Education reform efforts generally start off with good intentions, but often lose their effectiveness as they unfold within the daily life of schools. The Dark Side of School Reform is a skillfully-written book that speaks to a wide variety of audiences about this deterioration, but does not alienate any of them. Indeed, policy-makers, researchers, teachers, administrators, and vested constituents alike are bound to find this book approachable, insightful, and useful. -- Gerald R. Lopez, assistant professor, Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies, Indiana University and Co-Editor, Interrogat
Jeff Brooks' perceptive account plunges us headfirst into the everyday messiness of school reform at ground level, where teachers struggle mightily to hold on to their ideals amid the whirlwind that whips around them. In an educational universe where the wisdom of classroom practitioners is too often disregarded, Brooks' greatest contribution may be his willingness to listen carefully to teachers and to take seriously what they have to say. -- Gregory Michie, author of See You When We Get There: Teaching for Change in Urban Schools
Teaching is intellectual and ethical work, transcendent work that at its best encourages students to reach the full measure of their humanity. Teaching is also gritty work-grinding, draining, backbreaking, mind wrecking, and as common as mud. How do teachers experience these conflicting pulls? How do we understand the contradictions at the heart of what we do? How do we negotiate the turbulence? Jeffrey Brooks dives directly into the whirlwind, and invites us to sail along with him. It is not an easy ride, but it is well worth it. In this book he provides a nuanced and complex look at that special place between heaven and earth where every teacher must somehow make a life. -- William Ayers, educational theorist, author, and distinguished professor of education and senior university scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago
While Jeffrey Brooks portrays the dark side of being a teacher, he does it in a shining, even brilliant multifaceted (like a diamond) style. The effect, not depressing, is exciting and engaging, as is teaching itself. Through multiple lenses, he focuses, for example, on a single teacher's struggle, a group of teachers and their school, culture, roles, duties, experiences, contradictions, and problems. Brooks is right there in the book with the teachers, feeling and interacting. For as one teacher, Jim, asked, 'Why can't you use common language to describe something so common?' The author's response: 'Okay, Jim, maybe I will. Thanks.' But nothing's common about this marvelous book. -- Bruce S. Cooper, professor and vice chair, Division of Administration, Policy and Urban Education (APUE), at the Fordham University Graduate Scho, Ph.D., professor and vice chair, Division of Administration, Policy and Urban Education (APUE), at the Fordham University Graduate School of Education,...
The Dark Side of School Reform is an eye-opening look at the difference between appearance and reality in schools today. There will be laughter, tears, and gasps as you read the journey one school has taken. This book will serve as an inspiring and practical tool for school leaders. -- Julie Gawarecki, assistant principal, South Valley Junior High Liberty, MO
Skillfully captured in teachers' real voices, this account of a school reform effort draws the reader in so deeply that you'll feel as though you're an invisible presence in busy classrooms and hot and crowded meeting rooms. The writing is superb and the message is enlightening. -- Lisa D. Delpit, author of Other People's Children and editor of The Skin We Speak
With a filmmaker's eye for detail and resonance, Jeff Brooks immerses readers in the voices of teachers who care deeply about what they do-in spite of the daily suffocations of bureaucracies and the constant stream of reform movements. -- Roy F. Fox, author of UpDrafts: Case Studies in Teacher Renewal and Harvesting Minds
Evocative, provocative, and very well written. Brooks delves into the shifting complexities of multiple and contradictory school reforms, shedding light on how the layering of these competing demands shapes the lived worlds of teachers. It is 'a must-read' for policy entrepreneurs, political leaders, school board members, educational leaders, teachers, researchers, and anyone who cares about public education. -- Catherine A. Lugg, associate professor, Department of Educational Theory, Policy and Administration, Rutgers University
In his qualitative account, peppered with some of the requisite sociological and educational vocabulary, Brooks serves as both mirror and interpreter, but more accurately as a lens through which we enter the reality of teachers' lives within a school continually caught between the lights and shadows of reform. The spectrum of teachers is visible, from neophyte to veteran (literally and figuratively), coach to department chair, bitter to hopeful, individual to team player, technophobe to technophile, withdrawn to engaged. Some 22 teachers are quoted, some at great length, transcribed from taped interviews. * Teacher Leaders Network *
Brooks recounts the experiences of a group of public high school teachers over a span of two years and how reform in their school affected their work and personal lives. Through interviews and observations and using a narrative structure, he describes effects these reforms had on the pace of the school day and year, changes in teacher duties, and maintaining policies and procedures. * Reference and Research Book News *
Recommended. * CHOICE *
