This Teaching Life: How I Taught Myself to Teach / Edition 1

by Selma Wassermann

Overview

This important memoir of professional development in action follows bestselling author Selma Wassermann from her dismal beginnings, struggling for control over her students, to enjoying the kind of teaching in which teacher and students are truly partners in the process. This is the story of learning to respect students, to allow them choices, to engage them in their own self-discoveries, to relinquish control, to make informed diagnoses of individual learning needs and create teaching strategies to address them, and, ultimately, to stand up for what one believes is right and good in the education of children.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807745007
Publisher:	Teachers College Press
Publication date:	11/21/2004
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.48(d)

About the Author

Selma Wassermann is Professor Emerita in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. She is a coauthor of The New Teaching Elementary Science: Who’s Afraid of Spiders? and the author of Introduction to Case Method Teaching: A Guide to the Galaxy and Serious Players in the Primary Classroom..

Table of Contents

	Foreword	ix
	Preface	xiii
1	Leaving	1
2	Growing Professionals	10
3	Bridging the Gap Between Perceptions and Actions	17
4	Putting New Ideas into Practice	27
5	Finding Ways to Attend to Individual Learning Needs	36
6	Creating a Rich, Engaging, and Interactive Learning Environment	49
7	Using Evaluation to Promote Learning	68
8	Prizing and Caring About Each Individual	79
9	Unifying the Group-A Work in Progress	96
10	Building Habits of Thinking	108
11	Learning to Reflect on Practice	124
12	Providing Evaluative Feedback That Is Enabling	145
13	"4 Imprtint Things for Noo Teechrs to 'Member"	159
	References	165
	Index	169
	About the Author	176

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“It is the finely tuned reflection on children as whole human beings in classrooms, her strengths and limitations as teacher, and her stubborn effort to keep getting better that makes this a remarkable tale.”
—From the Foreword by Larry Cuban

"I like the way this book works in so many best practices with the author’s personal story. This is what makes it so valuable for both beginning and veteran teachers. I urge school districts to get a copy for every new teacher."
— Bill Cliett, former Deputy Superintendent for Curriculum and Instructional Services, Gainesville, FL

“This small masterpiece will change the way teachers see and live their craft, how they experience and might re-imagine their teaching lives. It is essential reading for people taking their first tentative steps toward teaching, as well as for those who have spent a lifetime on this complex and twisty path, and for most everyone in between.”
William Ayers, Distinguished Professor, College of Education, University of Illinois at Chicago

“Wasserman’s compelling narrative of her life and growth as a teacher takes us from a rote ‘teaching by telling’ stance to learning about how to integrate knowledge about self, students, and learning. Novice and experienced teachers can use this book as a primer, keeping it closely by their side as they struggle with their own learning over time.”
Ann Lieberman, Senior Scholar, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching