Chapter 2

• From “GOOD TEACHING MATTERS”
• BY KATI HAYCOCK

1. Have you ever heard the argument “Teachers and schools cannot make a difference if kids grow up in poverty”?
2. What do you think of Haycock’s response to that argument?
3. Is the United States—or are most local communities—ready to make the kind of commitment Haycock calls for?
4. Are Hancock’s proposals realistic?

• From “NEW YORK STATE CODE OF ETHICS FOR EDUCATORS”

1. Is it reasonable to ask a teacher to do everything that the New York Code seems to expect?
2. Are clear expectations like this helpful, or do people already know what’s expected?
3. Why do you think leaders in New York State saw a need for such a code?
4. Are there any principles you would like to add to (or subtract from) the code?

• From “PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT THAT WORKS . . . BECAUSE IT’S AGE-APPROPRIATE”
• BY WILLIAM H. JEYNES

1. Were your own parents involved in your schooling? Did it help? Did it ever embarrass you as the author says it might for some adolescents?
2. Do you think a teacher would welcome the kind of involvement this article suggests? As a teacher, would you?
3. Is it possible for parents to be too involved in the life of a school?

Chapter 3

• From “A PIVOTAL PERIOD FOR RACE IN AMERICA From DIVERSITY EXPLOSION: HOW NEW RACIAL DEMOCGRAPHICS ARE REMAKING AMERICA”
• BY WILLIAM H. FREY

1. Were you surprised by to learn that the nation is quickly moving toward a “majority minority” population?
2. What are some of the implications of this article for the classroom? In terms of who will be in school in the future? In terms of what schools should teach: Whose history? Whose literature?

• From “ALL LANGUAGES WELCOMED HERE”
• BY ORHAN AGIRDAG

• From “THE CASE FOR STRUCTURED ENGLISH IMMERSION”
• BY KEVIN CLARK

1. If the authors of these two articles were advising a school on how to develop a program for students who arrive not speaking English (English language learners or ELLs, as they are called today), how do you think they would differ in the recommendations they would make? In what ways might they make the same recommendations?
2. What is each author’s strongest argument in favor of his own recommendations?
3. If you were in charge of a school or district, which author would you listen to? Could you draw from both?

• From “THE SILENCED DIALOGUE: POWER AND PEDAGOGY IN EDUCATING OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN”
• BY LISA DELPIT

1. If you are a student of color, have you ever experienced the kind of silencing that Delpit describes in this article? What was your reaction?
2. If you are a White student, have you experienced similar silencing for another reason, such as a time when you just knew something was right but somehow others would not listen to or hear you? What was your reaction?
3. Can you think of a time when you may have silenced someone else?
4. Do you agree with Delpit that students who are “not part of the culture of power” may need explicit instruction in the rules of the dominant culture? Can you imagine giving such instruction to a group of children or adolescents? What would that look like?
5. Is it true that those with power may be unaware of it while those without power are quite aware? What does that mean for teachers?

Chapter 4

• From “THE TRUTH ABOUT BOYS AND GIRLS”
• BY SARA MEAD

1. How could different groups of scholars disagree so completely on the education of boys and girls when all claim that their work is based on solid research?
2. Think about schools where you have observed most recently. Can you find evidence that supports the arguments made in this or related articles?.

• FROM “THE CALIFORNIA FAIR ACT OF 2011”

1. What political forces might have brought about the passage of the Fair Act in California? Do those forces exist in other states?
2. Besides LGBTQ students, who might benefit from the Fair Act?

• From “UNDERSTANDING STUDENTS WITH LEARNING DIFFICULTIES: HOW DO THEY LEARN?”
• BY BARBARA S. S. HONG AND KAY A. CHICK

1. What strategies advocated by Hong and Chick might be most useful to you as a teacher?
2. What might a general education teacher learn from this article about learning difficulties as they appear for many students?

Chapter 5

• From “TEACHING TO TRANSGRESS: EDUCATION AS THE PRACTICE OF FREEDOM”
• By BELL HOOKS

1. hooks writes that, “it is rare that anyone talks about teachers in university settings as healers.” Is it any more common to hear anyone talk of elementary or secondary teachers in this way?
2. What would it mean for a K–12 teacher to be vulnerable and take risks while encouraging students to do the same? How might that change a K–12 classroom?

• From “HOW PEOPLE LEARN: BRAIN, MIND, EXPERIENCE, AND SCHOOL”
• By JOHN D. BRANSFORD, ANN L. BROWN, AND RODNEY R. COCKING

1. As you think about the schools you attended and those you have observed more recently, to what degree does the teaching reflect what these authors call the “latest scientific thinking” about how people learn? Did the teaching build on preexisting knowledge? Were the students encouraged to be active or passive learners?
2. As you read the Fish Is a Fish example, ask yourself if you have ever had an experience like the fish did, such as a time when you completely misunderstood something because you were hearing the story through an inappropriate filter? Try to think of specific examples.
3. Does this research mean a teacher should never give direct instruction to students? In light of the theories presented here, when might traditional “teaching by telling” be appropriate? When might it be inappropriate?
4. Late in the article, the authors say, “There is no universal best teaching practice.” Why do you think they say that? Do you agree or disagree with their conclusion? Are there universally worst teaching practices?

• From “MULTIPLE LENSES ON THE MIND”
• BY HOWARD GARDNER

1. Think about yourself as you read Gardner’s list of different kinds of intelligence. In what ways are you most intelligent? In what ways are you least intelligent?
2. If Gardner is correct that there are many different kinds of intelligence, why do so many people still categorize some people as “smart” or “gifted” and others as “stupid” or “slow?”
3. How different would schools be if they were designed to cultivate all forms of intelligence? What would happen to tests and grades?

Chapter 6

• From “THE COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS, 2012”
• BY THE JAMES B. HUNT INSTITUTE FOR EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND POLICY

1. How might a classroom organized around the Common Core State Standards differ from the one you attended? Would it?
2. At this point in your review of the standards, do you think they would improve classroom instruction? Hurt it? Make little difference?

• From “AFFIRMING DIVERSITY: THE SOCIOPOLITICAL CONTEXT OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION”
• BY SONIA NIETO

1. Nieto clearly places her commitment to multicultural education in her own experience growing up as an immigrant child in New York City. To what degree can you identify with Nieto’s experiences? To what degree are your views of multicultural education based on your own experience growing up?
2. Nieto answers the question “Who is included in multicultural education?” with a clear answer: “everyone.” Do you agree? Are European American’s multicultural? Why or why not?
3. Given his critique of multicultural education included in the chapter, what might Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., say in response to Nieto’s essay?

• From “THE CORE KNOWLEDGE CURRICULUM—WHAT’S BEHIND ITS SUCCESS?”
• BY E. D. HIRSCH, JR.

1. What does E. D. Hirsch, Jr., believe to be the most basic things that every child in the United States needs to know? Do you agree?
2. Reflect on the schools you attended and any in which you have observed. Do you think they have a core curriculum, either that proposed by Hirsch or another? Or are they examples of places Hirsch describes as having only a “mythical curriculum?”
3. If the elementary school you attended became a Core Knowledge school, would it be better or worse than it was when you were there?

• From “WHAT SHOULD CHILDREN LEARN?: A TEACHER LOOKS AT E. D. HIRSCH”
• BY BOB PETERSON

1. As you read Peterson’s critique of Hirsch, which author’s argument did you find most compelling?
2. Peterson criticizes Hirsch in several different ways. You may agree with Peterson on some of these issues and with Hirsch on others. What is your view on the debate about “national culture?” What is your view on the debate about core knowledge? What is your view on the debate about the nature of good teaching?
3. In this article, Peterson says that Hirsch’s approach “directly contrasts with the need for students to think analyze, critique, and understand their world,” yet in Hirsch’s own piece, he says that his approach is the best one for facilitating just such analysis and critique and understanding. How do you account for this difference? Which author do you think offers the best way to help students to understand their world?
4. How do you think Hirsch and Peterson would respond to the Common Core, which lays out standards but not a specific curriculum as does Hirsch? Is the argument about the Common Core the same one as is found here or a different one?

Chapter 7

• From “MY PEDAGOGIC CREED”
• BY JOHN DEWEY

1. If you were to write your own “Pedagogic Creed” how similar or different would it be from Dewey’s?
2. Does Dewey have ideas that help address motivation, management, and assessment in 21st century schools? Can you name a specific one?

• From “MAKE STUDENTS PART OF THE SOLUTION, NOT PART OF THE PROBLEM”
• BY TREVOR GARDNER

1. Restorative justice has become very popular as a means of handling student discipline, especially as zero-tolerance policies have come under intense critique. In the example given in this article, can you imagine such a system working? For Jose? For a whole school?
2. How might students on a Student Justice Panel be viewed by other students? Could their status work for or against the success of the system described here?

• From “TWO YEARS POST-NEWTOWN: WHAT’S CHANGED? WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE?”
• BY ROBERT CRABTREE

1. Do you think Crabtree is right to link the killings in Connecticut with the need for more special education services? Why or why not?
2. What would you propose if you were writing about a way to avoid future Sandy Hook–type tragedies?

• From “NEW DESIGN HIGH SCHOOL COMMUNITY HABITS RUBRIC”

1. As far as you know, has a teacher ever used a rubric like this to assess your work? If so, did the use of a rubric make the assessment seem more or less fair?
2. Can you imagine using a rubric like this in grading your students? Would it make your life easier, or is it too complicated?
3. If you were going to use a rubric like the New Design High School one, what changes would you want to make? What would you want to be sure remained unchanged?

Chapter 8

• From “ZERO TO EIGHT: CHILDREN’S MEDIA USE IN AMERICA, 2013”
• BY COMMON SENSE MEDIA

1. If 72% of children under 8 use a mobile device at some point in their lives, compared to 38% in 2011, and many young children use these devices a great deal, what are the implications for a teacher who wants to teach with such devices? What sort of instruction is, or is not, necessary? What about the other 28% of kids.
2. If TV viewing is still the dominant way children spend media time, what is the future of educational television in classrooms? Is that a good thing?

• From: “CELL PHONES IN THE CLASSROOM: DON’T PUT THEM AWAY JUST YET!”
• BY CAROLYN LORRAINE WEBB, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AT TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY-SAN ANTONIO

• From “PRINT TEXTS TO E-BOOKS: THE CHANGING NATURE OF LITERACY”
• BY LOTTA LARSON

1. How often do you use cell phones or e-books in your own personal life? How often have you used them as a student in a classroom setting? How might some classes you remember have been better—or worse—for the use of such technology?
2. What opportunities for using cell phones or e-books in the classroom would you add to Webb’s and Larson’s lists?

Chapter 9

• From “WHY TEACHERS SHOULD ORGANIZE”
• BY MARGARET HALEY

1. When you read Haley’s complaint about how difficult it was to be a teacher 100 years ago, do you think you would have wanted to teach then? Why or why not? What other careers might have seemed preferable in 1904?
2. How much has really changed?
3. Where has the greatest improvement taken place? What is better now, and what still needs attention?
4. What do you think of Haley’s proposed solution to the problems, that teachers needed unions, just as those in other fields of work needed them? Do they still need them?

• From “THE DESECRATION OF STUDS TERKEL: FIGHTING CENSORSHIP AND SELF-CENSORSHIP”
• BY BILL BIGELOW

1. What do you think of Bigelow’s decision to make “one of those compromises that we’re not proud of”? Would you have made the same compromise or handled things differently?
2. Bigelow says that for most teachers “the most powerful agent of censorship lives in our own heads.” Do you agree? Can you think of examples, in your own life or among teachers you have known or observed, when such self-censorship was a reality?
3. Could Bigelow have found a better way to relate to Mr. Dixon? To Dorothy Jennings’s mother? To Dorothy herself?
4. What do you think of Bigelow’s self-criticism at the end of the article about the way he related to parents early in his own career? Do parents make for more effective teaching? How? How not?

• From “TWO TEACHERS OF LETTERS”
• BY MARGARET TREECE METZGER AND CLAIRE FOX

1. Can you identify with the questions Claire Fox is asking at the beginning of this exchange of letters?
2. Do you know a teacher like Mrs. Metzger? Someone to whom you can ask similar questions? Someone who equally loves teaching?
3. Can you imagine yourself as a Mrs. Metzger some day? How do you think you would then answer Claire Fox’s questions?

Chapter 10

• From “SAN ANTONIO SCHOOL DISTRICT v. RODRIGUEZ”
• (UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, ARGUED OCT 12, 1972, DECIDED Mar 21, 1973)

1. Do you agree with the majority or the minority opinion in this case? Why?
2. Given what you have read in this chapter, what difference do you think it would have made in American education if the case had been decided in the opposite way?

• From “THE TRACKING WARS”
• BY JEANNIE S. OAKES

• From “THE TRACKING AND ABILITY GROUPING DEBATE”
• BY TOM LOVELESS

1. To what degree are Oakes and Loveless talking about the same thing and/or talking past each other?
2. Although they differ on many issues, Loveless and Oakes specifically contradict each other on at least one specific topic: Oakes found that African American students with the exact same test score as Whites were placed in lower groups; Loveless said they were placed in a higher group. Do you think this difference is due simply to their looking at different districts, or something else? When these kinds of differences appear in the research, who is a teacher, an administrator, or a policy maker to believe? Can one still learn from such research?
3. Have you experienced tracking or ability grouping in school, such as different reading groups in elementary school, advanced placement in high school, or gifted and talented programs at any level? Did you benefit? Did you think it benefited or harmed other students?

Chapter 11

• From “RAGE AGAINST THE COMMON CORE”
• BY DAVID L. KIRP

1. Given what you have read, do you believe that it is possible to separate the Common Core State Standards and the testing that has gone along with them? What would a test-free Common Core look like?
2. Given what Professor Kirp argues, how would you advise a state to implement, or not implement, the Common Core?

• From “A BACK-TO-SCHOOL CONVERSATION WITH TEACHERS AND SCHOOL LEADERS”
• BY ARNE DUNCAN, U.S. SECRETARY OF EDUCATION
• (POSTED ON OCTOBER 24, 2014)

1. Do you think Secretary Duncan has answered the concerns of the critics described in the first Reading?
2. What else, if anything, should the Secretary do to improve support for his agenda?

• From “DEFENDING PUBLIC EDUCATION: AN INTERVIEW WITH KAREN LEWIS, PRESIDENT OF THE CHICAGO TEACHER’S UNION”
• BY JOHN EIDELSON AND SARAH FAFFE FOR DISSENT MAGAZINE

1. How do you think Karen Lewis would respond to the Common Core State Standards?
2. What does it mean for a union to challenge local or national education policies? Who should make the final decisions—the school board, the federal government, the teachers, or some other combination of representatives of these groups?

Chapter 12

• From “THE SCHOOL AND SOCIETY”
• BY JOHN DEWEY

• What do you think of Dewey’s opening statement that, “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children.”? What do you think of Lisa Delpit’s critique of that idea discussed earlier in this chapter?
• Do you find Dewey’s ideas and his faith that schools can and indeed must ultimately create “a larger society which is worthy, lovely, and harmonious” to be romantic, realistic, or a little of both? What does it mean for you as a future teacher?

• From “ON EDUCATION”
• BY W.E.B. DU BOIS

• Du Bois describes education for “technical mastery” and education of the people who are “going to exercise the technique” as two quite different things. Can schools do both? Does your own philosophy of education favor one goal over the other or seek to include both?
• Where do you think Du Bois and Dewey would agree? Disagree?

• From “EXPLORING THE MORAL HEART OF TEACHING”
• BY DAVID T. HANSEN

• Hansen begins his book by saying, “Conceptions of teaching have consequences.” As you think about your conception of teaching—your philosophy of education—what consequences do you hope for? Will those consequences make your classroom, and the larger society, a fairer place in the future?
• In response to all of the Readings in this chapter, what do you think of the importance of ideas and idealism in education? How do ideas and idealism connect with the practical day-to-day duties of teaching?

Chapter 13

• From “WHAT KEEPS TEACHERS GOING?”
• BY SONIA NIETO

1. Nieto says, “We need to celebrate teachers who are excited about their own learning.” Think back to your own teachers—in school and in more informal settings—and think of one who was especially excited about learning. What difference did he or she make in your life?
2. Imagine that you have been teaching for three years. What kind of letter would you want to be able to write in answer to the question “What keeps teachers going?”

• From “CARING, COMPETENT TEACHERS IN COMPLEX CLASSROOMS”
• BY JACQUELINE JORDAN IRVINE

1. Which teacher, Ms. Little or Ms. Moultrie, best meets your own definition of a caring, competent teacher? Do you agree with Irvine that two such different teachers can both be caring and competent?
2. Do you think, as Irvine implies, that a teacher can be caring, sympathetic, friendly, and yet tough and “in charge”? Is this asking too much?
3. In the example Irvine gives, do you think Darius’s teacher was fair to him?
4. Do you agree with Irvine that “context is the operative word” and that teachers need to teach quite differently in different cultural contexts, or do you ultimately think “good teaching is good teaching”?