Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works (and How to Teach It to Everyone)

by Elizabeth Green

Overview

A New York Times Notable Book

"A must-read book for every American teacher and taxpayer." —Amanda Ripley, author of The Smartest Kids in the World

Launched with a hugely popular New York Times Magazine cover story, Building a Better Teacher sparked a national conversation about teacher quality and established Elizabeth Green as a leading voice in education. Green's fascinating and accessible narrative dispels the common myth of the "natural-born teacher" and introduces maverick educators exploring the science behind their art. Her dramatic account reveals that great teaching is not magic, but a skill—a skill that can be taught. Now with a new afterword that offers a guide on how to identify—and support—great teachers, this provocative and hopeful book "should be part of every new teacher’s education" (Washington Post).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393351088
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/13/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Elizabeth Green is cofounder, CEO, and editor in chief of Chalkbeat, a nonprofit education news organization. A former Spencer Fellow at the Columbia School of Journalism, she has written for New York Times Magazine and other publications.

Table of Contents

Prologue: How to be a Teacher (Part One) 1

1 Founding Fathers 23

2 A Teacher is Born 45

3 Spartan Tragedy 80

4 Knead and Rise 113

5 An Educational Start-Up 150

6 Lemov's Taxonomy 174

7 The Discipline of Discipline 196

8 The Power of an Inside Joke 230

9 The Holy Grail 253

10 A Profession of Hope 280

Epilogue: How to be a Teacher (Part Two) 314

Acknowledgments 323

Notes 327

Index 357

Editorial Reviews

"Green has spent years looking at what makes a great teacher—and whether the teachers we remember most fondly were born great or simply learned key skills."

USA Today - Greg Toppo

"Couldn't be better timed…exhilarating."

The Atlantic - Sara Mosle

"Moments of educational theater enliven and illuminate the history."

Boston Globe - Kate Tuttle

"Couldn't be better timed…exhilarating."— Sara Mosle The Atlantic

"Moments of educational theater enliven and illuminate the history."— Kate Tuttle Boston Globe

"Both a history of the research on effective teaching as well as a consideration of how that research might best be implemented. What emerges is the gaping chasm between what the best teachers do and how we go about evaluating what they’ve done."— Sebastian Stockman New York Times Book Review

"Green has spent years looking at what makes a great teacher—and whether the teachers we remember most fondly were born great or simply learned key skills."— Greg Toppo USA Today

"[S]hould be part of every new teacher's education."— Michael S. Roth The Washington Post

"Elizabeth Green draws upon years of interviews and research as an education writer and CEO of Chalkbeat to make the case for why teaching is a craft and that it can be taught to anyone. Her excellent book should be read for a detailed account of the history of teacher education, an international context, and an entertaining narrative."— Jonathan Wai Psychology Today

"We romanticize teachers, and we vilify them, but we don't do much to help. This beautifully written, defiantly hopeful book points the way to a better future for American teachers and the children they teach."— Paul Tough, best-selling author of How Children Succeed

"Elizabeth Green reveals, in cinematic detail, what makes great teaching such a dazzling intellectual challenge—and why it has taken us so unforgivably long to care. A must-read book for every American teacher and taxpayer."— Amanda Ripley, author of The Smartest Kids in the World

From the Publisher

[Green's] project is both a history of the research on effective teaching as well as a consideration of how that research might best be implemented. What emerges is the gaping chasm between what the best teachers do and how we go about evaluating what they've done.

The New York Times Book Review - Sebastian Stockman

2014-07-02
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.

Kirkus Reviews