Teaching Stories
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
When nearly everyone else is telling kids no—"No, do it this way….No, I don’t want to hear what you think….No, sit down and pay attention"—Judy Logan says yes, to a child’s passions, interests, and hopes. The results have been news-making; her students blossom academically, winning essay contests, prizes, and entrance to the country’s best colleges. Armed with a strong sense of who they are and what they think, her students also blossom personally—resisting peer pressure, understanding racial and gender stereotypes, and connecting to the world in which they live.
Drawing on over thirty years "knee deep in adolescence" as a teacher in a public middle school, Judy Logan shows that it is the very vulnerability of adolescence that makes it a time of tremendous opportunity for emotional, intellectual, and social growth. Uniting creativity and compassion, Logan’s vivid classroom stories bring into focus for all parents numerous effective strategies for working with adolescents.
Above all, Judy Logan is a compelling storyteller who loves and respects her students and the work of learning. Eye-opening and inspirational, the stories she has to tell take the simple human drama of day-to-day classroom life and create an all-embracing vision of the possibilities of public education in America.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her afterword, Peggy McIntosh, director of the Center for Research on Women at Wellesley College, notes that she wishes Logan had taught her own children. By the time readers finish this collection of both touching and funny tales, they will know just what she means. Over her 30-year career, Logan forged a connection with her sixth, seventh and eight graders in inner-city public schools in San Francisco, particularly the one which Logan and generations of her family had attended. Logan has quietly imaginative ways of tapping into her students' own creativity and enthusiasms--whether it is by making a relationship quilt, getting boys to think about what it would be like to be a girl, or having students create their own plays based on Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare (" `You phony old Capulet,' one says. `You jive ass Montague,' the other one replies, `Your mother'"). In her own wise, observant and brilliantly pragmatic way, Logan exemplifies the unobtrusive implementation of many of current school reform recommendations. Her students won various prizes, but her real reward was the achievement of her goal "to make my classroom a safe, comfortable, inspiring place for students of differing backgrounds." These stories spark optimism for the future of America's schools.
