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Building a better teacher : how teaching works (and how to teach it to everyone)
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2014
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New York Times Review
BUILDING A BETTER TEACHER: How Teaching Works (and How to Teach It to Everyone), by Elizabeth Green. (Norton, $16.95.) Abandoning the myth of the "natural-born teacher," Green argues that effective teaching is often the result of cultivating a precise skill set, not an individual's charisma. Her account reports on the research behind teacher training and considers how to introduce these methods into more classrooms. A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEVEN KILLINGS, by Marlon James. (Riverhead, $17.) The winner of this year's Man Booker Prize, James's third novel is centered on the real-life 1976 assassination attempt on Bob Marley, chronicling nearly three decades of violence and political upheaval that originated in Kingston and spilled into Brooklyn, Miami and beyond. Equal parts "spoof, nightmare, blood bath, poem," the story "takes on a mesmerizing power," Zachary Lazar wrote here. ALL THE TRUTH IS OUT: THE WEEK POLITICS WENT TAB-LOID, by Matt Bai. (Vintage, $15.95.) Gary Hart, once the front-runner for the 1988 Democratic nomination, is at the heart of this engrossing account, which describes how the press reported on Hart's rumored affairs, torpedoing his political career and breaking an unspoken understanding that journalists would keep quiet about politicians' dalliances. Bai, a former New York Times Magazine writer, calls this a turning point that continues to shape politics and media. SEE HOW SMALL, by Scott Blackwood. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $14.99.) Blackwood's novel, based on the unsolved murders of four teenagers in 1991 Texas, considers the lasting impact of violence. Narrated by a chorus of the city's residents, including a brain-injured veteran who witnessed the crime, the book forms a thoughtful portrait of a grieving town. THE BOMBERS AND THE BOMBED: Allied Air War Over Europe, 1940-1945, by Richard Overy. (Penguin, $18.) The Allied-led area bombing campaign of German civilian areas remains hotly contested: Its supporters have argued that the practice was the best option to defeat Hitler, while its detractors denounce the strategy as unfocused and unnecessarily brutal. The author soberly evaluates its genesis, implementation and legacy, including the moral questions that still linger. THE ASSASSINATION OF MARGARET THATCHER: Stories, by Hilary Mantel. (Picador, $16.) A master storyteller, Mantel, whose historical, Tudor-era novels "Wolf Hall" and "Bring Up the Bodies" both won the Man Booker Prize, joins classic storytelling techniques with the surreal in this collection, which our reviewer, Terry Castle, praised as an "unusually mordant verbal fantasia." POOR MAN'S FEAST: A Love Story of Comfort, Desire, and the Art of Simple Cooking, by Elissa Altman. (Berkley, $16.) Altman, a former food editor who once favored haute cuisine, recounts her transformative romance with Susan Turner, who found balance, simplicity and peace in a small Connecticut town. ?
Library Journal Review
Are exceptional teachers born with that gift, or can they be made? Green (cofounder, CEO, and editor in chief of nonprofit education news organization Chalkbeat) looks at both the history of teacher improvement efforts and current thinking and practice in teacher training and evaluation. The author acknowledges that inborn traits such as warmth and humor influence effectiveness. She also explores how effective teachers move students toward understanding and how their methods can be generalized to yield improved classroom techniques for almost anyone. From the Japanese practice of jugyokenkyu ("lesson study") to the creatively named TKOT ("This Kind of Teaching"), Green looks at how excellent teachers do it. Many of the author's examples are drawn from Teach for America and Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) and other charter school programs as they struggle to reach lofty educational goals, often with tight budgets and novice teachers. VERDICT This isn't a "how-to" book with checklists for making average teachers into educational stars, but contained within the well-documented narrative are many informational nuggets that motivated teachers can apply to their work. Principals and school administrators may find this work useful when planning meaningful professional development or teacher evaluation programs. [See Prepub Alert, 2/3/14.] Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley Sch., Fort Worth, TX (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Review
Journalist and cofounder of the news organization GothamSchools, Green promises to reveal how better teaching works and how everyone (or at least every teacher) can be taught how to do it. Unfortunately, the book promises more than it delivers. Green's primary argument concerns the need for better teacher training (less attention to "teachers' effect," more attention to successful classroom practice), and one of her most insightful observations concerns the shifts that occurred when "universities... began to add the lucrative teacher-training business to their repertoires." The material she cites most heavily comes from two distinguished specialists in training teachers to teach mathematics (Magdalene Lampert and Deborah Loewenberg Ball) and "from the world of educational entrepreneurs" (Doug Lemov, managing director of the Uncommon School charter network). Much of her content is classroom reportage that shows how teachers resolve the arithmetic problems of individual students. While this material will be of practical use to budding or aspiring teachers, it makes for dry reading. Japanese schools, charter schools, and national programs such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top are assessed as well. The book is best-suited for education specialists and working teachers. Agent: Alia Hanna Habib, McCormick & Williams. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
CHOICE Review
Green, editor in chief at a nonprofit education news organization, provides narratives of accountability and autonomy in this book about how to become a better teacher. Incorporating new research from cognitive psychologists and education specialists, Green transforms--in ten chapters--the "teacher quality" debate into a deeper understanding of how teaching really works. The first chapter, "Founding Fathers," begins with a summary of the research of Nathaniel Gage and the simple assertion that after 40 years of research on teaching effectiveness, the elite field of education researchers is still ignoring teaching and the importance of improving teacher-education programs. In chapter 2, Green draws upon interviews with Magdalene Lampert and Deborah Ball, both of whom provide evidence that a different kind of teaching is possible. Subsequent chapters raise questions that matter: what do teachers need to learn to be effective in the classroom, and how are they going to learn it? Another chapter unfolds with Ball's hopeful dialogue with two of her mentors. Taken as a whole, Green's book persuasively argues that teaching in American schools can improve when research is thoroughly examined and the infrastructure of support for responsible teaching leads the conversation between every teacher and taxpayer. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers. --Debra A. Pellegrino, University of Scranton
Booklist Review
Setting aside the questionable title (as if teachers are manufactured, like cars), readers should not expect a breakthrough how-to-teach guide. Rather, journalist Green profiles a (somewhat random) selection of trends and thinkers in American education spanning the past 30 years, our most recent education reform era. Green's storytelling approach is long on interview quotes and conversation. She argues that the nation's education schools have not succeeded in preparing a strong teaching workforce and that, beginning in the 1990s, education entrepreneurs (i.e., those who eschewed traditional teacher training to start no excuses charter schools) nevertheless needed grounding in child development and pedagogy. After experimenting on students for decades, Green avers, education entrepreneurs are shifting their focus from imposing draconian discipline to trying to instill academic discourse and intellectual rigor in their schools, teacher accountabilityis not a bad thing, but few people are doing it well. However, Green suggests, long-term solutions may be on the horizon with the Common Core Standards, Teach for America, and some nonunion charter school franchises.--Saper, Carolyn Copyright 2014 Booklist
Kirkus Review
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 bothjust 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. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Summary

A 2014 New York Times Book Review Notable Book

We've all had great teachers who opened new worlds, maybe even changed our lives. What made them so great?

Everyone agrees that a great teacher can have an enormous impact. Yet we still don't know what, precisely, makes a teacher great. Is it a matter of natural-born charisma? Or does exceptional teaching require something more?

Building a Better Teacher introduces a new generation of educators exploring the intricate science underlying their art. A former principal studies the country's star teachers and discovers a set of common techniques that help children pay attention. Two math teachers videotape a year of lessons and develop an approach that has nine-year-olds writing sophisticated mathematical proofs. A former high school teacher works with a top English instructor to pinpoint the key interactions a teacher must foster to initiate a rich classroom discussion. Through their stories, and the hilarious and heartbreaking theater that unfolds in the classroom every day, Elizabeth Green takes us on a journey into the heart of a profession that impacts every child in America.

What happens in the classroom of a great teacher? Opening with a moment-by-moment portrait of an everyday math lesson--a drama of urgent decisions and artful maneuvers-- Building a Better Teacher demonstrates the unexpected complexity of teaching. Green focuses on the questions that really matter: How do we prepare teachers and what should they know before they enter the classroom? How does one get young minds to reason, conjecture, prove, and understand? What are the keys to good discipline? Incorporating new research from cognitive psychologists and education specialists as well as intrepid classroom entrepreneurs, Green provides a new way for parents to judge what their children need in the classroom and considers how to scale good ideas. Ultimately, Green discovers that good teaching is a skill. A skill that can be taught.

A provocative and hopeful book, Building a Better Teacher shows that legendary teachers are more than inspiring; they are perhaps the greatest craftspeople of all.

Table of Contents
Prologue: How to be a Teacher (Part One)p. 1
1Founding Fathersp. 23
2A Teacher is Bornp. 45
3Spartan Tragedyp. 80
4Knead and Risep. 113
5An Educational Start-Upp. 150
6Lemov's Taxonomyp. 174
7The Discipline of Disciplinep. 196
8The Power of an Inside Jokep. 230
9The Holy Grailp. 253
10A Profession of Hopep. 280
Epilogue: How to be a Teacher (Part Two)p. 314
Acknowledgmentsp. 323
Notesp. 327
Indexp. 357
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