Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Learning to Connect: Relationships, Race, and Teacher Education

Learning to Connect explores how teachers learn to form meaningful relationships with students, especially across racial and cultural differences. To do so, the book draws on data from a two-year ethnographic study of No Excuses Teacher Residency (NETR) and Progressive Teacher Residency (PTR), and teachers that emerge from each program. Each program is characterized in rich complexity, with a focus on coursework relating to relationships and race, as well as fieldwork. The final part of the book explores how program graduates draw upon these experiences in their first year of full-time teaching. Two very different visions and approaches to teacher-student relationships emerge - one instrumental, the other reciprocal, with implications for the students ultimately served by each approach. Through engaging portraits and illustrative case studies, this rigorously researched yet eminently accessible book will help teacher educators (and likely other scholars, teachers and policymakers, too) to better conceptualize, support, and practice the formation of meaningful relationships with students from all backgrounds. Ultimately, Learning to Connect offers a hopeful path forward as educators become better equipped to model meaningful human connections with students, which might be especially necessary in today's deeply divided society. Review The expertly crafted "Learning to Connect" makes a valuable contribution to the field of teacher preparation. The book gives examples on well-prepared teachers who are nevertheless relatively helpless to sustain relationships in schools where relationships are not prioritized.--Radical Teacher In Learning to Connect, Theisen-Homer (Arizona State Univ.) explores the complexity of training teachers to connect with students through a two-year ethnographic study of two teacher residency programs located in the same city. One, Progressive Teacher Residency (PTR), is located at a well-established progressive school and emphasizes a constructivist approach to learning. The other, No Excuses Teacher Residency (NETR), is based at a charter school and prepares participating teachers to focus on "closing the achievement gap." Accordingly, NETR teachers convey to students that "forces like poverty, racism, and hunger are no excuse" for falling behind. Theisen-Homer selected these programs based on their missions, which include an intentional and explicit focus on the development of teacher-student relationships. Each aims to achieve its own "social justice" vision. PRT's social justice goal is preparing teachers to be "change agents" who serve all students, including privileged students and those with limited access to education. NETR's goal is achieving social justice through good teaching techniques. Though both programs had shortcomings, they did offer guidance in better preparing teachers for meaningful relationships with all students. Finally, the author upholds meaningful teacher-student relationships as possibly the most important aspect of teaching. This book should be widely read. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.--CHOICE In this probing and revelatory book, Theisen-Homer examines the ways that two teacher training programs seek to prepare teachers to build and sustain relationships--of authenticity, respect, and trust--with their students who come from backgrounds culturally and racially different from theirs. Through vivid and evocative portraits, the author offers us an interior view of the programs, documenting the perspective and voices of the participants, the challenges and resistance, the blind spots and breakthroughs that are embedded in nourishing and sustaining human connection in classrooms. Learning to Connect is at once a richly detailed narrative, a discerning analysis, a rigorous roadmap, and a powerful call to action.--Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Emily Hargroves Fisher Research Professor of Education