Building a Better Teacher

May 5, 2014
Journalist and cofounder of the news organization GothamSchools, Green promises to reveal how better teaching works and how everyone (or at least every teacher) can be taught how to do it. Unfortunately, the book promises more than it delivers. Green’s primary argument concerns the need for better teacher training (less attention to “teachers’ effect,” more attention to successful classroom practice), and one of her most insightful observations concerns the shifts that occurred when “universities... began to add the lucrative teacher-training business to their repertoires.” The material she cites most heavily comes from two distinguished specialists in training teachers to teach mathematics (Magdalene Lampert and Deborah Loewenberg Ball) and “from the world of educational entrepreneurs” (Doug Lemov, managing director of the Uncommon School charter network). Much of her content is classroom reportage that shows how teachers resolve the arithmetic problems of individual students. While this material will be of practical use to budding or aspiring teachers, it makes for dry reading. Japanese schools, charter schools, and national programs such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top are assessed as well. The book is best-suited for education specialists and working teachers. Agent: Alia Hanna Habib, McCormick & Williams.

August 1, 2014

Are exceptional teachers born with that gift, or can they be made? Green (cofounder, CEO, and editor in chief of nonprofit education news organization Chalkbeat) looks at both the history of teacher improvement efforts and current thinking and practice in teacher training and evaluation. The author acknowledges that inborn traits such as warmth and humor influence effectiveness. She also explores how effective teachers move students toward understanding and how their methods can be generalized to yield improved classroom techniques for almost anyone. From the Japanese practice of jugyokenkyu ("lesson study") to the creatively named TKOT ("This Kind of Teaching"), Green looks at how excellent teachers do it. Many of the author's examples are drawn from Teach for America and Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) and other charter school programs as they struggle to reach lofty educational goals, often with tight budgets and novice teachers. VERDICT This isn't a "how-to" book with checklists for making average teachers into educational stars, but contained within the well-documented narrative are many informational nuggets that motivated teachers can apply to their work. Principals and school administrators may find this work useful when planning meaningful professional development or teacher evaluation programs. [See Prepub Alert, 2/3/14.]--Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley Sch., Fort Worth, TX

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2014

A former Spencer Fellow at the Columbia School of Journalism and cofounder of Chalkbeat, a news site covering educational change in New York City schools, Green has spoken with lots of people, e.g., a former principal trying to understand what works best in the classroom by studying top educators, to determine what really makes a good teacher today. Hint: It's not just inborn charisma. Originating with a March 2010 cover story for the New York Times Magazine; with a six-city tour.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 15, 2014
Ideas from a former principal on what makes for anexceptional teacher.Accountability and autonomy are the two guiding lights forprescribing changes in our schools, and as Green notes early on in this book,the two principles are often at loggerheads. Accountability proponents believein leveraging the power of data to study which teachers' students are meetingor exceeding goals; opponents claim that it stultifies educators, diminishingthe profession, and ineffectively measuring teacher and student "success."Autonomy proponents believe that if you elevate the profession and let theteachers steer their ships, the trust, freedom and respect will enable them todo their very best. Green gives both of these views credence but goes furtherto suggest that the reverence surrounding the best teachers is misguided, inthat it elevates the "natural born educator" mythos that suggests an inborntalent. Green deflates the "I could never do what they do" aura of the bestteachers, but in a good way. In extensive conversations and observations thatuncover the approaches that the best educators share, she distills how theyapply those approaches in similar ways despite differences inextraversion/introversion, humorous/serious teaching approaches, and flexible/rigidstandards. Green goes deeper than bromides about student engagement and motivation,digging into data about student success as well as examining the means used tocollect the data. She also chronicles her visits with professionals at multiplelevels (administrative, support, frontline teachers) through various successesand failures, gleaning wisdom from both-just as the best teachers would havetheir students do.A powerful, rational guidebook to creating genuinelyeffective education, written in a manner useful not just for schoolteachers,but everyone involved in the care of children.

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