Beverly Falk - Teaching Matters: Stories from Inside City Schools

TEACHING MATTERS

Also by Beverly Falk and Megan Blumenreich

The Power of Questions:
A Guide to Teacher and Student Research

STORIES FROM INSIDE
CITY SCHOOLS

BEVERLY FALK AND MEGAN BLUMENREICH

with

Mary Williams

2012 by Beverly Falk and Megan Blumenreich
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without written
permission from the publisher.

Requests for permission to reproduce selections from this book should be
mailed to: Permissions Department, The New Press, 38 Greene Street,
New York, NY 10013.

Figs. 12 by Beatrice Tinio, used courtesy of the photographer
Figs. 311 by Travis Sloane, used courtesy of the photographer
Fig. 12 by Hazel Veras-Gomez, used courtesy of the photographer
Fig. 13 by Beverly Falk and Megan Blumenreich, used courtesy of the authors

Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2012
Distributed by Perseus Distribution

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Falk, Beverly.
Teaching matters: stories from inside city schools/Beverly Falk and
Megan Blumenreich with Adesina Abani...[et al.].
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-5955-8712-1
1. Education, Urban--United States--Case studies. 2. Teachers--United
States--Case studies. 3. Children of minorities--Education--United
States--Case studies. I. Blumenreich, Megan. II. Abani, Adesina. III.
Title.
LC5141.F35 2012
370.91732--dc23
2012004564

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We dedicate this book to all the caring and committed
teachers whose daily efforts are responsible for
supporting childrens learning and growth.

CONTENTS

Ann Lieberman

I t is rare that we get literally inside teaching to see not only what the problems of teaching are but how teachers learn to develop their own skills and abilities as they examine their own classrooms. And it is even rarer to see this kind of teaching and learning in urban classrooms. Falk and Blumenreich as well as their students teach us what it takes to inquire into ones own teaching and how this inquiry can be the source of deep and lasting learning.

In Teaching Matters, teachers struggle with the dilemmas of high-need urban communities. Rather than being stymied by them, however, they learn how to improve the learning of their students by enhancing their own teaching repertoires. Many of their students are immigrant children who come from different countries and cultures and who speak different languages. Teachers learn to create projects for them that integrate the disciplinesusing poetry, art, and literatureas well as create community-oriented work that make students feel valued and appreciated for their differences.

To develop closer home/school partnerships, teachers study the parents as well as the children in their classes to find out what they care about, how they think, and what is important to them. As they get beneath the surface of peoples lives, the teachers invent ways for parents to participate and for children to engage more fully by including ways for their cultural differences to become a part of classroom life.

These urban teachers pursue the questions that confront them: How do I teach my multiage dual-language classroom? How do I support literacy development in classrooms with English language learners? How do I create a curriculum that engages students when it is all scripted and tested? How can I bridge the competing demands of a test culture and the way children learn?

These teachers inquiries teach us (and them) how to use the richness of their students backgrounds, how to build stronger relationships with parents and families, how to enrich and differentiate instruction, as well as how to struggle with negotiating the constraints of mandates, scripts, and testing.

Read on and immerse yourself in an engrossing and deeply intelligent and emotional experience of how teachers examine their own practices. Learn from their inquiries how to solve the problems they are facing with strategies that help them confront rather than give up, that use differences as an asset rather than a problem, and that create, rather than negate, partnerships with parents as a way to connect them and their students to their schools.

Falk and Blumenreich join a growing movement of researchers who are finding out how to study and codify teacher knowledge as a way of gaining and documenting what teachers learn as they develop as educatorsin this case, by providing them with the tools to examine and write about their own practices. This book is an outstanding contribution to that genre of research and one that you will reluctantly put down when you reach the last page.

Ann Lieberman, Senior Scholar, Stanford University

We are grateful to the teachers who participated in this project for agreeing to go public with their work. It has been our honor to collaborate with them and learn from them how to use inquiry to continually improve teaching. Thank you to Adesina Abani, Neurys Bonilla, Carol Castillo, Evelyn Chang, Joleen Hanlon, Kanene Holder, Laurie Jagoda, Joan OBrien, Kisha Pressley, lisa schaffner, Rory Scott, Travis Sloane, Beatrice Tinio, Hazel Veras-Gomez, and Mary Williams.

How fortunate we are to teach and learn within the rich diversity of The City College of New York. Our students and colleagues provide a nourishing backdrop for our scholarship and daily work.

We extend special thanks to Ann Lieberman, our mentor and friend, whose lifes work has been devoted to making teacher knowledge visible. Our research and teaching have been enriched not only by her pioneering efforts but also by her unfailing personal support.

Thank you as well to everyone at The New Press, especially our editor Marc Favreau and production editor Sarah Fan, for providing us with a home for this book and for supporting us through all the stages of publication. In addition, we wish to thank the books copy editor, Cathy Dexter.

And to our familiesAlan, Meryl, Luba, Thabiti, Anaiya, and Asa; Jon, Hank, and Maggiewe offer our deepest gratitude for all the encouragement, understanding, tolerance, and love that they so generously gift us with each day.

Questioning, Searching, Learning from Teaching

[T]here is no such thing as teaching without research and research without teaching. One inhabits the body of the other. As I teach, I continue to search and re-search. I teach because I search, because I question, and because I submit myself to questioning. I research because I notice things, take cognizance of them. And in so doing, I intervene. And intervening, I educate and educate myself. I do research so as to know what I do not yet know and to communicate and proclaim what I discover.