Voices From The Classroom A Celebration Of Learning

Voices from the Classroom illustrates that teachers have a leading voice in the policies that impact their students and the profession of teaching. The aim is to provide a rich and broad view of the impact of inquiry in the classrooms, from primary to higher education, and to provide a window into the perspective of teachers. Voices from the Classroom allows us to advance this mission by identifying and then turning educators' ideas into action. The publication includes chapters on issues ranging from dyslexic students' geospatial abilities to teachers' differential behaviours related, student characteristics and the experiences of refugees with bullying in the educational space. All the contributions published in this book emerged from real classrooms: our teachers and researchers conducted their research by drawing on their experience as educators. We believe that these insights into everyday classrooms, and the issues affecting them, are crucial to making teaching and learning better. We hope they can help drive real, positive change for students and teachers.

Every day educators are presented with enlightening insights, questions, and encounters which reveal how students engage in learning, how new ideas can impact positively on student outcomes and how - when challenges are uncovered - there can be a sense of puzzlement where rethinking of pedagogical approaches is critical for student success. In this volume of Voices from the Classroom, "Contemporary Challenges in Education - Paradoxes and Illuminations", an international team of authors explores paradoxes, shares illuminations and invites you to reflect on educational practices to enhance pedagogy, scaffold learning and keep pace with educational advancements. This collection written by students, teachers, researchers and higher education instructors discusses education across all phases of learning. It explores issues such as instructional scaffolding in kindergarten, understanding transition through children's voices, youth participation in curriculum development of sex education, delivering crisis assistance to university students and staff in times of conflict in Ukraine, using augmented reality for transformative learning, co-creating university practices with staff and students, and how inclusive practices can help meet the needs of international postgraduate students. This comprehensive and diverse collection will have wide appeal for teachers, headmasters, stakeholders in the area of education and all those working in different educational contexts.

This book, authored by K-4 elementary educators, working at a publicly funded non-profit charter school, illustrates the power of culturally responsive teaching and learning as it becomes embedded in the New York State Education Curriculum. Educators, families, and community members contributed to this unique program with the goal of enhancing learning environments by applying the languages and cultures of their students in their classrooms. Strong, carefully attentive, school leadership encouraged culturally responsive teaching and learning with the belief that children in this urban, economically stressed area could demonstrate significant academic and social/emotional gains. Readers of this book will witness culturally responsive lessons, family interviews, and whole school events that honor languages and cultures represented in the school. Sample classrooms’ culturally responsive lessons tied to the curriculum, are presented. Additionally, qualitative and quantitative student academic and affective gains are analyzed. Moreover, this book clearly demonstrates the talents, vision, and compassionate care given to children and their families by exceptional educators. A CRTL Montage was created for this book. It includes classrooms, children, teachers, family, and community members. Teachers collected CRTL experiences and presented them to Producer, Dean Meghan Miller and Director, Designer, Dean Pamela Smith. They also received support for the montage from Instructor Allen Lauricella, and Graduate Assistant Elizabeth Kenny, Syracuse University, Newhouse School. The CRTL Montage can be accessed at the following online links: SAS Website SAS YouTube SAS Facebook SAS Twitter SAS Instagram Short Version of the Montage for Authentic Voices: Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning Long Version of the Montage for Authentic Voices: Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning

This Summer 2011 (IX, 3) issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge entitled “Teaching Transformations 2011″—a fourth of its annual “Teaching Transformations” series—brings together selected proceedings of the joint CIT (Center for Innovative Teaching)/EdTech (Educational Technology) conference held on May 12, 2011, at UMass Boston. The editors’ note describes the reasons for the bringing together of the two separately organized conferences in the past. It also reports on the new name adopted by CIT (from its former name, the Center for the Improvement of Teaching). The papers include a variety of contributions on topics such as: innovative techniques to enrich the dynamics of classroom discussions; “addressing plagiarism in a digital age”; cross-cultural/national, cross-institutional teaching of a course using online educational tools; “‘Islamicizing’ a Euro/American curriculum”; modernizing classical language education using the communicative language teaching (CLT) technique in conjunction with new educational technologies; teaching about race, caste and gender in light of the findings of anthropological and genetic sciences; and suggestions for online student collaborations based on the experience of teaching a Critical Thinking course. Contributors include: Eleanor Kutz (also as journal issue guest editor), Vivian Zamel (also as journal issue guest editor), LaMont Egle, Evelyn Navarre, Cheryl Nixon, Wayne Rhodes, Stephen Sutherland, Edward J. Romar, Annamaria Sas, Irene Yukhananov, Alan Girelli, Teddy Hristov, Mary Ball Howkins, Apostolos Koutropoulos, Tara Devi S. Ashok, Bob Schoenberg, and Mohammad H. Tamdgidi (also as journal editor-in-chief). Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge is a publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics). For more information about OKCIR and other issues in its journal’s Edited Collection as well as Monograph and Translation series visit OKCIR’s homepage.

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” —Lao Tzu But is the teacher ready? That’s the question that haunts every teacher that fateful first day in the classroom. Making it through that day and the 179 school days that follow is how every career in education—and lifelong learning—truly begins. In this collection, fifty teachers share the trials, tribulations, and triumphs they’ve experienced during their first year on the job. Organized along the lines of the school calendar, these touching tales illustrate the learning curve experienced by new teachers: Facing Day One Meeting the Students Surprising the Students Bonding with Faculty and Staff Being Surprised by the Students Watching the Students Bloom Saying Farewell From the hilariously obsessive-compulsive preparation of a rookie English professor to the poignant lesson a bold third grader imparts upon his novice teacher about love and acceptance, this moving collection is sure to motivate new and veteran teachers alike.

The best-selling book of easy-to-implement classroom lessons from the world’s premier educational system—now available in paperback. Finland shocked the world when its fifteen-year-olds scored highest on the first Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a set of tests evaluating critical-thinking skills in math, science, and reading. That was in 2001; even today, this tiny Nordic nation continues to amaze. How does Finnish education—with short school days, light homework loads, and little standardized testing—produce students who match the PISA scores of other nations with more traditional “work ethic” standards? When Timothy Walker started teaching fifth graders at a Helsinki public school, he began a search for the secrets behind the successes of Finland’s education system. Highlighting specific strategies that support joyful K–12 classrooms and can be integrated with U.S. educational standards, this book, available in paperback for the first time, gathers what he learned and shows how any teacher can implement many of Finland's best practices. A new foreword by the author addresses the urgent questions of teaching, and living, in these pandemic times.

Classroom Voices on Education and Race presents core educational issues— with an emphasis on race and the racial achievement gap, school culture, and curriculum—through the unfiltered and poignant voices of high school students. Students from urban, rural, and suburban public schools express a strong desire for a more active role in their classrooms, as well as for a curriculum that is more responsive to their world. Current students speak out against an increasingly complex and demanding world in which standardized testing serves to detach students from their learning and from their peers. They bear witness to increasingly competitive, content-driven classrooms that minimize open communication and critical thinking, and instead foster a culture of and cheating. And, they expose a hidden curriculum that contradicts the learning expectations of formal education. In particular, they speak to the persistence of racial stereotypes and segregation. Burdened by ignorance and misunderstandings, students address the need for honest racial dialogue facilitated by adults in their desire to cross the racial divide. Educators must listen to the voices from their classrooms in order to better participate in the lives and education of their students.

Raise Your Voices shows English language arts teachers how to prompt, sustain, connect, and assess classroom discussions, especially about issues that adolescents find consequential. The chapters explore the basics for facilitating discussion to support literacy learning and the principles for assessing the progress and effect of discussion.