Urban public schools and their teachers are under siege. From increased standardization, privatization and testing to a growing number of students whose needs are not being met by schools, urban public school teachers face a daunting task. Without a space in which to critically examine their daily experiences within schools, many well-intentioned…

Although teaching for social justice is a widely recognized goal of many teacher education programs, there are few supports for new teachers who wish to continue this kind of practice. In this article, I discuss the ways that a group of four new teachers found flexible support for developing a vision of teaching for social justice through…

In recent decades, federal, state, and local policies have demonstrated renewed efforts to address the concerns of both teacher quality and quantity, resulting in initiatives to attract, reward, and retain qualified people in the teacher profession. Initiatives to address the problems of teacher quality and quantity often take the form of…

This paper presents words of wisdom from the editors and editorial associates of "Rethinking Schools" that grew out of a discussion about an upcoming book project during a national meeting this July. The editors were asked to share their advice to someone who is new to the profession. The comments are not meant to be comprehensive, but they offer…

For many novice teachers, the first solo effort in the classroom is a "sink or swim" experience. With good pre-service preparation that includes extensive field experience, the beginning teacher may feel more confident, but even those with the most confidence still find the complexities of decision-making bewildering. For those novices who are…

In this article, the author explores her teaching experiences in order to better understand the nature of the professional knowledge needed to make use of conflict and to manage a particular teaching dilemma. The author's intention is to show that such a personal inquiry can reveal ways in which her story is a telling case that may enable others…

As the former director of the Compton Fellowship Program, the author has an in-depth knowledge about the program. When she left the position in 1997, she became interested in doing research on the impact of the program. The author knew that she would filter the events and situations that took place through a lens which would influence her…