The Hardest Questions Aren't on the Test - Lessons from an Innovative Urban School

Zusatztext “For educators or anyone interested in city schools! this is essential! provocative reading.” —Chuck Leddy! Boston Globe “This fascinating book takes you inside the mind of a uniquely gifted urban school leader and reveals the secrets that help her propel her disadvantaged students toward college: community! transparency! a profound understanding of adolescents! and! especially! moral courage. Reading The Hardest Questions . . . is like shadowing a principal for a year. I recommend it to every teacher or administrator who wants to make a difference in the lives of inner-city children.” —Michael Thompson! author of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys “Using rich and vivid examples! presented with passion and candor! Linda Nathan shows what it really means to go ‘back to basics’ in American urban education.” —Howard Gardner! author of Multiple Intelligences   “Linda Nathan and her remarkable colleagues . . . provide argument and evidence! theory and action plan! utopian hope and practical road map to the necessary project of reinventing America’s schools.” —William Ayers! author of To Teach and A Kind and Just Parent   “Linda Nathan’s wonderful account of piloting the Boston Arts Academy is personal! anecdotal! and yet focused on the critical Big Questions. Through stories of how these questions play out in hallways and classrooms! Nathan articulates a vision of how urban schools can flourish.”” —Deborah Meier! author of The Power of Their Ideas Informationen zum Autor Linda Nathan is the first Executive Director of the Center for Artistry and Scholarship and has taught at Harvard Graduate School of Education for fifteen years. Dr. Nathan served as founding headmaster of Boston Arts Academy! Boston's only public high school for the visual and performing arts. She also founded and directed the Center for Arts in Education! an arm of Boston Arts Academy that serves the outreach! professional development! and arts advocacy needs of the school.  Dr. Nathan was the co-director of Fenway High School for 14 years and founded two not-for-profit organizations: El Pueblo Nuevo (arts and youth development) and the Center for Collaborative Education (school reform issues). She is co-founder of the Perrone Sizer Institute for Creative Leadership and also serves on numerous not-for-profit boards both locally and nationally and is the author of When Grit Isn't Enough. Klappentext The Boston Arts Academy comprises an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse student body! yet 94 percent of its graduates are accepted to college. This remarkable success rate! writes Principal Linda Nathan! is in large part due to asking the right questions and being open to seeking solutions collaboratively with faculty! parents! and the students themselves. Nathan doesn't claim to have all the answers! but seeks to share her insights on schools that matter! teachers who inspire! and students who achieve. From the Introduction The Boston Arts Academy’s mission is to be a “laboratory and a bea­con for artistic and academic innovation,” and as such we regularly have teachers and educational leaders coming to learn about our cur­riculum, programs, and structures. We are an eleven-year-old pilot school that operates within the Boston Public School district, but we have considerable freedom to create our own curriculum. We also have the ability (unlike most public or charter schools) to select our students through an audition process. We do not look at prospective students’ academic records (we call this an academic-blind applica­tion process), but we do screen them for passion and commitment to pursuing their chosen art form (music, dance, theater, or visual arts) seriously. Approximately 400 students audition each year for about 140 seats. We ...

Product details

• Authors: Linda Nathan
• Publisher: BEACON PRESS
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 07.09.2010
• EAN: 9780807006153
• ISBN: 978-0-8070-0615-3
• No. of pages: 224
• Dimensions: 140 mm x 216 mm x 18 mm
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Education