“We Want to Tell the World”: One Teacher’s Experience with the Power of Petey

“That one’s Petey Corbin. He’s an idiot retard, but a friendly one—you know, laughs and smiles a lot. Sometimes you swear he’s thinking, but it’s just conditioning. They used to get him up every day and put him in a wheelchair. Lucky for us, they stopped that.” (Mikaelsen, 1998, p. 113) I steal a glance up from the page of the book I am reading aloud to take stock of my fourth-graders’ reactions. They sit just below where I am curled on the couch. The lights are off, except for a single reading lamp. This is our daily read-aloud ritual; a time of togetherness that quietly opens the door to great possibilities. Many are hugging their knees and staring into the middle distance, thoughtful. Some are slightly agape; all are solemn. “Why am I reading those words, ‘idiot’ and ‘retard’?” I ask. “What does it suggest to you about what people thought of Petey?

Professional Development\u27s Complex Ecology: Examining a Whole-School Balanced Literacy Professional Development

This descriptive study reports on the structure and implementation of a school wide professional development model in a southwest public elementary school. The professional development effort was designed to support educators’ understanding and teaching of balanced literacy. The paper reports on the components of this professional development and discusses the strengths of this model in relation to educational research and findings on professional development. We conclude by discussing this model from the perspective of involved administration, facilitators, and teachers, as they consider the process of crossing the borders from professional development into their classrooms. The study is strengthened by teachers’ opinions about the model in their school

Pre-service Teachers\u27 Understandings About ELLs: One Pedagogical Tool for Identifying and Shifting Dispositions

Cowart, Melinda T, Ed.D. Series EditorAnderson, Gina, Ed.D. Managing Edito

\u27The Classroom is a Place Where I\u27m Alive:\u27 One Teacher\u27s Reflection on Learning and Life in the Classroom

This qualitative case study of one teacher’s learning life describes how affective considerations influenced her learning and teaching. Classroom observations, interviews, and inquiry conversations informed the learning considerations that infused her first-grade classroom. The resulting descriptive vignettes showcase the various ways this experienced teacher trusted the significance of affect for her teaching and learning life together with children. This allowed her to co-construct a ‘life curriculum’ alongside students, demonstrating sensitivity to her students’ academic, social, and emotional needs

Introduction and Invitation (Chapter One of Generating Tact and Flow for Effective Teaching and Learning)

Extract: This book is for teachers, written by teachers, about the magic days. The days when things go so well you imagine that although teaching is a severely underpaid gig, you loved your work so much you might consider teaching for free. Maybe your most challenging students joined you on the learning journey in a new way, or a slightly under-planned lesson went much better than you anticipated, generating clear direction for the following week. Maybe things took a completely unexpected turn, and a teachable moment turned into a power hour fueled by excited and engaged students. These are the moments when teaching seems to flow effortlessly, when we know what to do and move seamlessly from task to task. Sometimes, early in a teaching career, these moments happen only occasionally. A year or two in, teachers might start having more of those moments, stringing the moments together into hours or even days. And with time, reflection, and experience, teachers move easily into the flow of teaching, subsequently gaining more joy in their professional lives. It is these flow experiences and the ways teachers create them through tactful action that we focus on in this book