My mom got me from school one afternoon and she didn’t take me to get anything to eat before we went home. So, when we got home, I was hungry. I begged her to make me macaroni and cheese! But she told me she wasn’t making it, and that she was going to lie down. Oh jeesh! I had to … Read More
Barnett Berry's Learning Story
I had a few powerful teachers who shaped my long career in advancing teaching as a 21st century profession. One was Gloria Smith — who taught me 9th grade civics (1970) and gave me a framework at 14 years of age for making a disciplined and educative case against the Vietnam War. Gloria was very sympathetic to my developing anti-war … Read More
Steven Zemelman's Learning Story
For the past year and a half, I’ve been working with a small group of schools in Chicago that are improving kids’ learning through instructional leadership teams. These are teams of teachers in schools that work democratically and systematically to help teachers throughout the school adopt a powerful practice, such as classroom writers workshop. What I love about this is … Read More
Jan Resseger's Learning Story
My primary school in an upwardly mobile neighborhood of a small Western town in the early 1950s was new and clean. The floor was vinyl, the walls a pale pastel. Dim round ceiling lights produced what was said to be the correct amount of light without glare. Desks in rows, we were arranged in alphabetical order. Paragraph by paragraph we … Read More
