Teaching for the Students

In this follow-up to his popular book, “Is This English?,” Bob Fecho explores dialogic teaching—what it is and how teachers can move toward more reflective teaching practices. Fecho provides a framework to help teachers develop the necessary focuses, perceptions, and intellectual habits that will result in an ever-enriching dialogue with their practice. Chapters like “Using the Difficulty” consider how an obstacle in the classroom can become a teachable moment, and “Wobble” asks teachers to be alert to when their beliefs are challenged by students and colleagues—and what can be learned in the balancing act. With anecdotes and scenarios from the author’s own experience teaching adolescents and preservice teachers, this engaging book will resonate with educators busy with today’s overcrowded curriculums.

Book Features:

• Helps teachers visualize the possibilities and mechanics of creating a classroom built on dialogue, inquiry, and critique.
• Author’s concise narrative provides inspiration, provokes thought, and guides practice.
• Addresses the goals, concerns, and questions that teacher education students often bring to class.
• Offers thought experiments and tools to help educators examine their own teaching.

Bob Fecho is a professor in the Language and Literacy Education Department at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. He is the recipient of both the Richard Meade and Alan Purvis awards given by the National Council of Teachers of English. His books include “Is This English?” Race, Language, and Culture in the Classroom, which received the James N. Britton award, CEE/NCTE.

“Bob Fecho offers CPR to teachers caught in the madness of national testing regimes.”
—Michelle Fine, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

“This lively book guides teachers in creating classrooms that connect the best theory with the most thoughtful practice.”
—Sonia Nieto, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

“In this age of unparalleled accountability, our students seem to get lost in the shuffle of standards-driven curricula and other external factors….Have we forgotten what authentic teaching and learning look and sound like? Have we forgotten that students must always be at the center of our teaching? Bob Fecho hasn’t, and this beautiful and thought-provoking book is proof.”
—From the Foreword by Deborah Appleman, Hollis L. Caswell Professor of Educational Studies, Carleton College