Publisher Description
We’ve all had great teachers who opened new worlds and maybe
even changed our lives. What made them so great?
Everyone agrees that a great teacher can have an enormous
impact. Yet we still don’t know what, precisely, makes a teacher great. Is it a
matter of natural-born charisma? Or does exceptional teaching require something
more?
Building a Better
Teacher introduces a new generation of educators exploring the intricate
science underlying their art. A former principal studies the country’s star
teachers and discovers a set of common techniques that help children pay
attention. Two math teachers videotape a year of lessons and develop an
approach that has nine-year-olds writing sophisticated mathematical proofs. A
former high school teacher works with a top English instructor to pinpoint the
key interactions a teacher must foster to initiate a rich classroom discussion.
Through their stories, and the hilarious and heartbreaking theater that unfolds
in the classroom every day, Elizabeth Green takes us on a journey into the
heart of a profession that impacts every child in America.
What happens in the classroom of a great teacher? Opening
with a moment-by-moment portrait of an everyday math lesson—a drama of urgent
decisions and artful maneuvers—Building a
Better Teacher demonstrates the unexpected complexity of teaching. Green
focuses on the questions that really matter: How do we prepare teachers, and
what should they know before they enter the classroom? How does one get young
minds to reason, conjecture, prove, and understand? What are the keys to good
discipline? Incorporating new research from cognitive psychologists and
education specialists as well as intrepid classroom entrepreneurs, Green
provides a new way for parents to judge what their children need in the
classroom and considers how to scale good ideas. Ultimately, Green discovers that
good teaching is a skill—a skill that can be taught.
A provocative and hopeful book, Building a Better Teacher shows that legendary teachers are more
than inspiring; they are perhaps the greatest craftspeople of all.
Download and start listening now!
“Ideas from a former principal on
what makes for an exceptional teacher… Green…suggest[s] that the reverence
surrounding the best teachers is misguided, in that it elevates the ‘natural
born educator’ mythos that suggests an inborn talent. Green deflates the ‘I
could never do what they do’ aura of the best teachers, but in a good way. In
extensive conversations and observations that uncover the approaches that the
best educators share, she distills how they apply those approaches in similar ways
despite differences in extraversion/introversion, humorous/serious teaching
approaches, and flexible/rigid standards…A powerful, rational guidebook to
creating genuinely effective education, written in a manner useful not just for
schoolteachers but everyone involved in the care of children.”—
Kirkus
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