Deciding to Lead: The English Teacher as Reformer - Softcover

Denny Wolfe and Joseph Antinarella believe that there is enough blame to go around about the current state of education-that it's time for English teachers to seize control of the direction for school reform; it's time to seize control of their profession. Top-down efforts at reform must fail, and English teachers are ideally suited to take on the role of negotiator, mediator, and facilitator for positive change, the authors claim. Their new book provides not only the reasons why but also the specifics of how.

This book argues that to achieve substantial progress in our schools policy/funding/administrative reform must be coupled with teacher led curricular reform. The authors invite and challenge English teachers, particularly, to link their beliefs, habits, and best practices to strategies of systemic school reform. They call for teacher-centered as well as student centered schools, places where teachers work to raise the level of professional conversation about teaching and learning.

When English teachers become school reformers, they encounter two critical factors as they attempt to lead students and colleagues to do better work: the "subject/object" factor and the "self efficacy/environment building" factor, which Wolfe and Antinarella discuss in two separate chapters. In the remaining chapters, they set forth their original theory of teacher development and describe the work of master teachers in classrooms. The book ends with a set of specific strategies for improving schools from within. This book will further the efforts of any preservice or inservice secondary school teacher who wants to play a more active role in today's reform movement.

This book will further the efforts of any preservice or inservice secondary school teacher who wants to play a more active role in today's reform movement.