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Reviewer Marjorie Larner strongly recommends City Kids, City Schools: More Reports from the Front Row. "Whether you are looking for practical ideas for the classrooms; research and statistics; essays from related fields of social justice, politics and history; or spoken word, poetry, memoir or fiction, you can find a beautifully written, relevant and thought-provoking selection."

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City Kids, City Schools: More Reports from the Front Row
Edited by William Ayers, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Gregory Miche & Pedro Noguero
2008 (384 pp./paperback)
The New Press
ISBN: 978-1-59558-338-3
$24.95

Reviewed by Marjorie Larner

If you were suddenly transported to a desert island with your urban school in tow, and you could only have one book, I would strongly recommend City Kids, City Schools: More Reports from the Front Row. Whether you are looking for practical ideas for the classrooms; research and statistics; essays from related fields of social justice, politics and history; or spoken word, poetry, memoir or fiction, you can find a beautifully written, relevant and thought-provoking selection.

This book will stimulate discussion, deepen understanding and inspire further teaching and learning to reach every child in our schools. This is not light reading, nor is it disheartening or tedious. There is a vitality and energy in each selection that leaves me with more understanding of what I can do and why I must continue in the effort— feeling motivated rather than discouraged.

As a collection, it works as a resource where you can search by writer, topic or genre. It is also a powerful read with a cumulative impact if you start at the beginning and read sequentially. I find myself regularly going back and re-reading, finding pieces to share with colleagues, to use in workshops and seminars or to offer to students for examples and inspiration. My copy became so full of sticky notes that I had to start color-coding them.

City Kids, City Schools is a treasure trove for anyone with interest and concern for our children and education, looking for authentic perspectives, information, and real stories from people in the front row, engaged in the everyday struggle of school. The list of well-known authors and everyday heroes is long. You can move from

• Linda Christensen’s account of discovering a way (through a “Curriculum of Empathy”) to get her students involved in a novel by teaching them to “enter the lives of characters in literature, history, or real life whom they might dismiss or misunderstand…”

• to Marion Unas Esguerra’s poem “morning papers,” dealing with “issues of language, culture, prejudice, and assimilation that many immigrant children in urban areas—and their parents—must confront...”

• to Grace Boggs’ call to "root students and faculty in communities…and engage them in the kind of real problem solving in their localities that nurture a love of place and provides practice in creating the sustainable economies, equality and community that are the responsibilities of citizenship.” 

As Ruby Dee writes in the foreword, “City Kids, City Schools holds the banner high for a more rewarding quality of life (by) reminding us of our responsibility as citizens to work for, to insist on, and to ensure a free, quality education to every child. It will not happen without our vigilance, our profoundest commitment—especially those of us whose voices, like mine, like those in this book—have been nourished by some of the great minds that steady and enlighten our lives. This book engages all our sensibilities toward the glorification of our remarkable species.”

If you were allowed a second book on your desert island, consider an earlier and similar collection also edited by William Ayers (and others), titled City Kids, City Teachers (1996), now available in a new edition. In the foreword to that book, the late Ossie Davis wrote a summary that applies to both of these wonderful resources. “In this book, our cities’ students and teachers share their problems, their prospects, and their plans. It is vital that all of us look deep into these pages, to listen and to learn….Look to these pages for guidance and light.”

Marjorie Larner is an instructional coach in the Colorado public schools and a facilitator for the National School Reform Faculty. Also see Larner's recent interview of Managing Diverse Classrooms (ASCD, 2008)

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Carrie Rothstein-Fisch and Elise Trumbull share a teaching approach that includes practical, culturally sensitive classroom organization. The book is based on research and trials in seven California classrooms over five years, during which time the authors  studied how teachers’ understanding of the deep meaning of culture impacts teaching and learning. Classroom organization and management, they learned, were the first things teachers changed as a result of a using a framework for understanding and responding to the particular culture of the students in their classrooms.

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Managing Diverse Classrooms: How to Build on Students’ Cultural Strengths
By Carrie Rothstein-Fisch and Elise Trumbull
2008 (196 pp/paperback)
ASCD
ISBN: 978-1-4166-0624-6
$25.95 ($19.95 for members)

Reviewed by Marjorie Larner

While many of us have increased our awareness and understanding of how issues of equity and diversity impact our students’ possibilities, specific implications and applicable recommendations for classroom practice have been harder to come by.

In Managing Diverse Classrooms: How to Build on Students’ Cultural Strengths, Carrie Rothstein-Fisch and Elise Trumbull share a teaching approach that includes practical classroom organization based on research and trials in seven classrooms over five years. In this Bridging Cultures Project, they studied how teachers’ understanding of the deep meaning of culture would have implications for teaching and learning. Classroom organization and management, they learned, were the first things teachers changed as a result of a using a framework for understanding and responding to the particular culture of the students in their classrooms.

When I think of the importance effective teachers place on building learning communities, I can see how valuable this book would be as a resource for constructing a community that is reflective of students’ family cultures and “what is truly rewarding for them.” They provide guidance to consider such important culture-related questions as how we measure success, what we are working for (my learning or the good of the group) and how to connect to students’ families.

The book is very clearly laid out -- from its purpose, view of learning, definition of terms and recommendations, to its very practical guides, plans, and questions to consider. The authors state in the beginning that their approach will not be to give the reader a set of strategies or lists of identifiers but rather a framework that is easy to grasp and immediately useful to “see and learn and develop yourself -- making your (own) decisions and choices.”

From the beginning there are interesting insights to consider, such as their premise that there are two types of cultures: individualistic (which we typically value in our schools) and collectivistic (which we need to include more deliberately for students from non-European backgrounds).  They help the reader take an explicit look at aspects of classroom teaching and learning in the context of these cultural values of individualism and collectivism – and how to integrate both school and family values into our work.

While I found myself occasionally questioning the authors’ assumptions or arguing with some of the generalizations and interpretations based on only seven teachers in Southern California, this book does provide the foundation for some serious thinking with colleagues about classroom organization and management that recognizes diverse contexts. Immediately understandable, uncomplicated and basic, it could be a “vehicle for finding common ground”  in collaborative planning in a school.

If you feel the need to deepen your knowledge of cultural values systems as they impact the classroom -- or learn more about the role of those systems in human development -- this book will be an excellent starting point. And it can provide ongoing support for changing practice, as you reflect on your own attitudes and values and how they mesh with your school’s cultural patterns.

Marjorie Larner is an instructional coach in the Colorado public schools and a facilitator for the National School Reform Faculty.

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The element is the point at which natural talent meets personal passion. When people arrive at the element, they feel most themselves and most inspired and achieve at their highest levels. The Element draws on the stories of a wide range of people, from ex-Beatle Paul McCartney to Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons.. and others, including business leaders and athletes. It explores the components of this new paradigm: The diversity of intelligence, the power of imagination and creativity, and the importance of commitment to our own capabilities. In his review, National Board Certified preschool teacher and professional painter John M. Holland focuses on Robison's ideas about "luck" and his observation that schools must shift from "how smart are you" to "how are you smart?"

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The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
Ken Robinson with Lou Aronica
2009 (288 pp; hardcover)
Viking Press
ISBN: 9780670020478
$25.95

Reviewed by John M. Holland, NBCT
Pre-School Teacher
Richmond (VA) City Schools

My son has a lucky dinosaur. He keeps it in his sock drawer and pulls it out when we play board games. His mother says that when she found it she "knew it was his lucky dinosaur." We have started to move him towards considering that maybe HE is lucky. I think he is starting to believe us.

I hope he starts to internalize this idea because it may help him find his bliss. I say this because being "lucky" is one of those ephemeral traits that seem to surround successful people. I just finished reading The Element by Sir Kenneth Robinson and turns out that being "lucky" is one of the traits that can help you find and inhabit your "element." Luck is the ability to be open to opportunities, to act on opportunities, and to turn misfortune into opportunity.

When we start to describe luck this way it becomes much less about superstition and much more of a creative skill. It is this type of thinking that Sir Ken Robinson is known for exploring.

Reading The Element is like reading a transcript of the conversation between your heart, your head, and your education. Only this time, your heart wins the argument. Ken Robinson tells us all the things that we told ourselves before we were "tracked" or Myers-Briggs'ed into groups for easier classification. This time though, your heart has some heavy-duty research behind its case.

 In The Element, Robinson argues that schooling, as a system, is like a machine that dehumanizes kids by trying to stuff them into boxes instead of helping them to find their potential as human beings. He says schooling is all about society and not about the kids. Through stories of many exceptional people, Robinson describes what might have happened if famous and successful people had listened to their parents, or their teachers, or their Myers-Briggs for that matter.

If so-and-so had listened to the teacher who said, "You’re good at ____ so you should become a ____," they never would have become the creator of The Simpsons or the author of The Alchemist or the winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize for Economics. The key is that these individuals discovered their true passion, realized their aptitude, and stuck to it, sometimes in the face of their education and in spite of a community or a society that didn't buy it.

The trouble with schooling, according to The Element, is that schools do not ask the right questions. Schools today are built on the question, "How smart are you?" Robinson says we should be asking, "How are you smart?"

If schools were organized around identifying and supporting students' finding their "element," teaching and learning would look much different than it does now. "The Element is the meeting point of natural aptitude and personal passion," he concludes.

I have to say I can relate to this book. There is this feeling I get when I am painting and sometimes when I am teaching. Actually, it is not so much a feeling as place I feel like I inhabit. This feeling of being in flow. It seems to be a state that almost all people are able to reach. But in society there is a meta-story that seems false to me about what creativity is and means. Many times creativity is seen as a gift from a higher power, something out of the ordinary.

In Robinson's view, creativity is what happens when aptitude and passion find each other. It is what students will need to tap into in order to be successful in the unknown future. Robinson says "it would be wise" to support students in identifying and pursuing their element, rather than a particular career or a set of marketable skills, because the only thing we can be sure of is that the future will be different than the world we live in today.

John M. Holland teaches in the Head Start program of the Richmond VA public schools. He is a National Board Certified Teacher in early childhood education and blogs at Lead from the Start and Inside PreK. Images of many of his paintings can be seen at Much Too Bright.
 

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Building from the statistics and anecdotal evidence of disengaged students, authors Joseph DiMartino, President of the Center for Secondary School Redesign, and John Clarke, a creator of professional development schools with 42 years of practical experience in classrooms, have assembled a guide to creating student-centered high schools. “It all sounds great,” says reviewer Mary Tedrow. “But coming from a teacher’s perspective, I cannot imagine this book being useful until it is in the hands of open-minded, inspired leadership. I’m not convinced that we have enough of those yet in place to make a nationwide difference.”

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Personalizing the High School Experience for Each Student
By Joseph DiMartino and John H. Clarke
2008 (200 pp./paperback)
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
ISBN: 978-1-4166-0647-5
$27.95 ($21.95 for members)

Reviewed by Mary Tedrow, NBCT
High School English
Winchester, VA
Co-Director, Northern Virginia Writing Project

Across this nation, 30 percent of ninth graders do not graduate with their class. If nothing else proves that the current configuration of high schools is failing students, that one statistic should. Not convincing enough for you? Here’s another: the United States ranks 16th in the world for high school completion rates.

For those who labor within these high school buildings, these are not surprising numbers. For the general public, they might come as a shock. Formerly a teacher of ninth graders, I saw first-hand evidence that we lose our high school freshmen at a steady pace – one that is not reflected in our graduation rates, generally published at above the 90% level. Some inventive statistics regularly put a happier face on student attrition.

Building from the statistics and anecdotal evidence of disengaged students, authors Joseph DiMartino, President of the Center for Secondary School Redesign, and John Clarke, a creator of professional development schools with 42 years of practical experience in classrooms, have assembled a guide to creating student-centered high schools.

Their thin book of only seven chapters provides an outline for building a school responsive to student needs in the context of a particular community. The authors are right in offering just an outline, since these schools are envisioned as a vital part of the community they dwell within. Students are encouraged to interact with -- rather than be sequestered from -- the surrounding world in order to achieve self-identified goals.

Each chapter of Personalizing the High School Experience for Each Student covers one of the hallmarks of already successful student-centered schools and provides the sample rubrics, evaluation sheets, and reflective questioning necessary in the project-driven work that the students are engaged in when a school shifts to a student-centered philosophy.

The authors also have suggestions for re-managing time, currently dominated by a now-defunct (according to the authors) Carnegie unit system that limits high school flexibility. The samples and suggestions come from high schools that have already made a difference in the success rates of their students – proof that starting with children and engaging them in a vision for their own life is the key to saving our public high schools.

At the end of each chapter, the authors outline the stumbling blocks that any school should anticipate as they implement this new configuration. It all sounds great. But coming from a teacher’s perspective, I cannot imagine this book being useful until it is in the hands of open-minded, inspired leadership. I’m not convinced that we have enough of those yet in place to make a nationwide difference.

Why we don’t have this now

There are a few places where I think the authors glossed over the true stumbling block to student-centered high school education: the need to re-define a teacher’s role. If that shifting role isn’t supported by continual professional development and a reconsideration of how a teacher’s time is to be used, this plan will just go on the already overflowing rubbish bin of initiatives tried and failed.

Don’t get me wrong. DiMartino and Clarke were singing to the choir when this book landed in my lap. Student-centered instruction works. I’ve seen it happen time and time again. And, even better, igniting students through inquiry-based instruction is fun for both the teacher and the student. (And for that reason alone, some educators dismiss it. School, apparently, shouldn’t be fun.)

Re-centering high schools on student work, student questions, and student-generated goals should happen tomorrow, or better still today, as far as I am concerned. What I don’t trust are school administrators who have historically taken a new idea and ruined it by making it just another add-on to an already overwhelming workload on the part of teachers.

Re-thinking high schools is a philosophic sea-change in the way some educators view school. If time is not taken to help the school’s leadership and its teachers digest, internalize, and personalize the idea for themselves, it is doomed to failure.

In addition, creating student-centered schools is an idea that must be extended into pre-service teacher preparation. Student-centered classrooms and schools move teachers into the role of coach or adviser to students, a role not uniformly accepted by all teachers or administrators nor promoted in all teacher education institutions. There are many who came to teach in high school because of their love for their subject but not for their students. They covet the role of the sage on the stage. And there are many administrators who see that role as appropriate – who do not recognize the role of teacher-as-coach as a valid one.

Nor do nearly enough administrators see teaching as a collaborative act. The authors mention this several times but not nearly in strong enough terms. In fact, I had to read over one passage three times before I could make solid sense of one of their points. Their message was this: In industrialized countries where student success is high, teachers spend considerably more time outside of the classroom planning with peers than American teachers do. This is an important message about teacher time that was buried in a complicated passage.

Currently, my impression is that administrators do not feel teachers are working unless they are standing in front of students. The important work of planning strong, engaging lessons is considered fluff, if you gauge its value by how teacher time is now used at the building level.

I’ve lived through the switch to block scheduling and seen how this great idea has been misinterpreted. The original move to the block was intended so that 90 minutes would ensure time for adults to mentor students and to offer more engaging hands-on lessons. These lessons could be carefully planned in the additional planning time the new schedule would make possible.

Once administrators saw that teachers would have more time away from students they immediately began using the time to address administrative duties. In my building teachers are required to monitor hallways and bathrooms during planning. No time is scheduled during the day for teams to work together designing the innovative lessons they should be able to present in the longer teaching time. No professional development was offered to help veterans reconfigure their lessons for student engagement beyond the traditional lecture. What we got in the end was the bare minimum: a longer class period.

The ideas and action steps offered in Personalizing the High School Experience depend upon collaborative planning and intensive time working with students in advisories. Those initiatives will have to be seen as part of a teacher’s workday by all concerned parties, including, and most importantly, those who control that workday. 

Though the authors offer the tools for rebuilding high schools, this is not the book to inspire the leadership to change philosophy and do what is right for students and teachers. That book may have already been written by George Wood in Time to Learn where he expresses the goals and successes of Federal Hocking High School in Ohio.

This book is for those school leaders who have already been converted, who see that teacher time can we well used for mentoring and coaching students during the school day, who believe we must enable students to be masters of their own learning rather than prisoners in a closed system.

Those leaders (may they flourish) will find this book to be a helpful guide for planning and structuring a high school where every student feels known, welcome, and successful.

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Debbie Diller has created an “incredible new resource” with her new book Spaces & Places, says reviewer Gail Ritchie, a K-6 school-based instructional coach. Using before-and-after photos and simple step-by-step instructions, Diller helps teachers de-clutter and organize classroom spaces in which every inch is being utilized thoughtfully. The goal is to create a purposeful, inviting literacy-rich classroom in just about any circumstances.

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Spaces & Places: Designing Classrooms for Literacy
Debbie Diller
2008 (240 pp./softcover)
Stenhouse Publishers
ISBN: 978-1-57110-722-0
$28.50

Reviewed by Gail V. Ritchie, NBCT, PhD
School-based Curriculum Leader
Fairfax County, Virginia

I have found an incredible new resource for my work as an Instructional Coach for grades K-6. Spaces & Places by Debbie Diller has created a visual companion to her ground-breaking books, Literacy Work Stations and Practice with Purpose. Using before-and-after photos and simple step-by-step instructions, Diller helps all of us de-clutter and organize classroom spaces in which “every inch is being utilized thoughtfully” (p.1).

Emphasizing the connection between the classroom space and student behavior, Diller helps teachers restructure their classrooms by considering such things as:

•    What to keep and what to get rid of (her motto: “When in doubt, throw it out” (p. 168),
•    Accessible materials,
•    Placement and provisioning of work stations,
•    Encouraging student independence,
•    Involving students in decision-making so that they feel like they’re part of the learning,
•    Traffic patterns,
•    Furniture arrangement and down-sizing the amount of furniture,
•    Double-duty use of furniture, and
•    Packing up at the end of the year.

The book is organized into five chapters and a resource section. Each chapter has a step-by-step process to follow and numerous photographs of what a purposeful, inviting literacy-rich classroom can look like. The photos are from many different settings, including open classrooms and portable classrooms. The resource section includes a “Where to Find It” section, providing information about where the space-saving organizers and materials can be purchased. It also includes planning forms, checklists, and ideas for professional development with a book study of Spaces & Places.

Chapter 1 focuses on the importance of planning your space before school begins. This involves four steps:

1.    Think about the teaching you plan to do within the space.
2.    Think about what your ideal classroom would look like.
3.    Assess your space for #1 and #2.
4.    Make a map of the classroom arrangement that will allow you to do #1 and #2.

Chapter 2 focuses on actually arranging the classroom in a way that saves time and maximizes space. The steps involved here are:

1.    Set up the whole group area and “big stuff.”
2.    Set up the small group teaching area(s).
3.    Set up the classroom library.
4.    Set up the Word Wall.
5.    Set up work stations around the perimeter of the room.
6.    Set up the computer area.
7.    Set up student desks/tables.
8.    Set up the teacher desk (if you absolutely must have one) last.

Chapter 3 focuses on arranging the stations that are essential for the kind of classroom advocated in Literacy Work Stations and Practice with Purpose. For each station, there are three questions you should ask yourself:

1.    What is the purpose of this space?
2.    How does it link to instruction?
3.    What materials will we need here?

Chapter 4 focuses on what should be displayed on your classroom walls, and what to do about displays if you don’t have walls. The steps are:

1.    Think about the message you want to convey. What you display shows what you value.
2.    Plan which space(s) you’ll use for what purpose.
3.    Plan display spaces.
4.    Create the spaces as you teach the material, leaving room for student work and minimizing “teacher store” commercially-produced materials.
5.    Change the displays as the year goes on to reflect what you and your students have learned and are focusing on.

Chapter 5 provides numerous helpful hints for organizing your teaching materials for end-of-year pack-up and/or moving to a new classroom space. Diller reminds teachers to keep teaching up until the very last day. On the last day of school, invite students to help you take things down and put them away. After students depart, empty one space at a time, packing the materials in clearly labeled boxes/bins/crates. Before packing anything, ask yourself, “Should I keep this?” For teachers who are moving to a new classroom, Diller recommends:

1.    Make a plan.
2.    Take photos of the spaces you like and want to recreate.
3.    Gather storage materials.
4.    Put photos and labels on each box.
5.    On the last day of school, invite students to help you take things down and put them in the labeled boxes.
6.    Pack, place materials by the door, ready to be moved to your new location.

And that’s all there is to it! Spaces and Places is a quick read that teachers can use as a guidepost before school starts so that they can begin the year with an inviting and purposeful classroom space. Then during the year, when clutter starts to build up, one glance inside Diller’s book will motivate and inspire teachers to once again strive to make their rooms look like the “after” photos, and the step-by-step procedures will provide the easy-to-follow guidelines for doing just that.
 

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