"The volume describes and vividly illustrates the critical qualities that make PK-12 teachers both effective and memorable. These critical stories, and the editors' concluding conceptual analysis, will prove especially valuable to pre-service and in-service teachers who are engaged in the important responsibility of teaching our nation's youth. Each chapter will include an analysis drawn from research on identity in teacher education, theory, and research in education, psychology, and human development"--

This volume contends that effective teachers should reflect the student population in racial and cultural terms. Employing a critical storytelling framework, respected scholars from diverse backgrounds share the teaching practices of influential teachers that they learned from. Each storyteller identifies key concepts and principles that explain why the selected teacher was so memorably effective. Contributors: Judy A. Alston • Roslyn Clark Artis • Aimeé I. Cepeda • Theodore Chao • Antonio L. Ellis • Ramon B. Goings • Lisa Maria Grillo • Nicholas D. Hartlep • Jameson D. Lopez • Shawn Anthony Robinson • Theresa Stewart-Ambo • Amanda R. Tachine • Dawn G. Williams “Each chapter offers an intimate view of what it feels like to be taught by a teacher who affirms to the student: You belong here.” —Leslie T. Fenwick, AACTE “Compellingly weaves together the voices and experiences of a diverse group of authors who dare to write toward and for freedom.” —H. Richard Milner IV, Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair of Education, Vanderbilt “For those who teach teachers, and for teachers everywhere, this book will serve as an invaluable resource and a source of inspiration for what can be achieved in the classroom.” —Pedro A. Noguera, Distinguished Professor and the Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean, USC Rossier School of Education

Critical Storytelling in Urban Education shares poems and stories written by college students attending Metropolitan State University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.

‘Tom Bennett is the voice of the modern teacher.’ - Stephen Drew, Senior Vice-Principal, Passmores Academy, UK, featured on Channel 4’s Educating Essex Do the findings from educational science ever really improve the day-to-day practice of classroom teachers? Education is awash with theories about how pupils best learn and teachers best teach, most often propped up with the inevitable research that ‘proves’ the case in point. But what can teachers do to find the proof within the pudding, and how can this actually help them on wet Wednesday afternoon?. Drawing from a wide range of recent and popular education theories and strategies, Tom Bennett highlights how much of what we think we know in schools hasn’t been ‘proven’ in any meaningful sense at all. He inspires teachers to decide for themselves what good and bad education really is, empowering them as professionals and raising their confidence in the classroom and the staffroom alike. Readers are encouraged to question and reflect on issues such as: the most common ideas in modern education and where these ideas were born the crisis in research right now how research is commissioned and used by the people who make policy in the UK and beyond the provenance of education research: who instigates it, who writes it, and how to spot when a claim is based on evidence and when it isn’t the different way that data can be analysed what happens to the research conclusions once they escape the laboratory. Controversial, erudite and yet unremittingly entertaining, Tom includes practical suggestions for the classroom throughout. This book will be an ally to every teacher who’s been handed an instruction on a platter and been told, ‘the research proves it.’

Debates regarding the qualities, skills, and dispositions of culturally relevant teachers and teaching have raged in teacher education for several decades. Ladson-Billings’ (2009) The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children was a groundbreaking work that has become a foundational study that informs the work of culturally-relevant (Ladson-Billings, 2009) and culturally-sustaining (Paris & Alim, 2017) teaching. In her book The Dreamkeepers she describes effective teachers who are able to draw from the cultural wealth, knowledges, and heritage of Black communities. The Dreamkeepers ensured that their Black students were academically successful, retained, and grew both in terms of their cultural competence and their sociopolitical awareness. In other words, according to research by Ladson-Billings (2009), effective teachers possessed both pedagogical and relational dispositions, which leave lifelong impacts on the academic and social lives of the students they teach. While being a foundational text, what remains missing from the research on culturally-relevant and even culturally-sustaining teachers are “narratives” (read: stories, testimonios, etc.) related to how the race of particular E–12 teachers positively impact the lives of their students. For instance, Dr. Antonio Ellis (the first editor of the proposed book) describes his high school music teacher Mr. Linard McCloud) as “a highly effective African American music educator who changed the course of his life” (p. 170). Ellis (2016) describes McCloud as being loving, caring, creative, culturally sensitive, attuned, hopeful, flexible, organized, and thoughtful. Because Mr. McCloud possessed the aforementioned characteristics and dispositions, Ellis contends that he was motivated to achieve academically and socially in his urban high school. In addition, according to Ellis (2016), Mr. McCloud was a highly impactful educator because he went beyond the call of duty as a teacher—a practice that is not so common in schools, particularly urban ones. Not only did McCloud teach in the classroom setting, but he also built strong relationships with families, community members, and external stakeholders including local businesses, colleges, and universities. Mr. McCloud used these networks to leverage opportunities for his students academically, personally, and professionally. Like many of his high school classmates, Ellis (2016) contends that he would not have graduated from high school if it were not for the care and mentorship he received from Mr. McCloud. In this proposed edited volume, it is the editors’ goal to honor teachers like Mr. McCloud who have made a difference in the lives of their students by learning from their impactful practices. Employing a “critical storytelling” methodology (see Hartlep & Hensley, 2015; Hartlep, Hensley, Braniger, & Jennings, 2017), each chapter contributor will use his or her own narrative to show the power of influential teachers in classrooms. While this framework centers race, lived and learned experiences, the storyteller is the most important unit of narrative; hence, The Impact of Classroom Practices: Reflections on Culturally Relevant Teachers will include African-American storytellers who reflect on the impact of classroom practices of teachers from diverse backgrounds who they deemed culturally relevant and responsive to both their academic and social needs. This work will offer recommendations to pre-service teachers and in-service teachers who desire to leave a lasting impact on the students they teach.

The journey of becoming a teacher is a complicated, emotional, and often intricate endeavor. Much has been written about pre-service teachers but rarely do we understand the journey through their own voices. Join nine pre-service teachers as they share their experiences, challenges, and victories through a series of powerful narratives. Committed to making the process more transparent for those embarking on a similar journey, the chapter authors share honest, personal, and heartfelt viewpoints about what it means to become a teacher. The nine pre-service teachers in this volume all participated in a yearlong student teaching in the renowned Elementary Holmes Master of Arts in Teaching program at Louisiana State University. Putting to practice critical perspectives about what it means to teach in the 21st century, these authors expose their vulnerabilities with a range of literary approaches including metaphor, reflective journaling, and storytelling. The volume is framed by teacher educator insights about the contexts and complexities of teaching. A must read for anyone preparing to student teach, or for those already student teaching, Student Teaching: A Journey in Narratives deals directly with the realities of learning to teach. Sometimes poetic, sometimes painful, these compelling personal narratives of novice teachers provide a poignant view of the struggles, fears, and celebrations developing teachers traverse on the journey to induction into the profession. Teacher educators and teacher candidates alike will find much to explore and discuss in these chapters. No stone of learning to teach is left unturned! – Lisa Delpit, Author of Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom and Multiplication is for White People: Raising Expectations for Other People's Children

The importance of drama in primary school has been elevated in recent years, with many teachers continuing to make it high priority in their teaching. They recognise that it can enrich children's understanding of the world and motivate and encourage them in other curriculum work. This lively and readable book offers a blend of theory and practice based on the author's own considerable experience as a drama teacher. He provides numerous examples taken from work with children in schools, which will help teachers to prepare for drama sessions in the classroom. The book examines the role of drama as a subject in its own right as well as its role in delivering other aspects of the curriculum within primary education. It assumes no prior knowledge of teaching drama and will therefore be useful to trainee teachers and in-service teachers wanting to make use of drama in their daily teaching.