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American school teachers

Uncovering Challenges in the Classroom

In Horace's Compromise, Theodor Sizer presents a comparative study of high schools across America in the 1980s. In Tales Out of School, Patrick Welsh renders an insider's view of daily activities at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia. In Among Schoolchildren, Tracy Kidder records his meticulous year-long observation of Chris Zajac's fifth-grade class at the Kelly School in Holyoke, Massachusetts. These three accounts offer inspirational yet balanced appraisals of how diverse selves can be seen struggling daily to excel as contemporary American schoolteachers. Read collectively, these works offer a how-to manual for superior teaching, suggesting which educational strategies are the most successful and which mistakes the most common. This essay will explore the contributions of a teacher's personality, humor, dedication, passion, and ability to compromise within the classroom, comparing and contrasting the styles of such teachers as Sizer's Horace and Sister Michael, Kidder's Chris Zajac, and Patrick Welsh's autobiographical account. Sizer, Welsh, and Kidder dramatize selective schoolteachers as participants within the continuing American quest to ameliorate society and to surpass the status quo, despite the occasional faltering step.

Great teaching demands that a synergy develop between the teacher and the student. Coaching students, prompting them to be tough questioners, offering them respect, and assisting in the development of their self-esteem repeatedly produces the best results. These three books probe how "reflection and repose" are qualities which educational systems should seek to foster, not banish (Sizer, 1984, p. 80). Although Sizer indicates that this inward-directed gaze traces itself back to America's Puritanical roots which have flowered into the cultivation of both a rigid self-discipline and a strong inner balance, his observation does underscore A...

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American school teachers. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 04:39, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1692949.html