Teaching to Learn, Learning to Teach

Abstract

The book is designed as a handbook for preservice and beginning teachers. We anticipate that some readers will examine the entire package in the order that material is presented, whereas others will sample topics selectively based on their interests and needs. We hope the book works both ways. We apologize in advance for any repetition between chapters, but felt it was necessary so that each chapter could stand on its own. The book opens and closes with challenges to preservice and beginning teachers to reflect on what they liked and did not like about their own school experiences and to consider their goals as teachers. It argues that many problems students perceive of as individual are really a result of the way that schools and classrooms are organized. In the book, we address broad topics in secondary school teaching rather than the needs of specific subject areas. Although examples are included from different subject disciplines, the focus of the book is on the relationships between disciplines (concepts, skills, practices) rather than distinctions. While discussing different approaches to secondary school teaching (middle school, 6–8, and high school, 9–12), the book offers a model student-centered approach based on a series of PRO/CLASS Practices. It includes sample “Nuts and Bolts” teaching techniques that can be used in different types of classrooms and by teachers employing different pedagogical approaches (lesson and unit design, activities, questions, projects, team learning, community building). Although the broad principles of PRO/CLASS Practice are presented as part of an integrated approach to teaching, preservice and beginning teachers are encouraged to reinterpret the principles and continually redefine them as they develop their own reflective practice. Conversations with preservice teachers, interviews and conversations with teachers, essays about classroom issues and reflections on teaching goals and process, and the “Nuts and Bolts” of classroom practice are integrated throughout the text.