When Challenge Brings Change: How Teacher Breakthroughs Transform the Classroom

All teachers face challenges—from the daunting and unexpected, like teaching during a pandemic, to nagging doubts about daily interactions and teaching practices. If there were ever a time for sharing teacher personal and professional breakthroughs—the ways teachers have successfully and courageously turned a corner—that time is now. In this collection of compelling narratives, high school and college teachers show us how they have taken on issues such as faculty and student relationships; struggles over personal identity in the classroom; the joys and complexities of working with emergent bilinguals, developing writers, and first-year college students; and the forever question of how to engage students. This is a book about breaking rules, caring about students, navigating systems, and taking chances. It’s an uplifting journey and along the way, teachers do what they always do: They share the reading and writing assignments that have worked for them during the best and worst of times. The matchless part, however, is teacher wisdom. Where would we be without it? Book Features: Brings together narratives by veteran teachers who describe recognizable challenges and what happens when new understandings trump old ways of doing things. Provides ideas for teaching that arise from the breakthroughs of college, community college, and secondary teachers and are applicable to all grade levels. Celebrates teachers—their voices and practices, their intelligent and empathetic approaches to solving problems and making change. Illustrates the transformative power of writing about breakthroughs and encourages all teachers to share their stories. Includes an appendix with sample materials for school and writing group leaders who want to initiate similar breakthrough projects for teachers.

Table of Contents:
Contents Foreword Elyse Eidman-Aadahl  ix Acknowledgments  xi 1.  Introduction  1 Sandra Murphy and Mary Ann Smith About Chapter 2  9 2.  Breaking Through Writing Anxiety: Confessions of a Recovering Basic Writer  11 Cheryl Hogue Smith About Chapter 3  23 3.  Taking Research Public: Participatory Communities and Student Authority Through Wikipedia  25 Anne Kingsley About Chapter 4  38 4.  Looking Backward: How the “Fly on the Wall” Changed My History Instruction  39 Stan Pesick About Chapter 5  52 5.  Teach What You Love: How Carving Out Space for Joy Transforms a Composition Class  53 Kristin Land About Chapter 6  65 6.  Trainer/Collaborator/Coach: Helping Faculty Navigate the Pandemic Pivot to Remote Instruction  67 Lisa Orta Contents About Chapter 7  77 7.  Lessons From Moldova: From Language Learner to Language Teacher  79 Beth Daly About Chapter 8  86 8.  Changing Perspectives on Written Feedback  87 Kelly Crosby About Chapter 9  93 9.  Personal and Confidential: What the Pandemic Taught Me About My Relationship With Students  95 Rob Rogers About Chapter 10  101 10.  Becoming Somebody: Queering the Classroom and Resisting “Neutral”  103 James Andrew Wilson About Chapter 11  115 11.  Teacher as Disrupter: When Critical Thinking Gets Personal  117 John Levine About Chapter 12  128 12.  From Breakthroughs to Through Lines: Navigating the Crosswinds of Practice  129 Rebekah Caplan 13.  Conclusion  143 Sandra Murphy and Mary Ann Smith References  147 Index  155 About the Editors and Contributors  161