Eleventy billion stars. Should be compulsory reading for everyone in a teaching program, for every education policy crafter, for anyone who currently works in a school, for anyone with children.
I cannot say enough about how moved and transformed I feel by this book. ...more
Ten stars. Must-read for every teacher, pre-service teacher, administrator, person who cares at all about the education system in the USA.
This book is a call to action to remake myself as a teacher, to rethink everything I've taken for granted about the ways we do business in our schools (some of wh ...more
Reframing troublemakers in school as the canaries in the coalmine, reframing the trouble as existing in our institutions, not in our children, Carla Shalaby makes a big ask, can we be love in the face of troublemakers, can we be love and teach freedom? Even by posing the questions, she offers educat ...more
This book should be on the syllabus of every teaching program. I certainly agree with everything stated in the book, and often saw myself in the teachers she observed. The difficulty comes in enacting the change in a school system that does not support this type of change. I think for myself, I will ...more
A beautifully written call to arms, encouraging us to see in young people's imagination and unruliness the opportunity for social justice and democratic participation. Shalaby compiles a set of character sketches of children at successful schools who are struggling in their classrooms. In each examp ...more
If I had to suggest one book that every educator should read, this would be the one. Carla Shalaby chronicles her time spent in schools observing four "troublemakers." From these narratives she forces us to ...more
I'll admit it. I'm deeply in love with this book. I loved it when I read the preface and introduction; perhaps I struggled as I read the portraiture of the four individual students in the two schools; but then I fell even deeper after reading the conclusion and letter to teachers.
I loved reading about the students in this story, they all encouraged me to examine and reflect on myself as a teacher. Really thinking about what it truly means to have freedom in schools, freedom for students to be authentically curious and for love to be central. ...more
This should be required reading for any and all teachers. I wish I had read it sooner. It pushed me to think about how I engage with my students and how I can do better. ...more
This is a great book and should be used by any and every new teaching program. I love how the author showed the brilliance of these young people, and their humanity. A great lesson for teachers of how to use empathy, and truly know your students to create an inclusive classroom. ...more
Unique perspectives on how we view children in our classrooms. I am curious to investigate how parents and educators of color respond to the author's ideas. ...more
One of the most liberating re-framing of “troublemakers” and “classroom management” I’ve read outside of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Although the four students Shalaby profiles are in elementary school, it does not take much effort to apply these profiles to middle and high schools. I ...more
Read as part of the #ClearTheAir Twitter chat, and I am so glad I did! This book is short, but mighty. It has me reconsidering all kinds of things about my classroom, from how to change up the power dynamics to how I might restructure my classroom community to belong to students rather than to me. A ...more
As soon as I was done with this book, I wanted to reread it. This book is filled with gems to observe that I want to go back to and reflect on, gems such as, "The extent of our willingness to change children, coupled with the extent of our unwillingness to change schools, must awaken our collective ...more
This book is well written, but I have mixed feelings about it. Shalaby is a former elementary teacher who is now in higher education. I was hoping she was a teacher writing about kids whom she herself had taught--the student-teacher relationship from the teacher’s perspective.
This book needs to be required reading for every educator!!!! Holy cow. Shalaby challenged her readers to not see “troublemakers” as bad and instead view their behavior as indicative of a bigger issue within school systems. One part I found particularly interesting was her point that we spend so muc ...more
Excellent and thought-provoking. Challenges traditional ways of thinking about school and kids. Not a book of strategies, but of stories that take an honest and critical look at the way we expect kids to fit in at school. Thinking about a professional learning text set with this title, We Got This b ...more