Puzzling Moments, Teachable Moments: Practicing Teacher Research in Urban Classrooms (The Practitioner Inquiry Series)

In her new book, bestselling author Cynthia Ballenger explores the intellectual strengths of students that teachers find puzzling poor, urban, immigrant, or bilingual children who do not traditionally excel in school. Ballenger challenges the assumption that these children whose families in many cases have less formal education, read fewer storybooks, and talk less with their children about school-like topics have fewer intellectual or academically relevant experiences. This practical book offers a detailed roadmap for traversing the daily work of teaching today s diverse population, helping educators to refine their work as it unfolds in the classroom. Ballenger guides the reader as she analyzes what the children said, what this indicates about their thinking, and how her dialogues with them informed her teaching.