. In this collection of compelling narratives, high school and college teachers show us how they have taken on issues such as faculty and student relationships; struggles over personal identity in the classroom; joys and complexities of working with emergent bilinguals, basic writers, and first-year college students; and the forever question of how to engage students. This is a book about breaking rules, caring about students, navigating systems, and taking chances. It's an uplifting journey and along the way, teachers do what they always do: They share the reading and writing assignments that have worked for them during the best and worst of times. The matchless part, however, is teacher wisdom. Where would we be without it?
Book Features:
Brings together narratives by veteran teachers who describe recognizable challenges and what happens when new understandings trump old ways of doing things.
Provides ideas for teaching that arise from the breakthroughs of college, community college, and secondary teachers and are applicable to all grade levels.
Celebrates teachers—their voices and practices, their intelligent and empathetic approaches to solving problems and making change.
Illustrates the transformative power of writing about breakthroughs and encourages all teachers to share their stories.
Includes an appendix with sample materials for school and writing group leaders who want to initiate similar breakthrough projects for teachers.
Contents
Contents (Tentative)
Foreword
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
Sandra Murphy and Mary Ann Smith
About Chapter 2
2. Breaking Through Writing Anxiety: Confessions of a Recovering Basic Writer
Cheryl Hogue Smith
About Chapter 3
3. Taking Research Public: Participatory Communities and Student Authority Through Wikipedia
Anne Kingsley
About Chapter 4
4. Looking Backward: How the "Fly-on-the-Wall" Changed My History Instruction
Stan Pesick
About Chapter 5
5. Teach What You Love: How Carving Out Space for Joy Transforms a Composition Class
Kristin Land
About Chapter 6
6. Trainer/Collaborator Coach: Helping Faculty Navigate the Pandemic Pivot to Remote Instruction
Lisa Orta
About Chapter 7
7. Lessons From Moldova: From Language Learner to Language Teacher
Beth Daly
About Chapter 8
8. Changing Perspectives on Written Feedback
Kelly Crosby
About Chapter 9
9. Personal and Confidential: What the Pandemic Taught Me About My Relationship With Students
Rob Rogers
About Chapter 10
10. Becoming Somebody: Queering the Classroom and Resisting "Neutral"
James Wilson
About Chapter 11
11. Teacher as Disrupter: When Critical Thinking Gets Personal
John Levine
About Chapter 12
12. From Breakthroughs to Through Lines: Navigating the Crosswinds of Practice
Rebekah Caplan
13. Conclusion
Sandra Murphy and Mary Ann Smith
References
Index
About the Editors and Contributors
