We've heard enough about your successful teaching-your workshops that run like Cuisenarts, your students who listen with empathy and respond with insight, your conferences with parents and principals which end with hosannas and hugs. You're too perfect. These are stories of failure from over forty-five new and veteran teachers in every field, stories that will resonate with every teacher who took a risk and blew it. And, because this is a book about the realities of teaching, you will see how others have learned the hard way about some of the intractable problems in education and society, for the issues of race, economics, undersupplied classrooms, and mind-numbing bureaucracy are all here. There is sparkling humor and genuine pain in these stories of teachers who care deeply about their students and still make mistakes.
Every failure matters, and often hurts.
But ultimately, many teachers have learned the most about the art of teaching when their teaching fails. As contributors like James Beane, Glenda Bissex, Leila Christenbury, Jerry Harste, Donald Murray, Susan Ohanian, Patrick Shannon, and Kathy Short demonstrate, even the profession's gurus struggle with disaster. As educators we should write about, talk about, and think about failure more. The essays in Oops acknowledge the gaps between our theory and practice, between our dreams of what we might be as teachers and who we are.