Keeping school : letters to families from principals of two small schools / Deborah Meier, Theodore R. Sizer, Nancy Faust Sizer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Meier, Deborah.

Contributor:

Sizer, Nancy Faust.

Sizer, Theodore R.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Small schools--United States.

Small schools.

Teaching--United States.

Teaching.

United States.

School management and organization--United States.

School management and organization.

Physical Description:

xxxiii, 187 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Boston, Mass. : Beacon Press, [2004]

Summary:

Education reformers Deborah Meier, Theodore R. Sizer, and Nancy Faust Sizer have published books that are acknowledged classics of education wirting -- books that have helped shape a movement centered on small schools, community, and alternative visions of teaching and learning. But as school principals, all three have done another kind of writing, as well. Every week they wrote short essays in their schools' newsletters to families. Sharp and accessible but intellectually ambitious, these little essays talk about everything from homework to discipline, from academic expectations to reading for pleasure. They are literary gifts to their communities -- challenges to think about school in the most thoughtful of ways. Keeping School collects the best of these gems of education writing from the two schools the authors have most recently run: an urban public elementary school in Boston and an exurban charter secondary school thirty miles west in Devens, Massachusetts. There could be no better portrait of the kind of small schools -- and the values behind them -- for which Meier and the Sizers have spent their careers advocating than these elegant, thoughtful, intimate letters. Keeping School organizes them around the themes of Authority, Community, Learning, and Standards, and the writers, who have been friends and colleagues for years, frame the letters with new essays on those larger topics. Reflecting decades of practical wisdom, this collection is a portrait of a different way of keeping school and an essential companion to the other works of these legendary educators.

Contents:

A History of the Mission Hill School / Deborah Meier xxii

On Keeping School at Parker / Nancy Faust Sizer xxvii

Part I Learning

Learning: Turning Less into More / Nancy Faust Sizer 3

The Letters on Learning from Mission Hill 15

The Letters on Learning from Parker 37

Part II Authority

Authority and Power / Deborah Meier 61

The Letters on Authority from Mission Hill 69

The Letters on Authority from Parker 80

Part III Community

Community / Deborah Meier 97

The Letters on Community from Mission Hill 104

The Letters on Community from Parker 120

Part IV Standards

Standards / Theodore R. Sizer 139

The Letters on Standards from Mission Hill 144

The Letters on Standards from Parker 168.

ISBN:

0807032646

OCLC:

54029401