Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

The son of two retired New York City teachers, Sam M. Intrator began teaching at Smith College in 1999 after more than a decade of teaching and administrative service in public schools in Brooklyn, Vermont, and California. Intrator teaches courses on Urban Education, Teenagers in American Culture, and the Teaching of Writing. He also founded the Smith College Urban Education Initiative―an educational outreach program that seeks to deepen students’ understanding of the theoretical, practical, and human issues facing urban educators by engaging them in intensive service learning experience in urban school settings.

Intrator’s books and research inquire into what it takes for teachers and students to co-create intellectually vibrant and genuinely meaningful experiences in the classroom. He has written or edited five books, including Tuned in and Fired Up: How Teaching Can Inspire Real Learning in the Classroom (Yale University Press, 2003), which was a finalist for the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in Education. Intrator has received a number of awards for his teaching and public service, including a Kellogg National Leadership Fellowship, an Ella Baker Fellowship, and the Distinguished Teacher Award from the White House Commission of Presidential Scholars. His latest effort is the co-development of Project Coach―an after-school program that prepares high school students from underserved communities to be youth sport coaches. These youth coaches then run neighborhood sport leagues in their home neighborhoods.

Intrator holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and an MA degree from the Bread Loaf School of English.

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WISE STORIES TO HONOR AND ENCOURAGE THE HEARTS OF TEACHERS

"A heartwarming collection of essays about the doubts, passions, insecurities, and life-changing moments of teachers."
?American School Board Journal

"Our history books are filled with examples of the efforts of committed education employees who helped to make this country what it is today. Stories of the Courage to Teach challenges today's teachers to see themselves not only as school employees, dedicated to serving children, but as leaders in their schools and communities."
?Bob Chase, president, National Education Association

"It's the worst-kept secret in education: the passionate and talented teacher makes more of a difference than any school policy. Yet for all the ink spilled over school reform, little gets written about what makes a great teacher tick. Stories of the Courage to Teach . . . [by Sam Intrator] bucks this trend by looking into the hearts of twenty-five effective teachers, knitting together their first-person narratives with his own ideas about great teaching."
?New York Times

"The teachers featured in this anthology have all, at various junctures, been on the verge of exhaustion, and the book is, in many ways, a sustained meditation on how they've sought to regain their emotional and spiritual strength."
?Teacher Magazine

"Stories of the Courage to Teach . . . honors teachers who struggle to rekindle their passion for teaching."
?Christian Science Monitor

Aus dem Klappentext

WISE STORIES TO HONOR AND ENCOURAGE THE HEARTS OF TEACHERS

A heartwarming collection of essays about the doubts, passions, insecurities, and life-changing moments of teachers.
--American School Board Journal

Our history books are filled with examples of the efforts of committed education employees who helped to make this country what it is today. Stories of the Courage to Teach challenges today's teachers to see themselves not only as school employees, dedicated to serving children, but as leaders in their schools and communities.
--Bob Chase, president, National Education Association

It's the worst-kept secret in education: the passionate and talented teacher makes more of a difference than any school policy. Yet for all the ink spilled over school reform, little gets written about what makes a great teacher tick. Stories of the Courage to Teach . . . [by Sam Intrator] bucks this trend by looking into the hearts of twenty-five effective teachers, knitting together their first-person narratives with his own ideas about great teaching.
--New York Times

The teachers featured in this anthology have all, at various junctures, been on the verge of exhaustion, and the book is, in many ways, a sustained meditation on how they've sought to regain their emotional and spiritual strength.
--Teacher Magazine

Stories of the Courage to Teach . . . honors teachers who struggle to rekindle their passion for teaching.
--Christian Science Monitor

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Stories of the Courage to Teach

Jossey-Bass

Chapter One

Chip Wood

Remember what it feels like to really be alone in the classroom? Nearly forty years ago, as a first-year teacher, I had an experience that indelibly etched in my memory the degree of compassion and support every teacher needs to sustain a career in education. In my combination first and second grade, the children were learning to read. We were using the basal reader. It was winter and bitterly cold outside our midwestern school. The basal story this particular morning showed children chasing their shadows on the sidewalk (the sh sound?). To capture their shadows, the children in the book decided to draw with chalk (ch) around the shapes (sh) of their bodies. To capture the essence of this scene for my young readers, I had them draw with the chalkboard chalk on the sunlit floor of our classroom, desks pushed asunder. Enter my principal, who stood and watched, arms folded across her chest, and then left without comment. At the end of the day, she returned to my room and told me in no uncertain terms that my lesson was unacceptable (we were not to draw on the floor) and wasted valuable time (the point was made in the picture in the basal, after all) and not to do any such thing again.

You can imagine how I felt. And there was nowhere to turn; no mentor teacher, no critical friends, no study team, not even a grade-level group; just the teacher's room and a hole in my stomach. What I did not know then in that sun-drenched primary classroom was that the secret to becoming a high-quality teacher would finally emerge through my discovery of and participation in strong adult community activity in the schools where I would teach. Today I advocate that every adult working in a school (from first-year teachers to veterans to cafeteria workers) needs this gift of a supportive adult community in order to have access to the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual strength that will sustain them in their life-giving work.

Throughout my career, I have been fortunate to find such a community. Gradually I discovered ways to talk about my teaching with my colleagues and my superiors, to listen to their experiences and observe their best practices. In my elementary classrooms, children not only drew on the floor, they waded in streams, collected specimens for microscopes, built block cities, and could tell you what the sun's shadow meant about the movement of the earth. They also cleaned up the floor, the buckets of pond water, and the block cities and helped solve the problems of classroom life. I took the time such teaching takes and was supported by the adults around me in my conviction to help children learn both to master their academics and to live together peacefully and productively in a democratic society.

I had the unique experience of being a nearly full-time teacher and the principal of two K-8 elementary schools that featured discovery-based curricula during my teaching career. This made me worry a great deal about test scores being worse in these schools, but they never were. In both schools, we worked together to understand testing and its place in improving achievement and tried to make test scores useful for parents and our teaching without being driven by the numbers. We sustained our adult community by engaging in lively self-evaluation of an instructional approach full of inquiry and collaborative activity. We also spent a great deal of time on staff development and new learning as adults. The central focus of this work was observing in each other's classrooms and deepening our knowledge of child development-two things that the science of education virtually ignores today. We also worked together to invent or learn the collegial structures and supports we needed from and for each other as we went. We devoted a lot of time to conferencing with parents and listening to what they wanted most for their children. Needless to say, we worked long hours and spent endless time preparing our lessons, the way good teachers always have.

As someone who has spent more than thirty years in schools, I am unsettled by the new, cold, statistical analysis and the increasing use of American education as political blood sport. Today the American metaphor for education has become a computer model of artificial intelligence. It is a chilling shift, further distancing us from a relational model of learning. Adults who work in schools are being made to believe that they are more responsible for raising test scores than for raising children. The constant call for more and more evaluation of students and teachers, with punishing effects for those not living up to artificially inflated standards, is actually having the unintended consequence of reducing time for teaching, diminishing the depth of acquired knowledge, and compromising the moral character of the next generation.

Political blaming and shaming is also having a chilling effect on the teaching profession, as we witness a steady early exodus of veteran teachers and the rapid exit of new teachers in high numbers. Principals and superintendents are increasingly transient and scarce. I see the increased demoralization of the adult community of schools where dedicated grown-ups have worked tirelessly for years against significant odds, only to be told that their efforts do not measure up. Respect, support, and appreciation for those who work in schools seem at an all-time low. And for those working in poor communities, the situation is often more difficult.

In disproportionate numbers, poor children receive a poorer education, in poorer facilities with fewer ancillary supports than their wealthier neighbors. This is true for both the urban and rural poor. While poor students obviously have the same potential intelligence as rich students, holding them to the same rigorous and punishing standards of achievement without providing resource advantages to poor schools is cruel and cynical governmental practice. Simply applying skill drills, teaching only through so-called direct instruction, and beefing up testing is no replacement for legislative action and compensatory funding that could provide teachers and administrators of high quality and diverse backgrounds for all our schools.

Needed also are humane personnel practices for the adults in these school communities. High-quality teachers and exceptional communities of learning are not created in environments of fear and intimidation, nor do such schools need to rely on artificial instructional practice or microwaved curricula. High-quality teaching is built on relationships, connecting students' learning experiences to their life experiences.

Sadly, we now find that students often cannot apply what they learn to solve real problems, let alone the problems on tests designed to measure what they have been taught. The reason they cannot do this is not because their minds are incapable of problem solving. It is, rather, that in our rush for results, we are short-circuiting the ability to think. The volume of schoolwork completed is equated with accomplishment. School schedules are crammed, and time is seldom available to process thinking and consolidate learning-to reflect, ponder, revise, discuss, debate, explore, wonder, observe, and make connections. Time to listen to the children, the essential ingredient in good teaching, is now at a premium.

In schools where rigor and informed inquiry are both valued and protected for students and grown-ups alike, where it is safe to make a mistake, where strengths and weaknesses are appraised honestly, where the goal is both academic excellence and a caring community, learning thrives and measured achievement is not compromised. Such schools, I am convinced, depend on the vitality of the adult communities that direct and nourish them. But to create and maintain a vital adult community is not a simple matter. It requires intentional structures and specific strategies that build communication and support, reinforce collaborative activity, and provide the time to make it all possible.

The Latin root for the word education, educare, meaning "to nurture, bring up," implies an adult community leading the process of learning. Over the past several years, as a Courage to Teach facilitator and in my work as a leader of the Responsive Classroom approach to professional development, I have encouraged the adults working with children in schools to pay closer attention to their adult community interactions. I have increasingly seen the impact such attention can make on the mental and physical health of these adults, their longevity on the job, and their ability to nurture and instruct with more skill, energy, and sheer joy.

High-quality teaching cannot be sustained by the teacher alone, no matter how idyllic the classroom. It requires the trustworthy space of a true learning community. I have witnessed many school communities as they attempt to build these spaces.

In one urban middle school, homeroom time has taken on a new meaning for the teachers. Inspired planning by the principal and a small group of teachers led to the creation of "adult community meetings." These happen at the same time as homeroom, first thing in the morning, and coverage is provided through creative scheduling so that each teacher can attend an adult community meeting each week. Gathering in small groups across grade levels and subject areas, teachers have a chance to share insights and experiences about their lives and their work, engage in fun activities relevant to their teaching, and pursue the same kind of community building they are creating with their students in their own homerooms.

In many schools I have worked with over the past several years, there are no longer any "substitute" teachers-at least they are no longer referred to that way. In these schools, "guest teachers" replace staff out sick for a day. An orientation session and reception are held for guest teachers at the beginning of the year, and students and teachers plan and practice together how to make a guest teacher's experience in the classroom positive and productive for teacher and students alike. In one school, guest teachers pick up a name badge in the office inscribed "guest teacher" before heading to their assignment. In a number of these same schools, staff titles have changed too, as the adult community comes to realize that every adult in the building is a teacher through the ways they work and model what it means to be an adult in this world. Playground and lunch teachers now work where aides and paraprofessionals previously labored. Service learning in these schools takes place in the office, in the cafeteria, and with the custodian, not just in projects outside in the broader community.

In a large elementary school, faculty meetings now often begin in "home groups." These small, heterogeneous groups also cross traditional grade levels and friendship lines. Teachers meet for the first fifteen minutes of each faculty meeting to explore a common theme affecting everybody in the school. "How is recess going?" "What should we do to support our coworker and her family now that she is in the hospital?" "What are some strategies that are working for you to deal with classroom interruptions?" Ideas are sometimes reported out when the whole faculty reconvenes, and sometimes they are reported back as a written summary.

A teacher engaged in a two-year cycle of Courage to Teach retreats reports on a way she found to offer time and space for reflection with her colleagues. Every Monday, after school, she serves tea in her classroom to anyone who chooses to show up. No expectations, no agenda. What has emerged has been an ever-changing stream of people and conversations, adding respite for the adult community.

Putting chairs in circles works not just for morning meetings for children but also for staff conversations. In a circle, adults feel known and acknowledged, just as children do. In the first elementary school where I was a principal, the staff gathered in a circle five minutes before the students' buses arrived each morning to check in about the day ahead, to offer support for colleagues in special need of it that day, and to feel the strength of our teaching community. This daily circle continued through several subsequent administrations.

Many schools have adopted the strategy of having the adults in the building wear name badges all the time for security purposes. This proves to be a good device to help the grown-ups get to know each other at the beginning of the year, as children do in classrooms by wearing name tags. Especially in large schools, getting to know everyone is no easy task, and staff solidarity is extremely important to the strength of the school community.

On designated days during the school year, a principal in a rural K-8 school, along with some of his teachers, cooks breakfast for the entire student body so that paraprofessionals can participate in staff development programs at the beginning of the school day.

Everyone on a large school staff is given a book at the end of the school year and asked to read it over the summer. In the fall, small study groups meet at different times to pursue the book's relevance to the school community and to decide on some new strategies to try out together that the book has suggested about discipline.

Peer coaching is made an approved "professional day" activity for teachers, allowing them to visit in each other's classrooms and provide feedback through an agreed process while being given coverage for their own classroom and time to confer among themselves.

In more than one school, I have witnessed a kind of "buddy system" for teachers. Teachers next door or across the hall from each other work together to know and help each other's students, and practice discipline procedures that are consistent and supportive of the agreed expectations of the adult community for students and respectful of the dignity and differences among children. These efforts have often grown out of yearlong study and planning by committees of parents, teachers, administrators, and staff who are listening to each other and are seriously invested in increasing social responsibility as well as academic performance. School-wide discipline begins with a disciplined adult community.

The more we are connected, the better our schools will be. Our individual voices matter, but what matters more is the gathering of our voices as we help each other teach with courage in our classrooms and cafeterias. To understand and utilize the power of our adult community requires courageous collaboration. We must take the time to gather with each other not only to honor our daily acts of courage but also to acknowledge our mistakes.



Continues...

Excerpted from Stories of the Courage to Teachby Sam M. Intrator Copyright © 2007 by Sam M. Intrator. Excerpted by permission.
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