Summary

"Teaching after all is about knowing children well"
-from A Letter to Teachers

"Perrone has given us a gift, a book worth reading over many times, an important reflection on his many years of close observation of schools and school people, parents, teachers, children, and their communities."
-Deborah W. Meier, principal, Central Park East Secondary School

Simple, elegant and full of common sense, these reflections on the art of teaching address the deepest concerns teachers have for their work with children and young people.

Booklist Review

In this missive, Perrone calls upon teachers to widen their perspectives and broaden their expectations by taking a more personal, commonsensical approach to their craft. In precise, practical terms, he expresses the need to move forward, or perhaps to return, to a more intimate approach to education, to teach students not only to read and write but to enjoy reading and writing. He criticizes the increasing emphasis on competition with systems in Japan designed to "win the war of technology" as potentially self-defeating and stresses the need for students to "see the world as fully connected." Perrone supports teachers in articulating a greater voice in the curriculum, concentrating on individual students and their needs, and charges schools with bridging the often abysmal gap between the academic environment and the community at large. He offers insight, though no clear-cut solutions, into matters of student evaluation and audits education from a historical perspective while canvasing its future. ~--Ivy Burrowes

Choice Review

Perrone's unusual "letter" format demonstrates how dominant issues in recent teacher education literature are necessarily connected. He shows, for example, that decisions teachers make about their purposes of teaching (Chapter 1) affect what will be taught, how students will be engaged in learning, and how this learning will be evaluated (Chapters 2, 3, and 6). In his reflections on 12 specific issues, Perrone shares personal accounts of his rationale and methodology for interacting with teachers and students alike. However, the volume is written purposely to encourage an ethos of reflection in the readers, a popular theme in recent literature. This purpose is evident through the frequent questions and reflective exercises. The author's professed preference for the progressivist worldview of education is also popular in today's literature. Dewey especially has influenced Perrone's educational platform. This influence is particularly apparent in a later chapter where recent reforms of education are placed into a historical perspective. Perrone's orientation is a "belief in the intelligence of the teacher and the power of children and young people to be consequential learners." Upper-division undergraduates and above. -P. Lemma, Central Connecticut State University