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Forging an Educative Community tells the story of a public school classroom, where relations are fostered to promote democratic participation within intellectual engagement. In forging an educative community, teacher and students develop relations of trust, sense-making, and compassionate imagination, which in turn engender a sense of belonging, all essential elements of an educative community. This book illustrates the challenges and barriers to forming such a community in classrooms, particularly the underside of a sense of belonging that carries with it a terror of being transformed - a terror that can subside only with a trust that belonging will not require us to give up who we are.
About the author
The Author: Rosalie M. Romano spent almost twenty years in K-12 public school classrooms as a teacher. She is Assistant Professor of Education at Ohio University, where she continues to work in and with schools to promote educative communities. She received her Ph.D. in Social Foundations of Education from the University of Washington in 1996.
Report
"Just glancing at the table of contents propelled this manuscript from the bottom of my pile to the 'must read now!' Dr. Romano invites us into the powerful story of Mr. Greg's classroom, where she mines the intimate conversations of the students and teacher for essential elements of a caring, learning community. She avoids simplistic prescriptions for creating an educative community, but rather articulates the culture of mind and heart out of which such classrooms may grow." (Steven Levy, author of 'Starting from Scratch')
"'Forging an Educative Community' is, in part, a story of life in an extraordinary classroom, a place where the ideas of children are valued, their lived experiences respected, their hearts, minds and spirits honored. It is, as well, a vivid description of the elements needed to create a thoughtful reflective classroom community - trust and dialogue, imagination and compassion, a sense of connection and affinity. Rosalie M. Romano shows us teaching as intellectual and ethical work, a calling with the power and the promise to change lives." (William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education
University of Illinois at Chicago, Author of 'A Kind and Just Parent')
