Jacqueline Grennon Brooks

The edition of this book I read, which I picked up at a library benefit sale in Vermont, looked like a galley or an advanced review copy. But, in fact, it is a four- or five-star book marred by its publisher's ineptitude. Spelling, stylistic, and formatting lapses plague this book, causing problems, I'm afraid, for this fastidious, obsessive reader. Memo to my fellow educators: if you want to be taken seriously, please don't submit things like this for publication unless you're confident of your publisher's editorial staff.
Post Scriptum: After considering my review of this book, and more importantly learning that there are other editions of it available, I raised my estimation of it. My problem, to belabor the point, is with this edition. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development published this particular edition, and did so very badly. Are you listening ASCD? There is another edition on Google Books, also published by ASCD, that looks like it gave the book the respectful publishing treatment it clearly merits.
… (mer)

I found this book to be absolutely fascinating!!! I agree with everything the authors were portraying as the best ways to educate students. You simply have to think about how people learn in their everyday lives to have it slap you in the face that traditional schooling methods are just flat out inconsistent with being a human! Not only does this book provide solid examples of constructivist methods, but it also provides a background that helps one understand the current trajectory of schools. I recommend this book to any future educator as well as any current educator who wants to experiment with the best ways to get students engaged and truly understanding the material being taught. Essentially, knowledge is something that we individually build in our minds as a complex framework with multiple interconnections based on our prior knowledge and how we simply view the world. Transmissionist techniques of teaching take none of this truth into account. The most striking idea that this book presented, at least for myself, was that the questions we think we are asking our students may not be the same questions that they actually hear. This is simply because they are children and we are adults and we cannot expect them to see the world through the same adult filter that we have, which is why using prior knowledge and the students' points of view is so incredibly important to getting them to truly connect with academic material.… (mer)