Teachers College Press Teaching, A Life's Work: A Mother-Daughter Dialogue

Product Description A must-read for new teachers and seasoned practitioners, this unique book presents Sonia Nieto and Alicia López, mother and daughter writing about the trajectories, vision, and values that brought them to teaching, including the ups and downs they have experienced and the reasons why they have stubbornly remained in one of the oldest, most difficult, and most rewarding of professions. Drawing on their extensive experience as educators in school and university classrooms, they reflect on what it means to teach young people, prospective teachers, and future academics in our complex, dynamic, and multicultural society. Teaching, A Life's Work is at once theoretical and practical, reflective and critical, personal, professional, and political. Nieto and López document their reasons for becoming teachers and share some of the most important lessons they have learned along the way. Using journals, blogs, current writings, and their research, they explore how their views on curriculum, pedagogy, and the field of education itself have evolved over the years. Book Features: Experiences and insights from elementary, secondary, and post-secondary education. Ideas from authors who have been at the forefront of progressive movements in public and private education in the United States. An accessible text that includes both theoretical concepts about teaching and practical examples of curriculum and pedagogy. A chapter based on a dialogue similar to the "talking book" created by Ira Shor and Paulo Freire (1987). Review The book is a testament to public education while providing an honest appraisal of the problems and successes inherent in the educational endeavor. As teachers and teacher educators, we found the advice for teacher educators and pre-service, novice, and experienced teachers to be relevant: understand that teaching is transactional, take time to write, respect and care for your students, find a mentor, make a friend, be kind, creative, and efficient, get outside once a day, have stamina and courage, engage in professional development, and be thoughtful and critical about curriculum and pedagogy. We encourage both in-service and pre-service teachers to read this book as they reflect on their teacher identity. As the authors note, teaching is not always easy, but it is a profession worth fighting for. --Teachers College Record About the Author Sonia Nieto is professor emerita at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her bestselling books include The Light in Their Eyes: Creating Multicultural Learning Communities, Why We Teach, Why We Teach Now , and What Keeps Teachers Going?. She is the recipient of the 2019 LRA Distinguished Scholar Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2021 Mass Humanities Governor's Award. Alicia López is an ESL teacher and former assistant principal at Amherst Regional Middle School.