Work Hard. Be Nice.: How Two Inspired Teachers Created the Most Promising Schools in America
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.45 (598 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1565125169 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 329 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-08-18 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Engaging story of a promising school model Timothy J. Bartik Jay Mathews's book is a good story and description of the history and accomplishments of the KIPP schools. Among its strengths are the following:1. It is a well-written and highly engaging book. The personal stories of KIPP's founders are interwoven with their battles with institutions in a manner that attracts and keeps the reader's attention.2. The book includes some detailed stori. "No Short Cuts; No Panacea" according to Chris Buczinsky. To their credit, no one in the KIPP story, neither the writer of this book, nor the teachers themselves, claims that the KIPP program is a panacea for all the ills of education among disadvantaged students. Nonetheless, I imagine that many of this book's readers are teachers like myself who continue to look for ideas and strategies proven successful in schools, especially among strug. Kevin Currie-Knight said Not Just a Story, But a Vision!. KIPP (KNowledge is Power Program) schools have recieved a lot of press recently. Malcolm Gladwell's best-selling book "Outliers," devotes a whole chapter to prais of KIPP's methods. A few years ago, the book "No Excuses" offered KIPP schools as a prime eample of how poor and minority students can excel as well as those in the status quo. As a teacher, I have been long curious about K
Kipp schools incorporate what Feinberg and Levin learned from America's best, most charismatic teachers: lessons need to be lively; school days need to be longer (the Kipp day is nine and a half hours); the completion of homework has to be sacrosanct (Kipp teachers are available by telephone day and night). Chants, songs, and slogans such as "Work hard, be nice" energize the program. They did that-and more. In their early twenties, by sheer force of talent and determination never to take no for an answer, they created a wildly successful fifth-grade experience that would grow into the Knowledge Is Power Program (Kipp), which today includes sixty-six schools in nineteen states and the District of Columbia. When Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin signed up for Teach for America right after college and found themselves utter failures in the classroom, they vowed to remake themselves into superior educators. Illuminating the ups and downs of the Kipp founders and their students, Mathews gives us someth
He delves into the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) and follows the enterprise's founders, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, from their days as young educators in the Teach for America program to heading one of the country's most controversial education programs running today. Mathews emphasizes Feinberg and Levin's personal stakes in the KIPP program, as they often found themselves becoming personally involved with the families of their students (in one case Feinberg took the TV away from a student's apartment because the student's mother insisted that she could not stop her child from watching it). Luckily for many low-income children, Feinberg and Levin believed that with proper mentors, student incentives and unrestrained enthusiasm on the part of the teachers, some of the country's poorest children could surpass the expectations of most inner-city public schools. From Publishers Weekly Many people in the United States believe that low-income chi