Description
Book SynopsisHere is the story of how Ken Winograd grappled with the uncertainties and contradictions of teaching and, in the process, began to understand himself as teacher. Winograd contends that it is crucial that teachers, especially beginning teachers, examine and reflect on the inevitable complexities of classroom life as they work to construct professional identities that are flexible, strategic, and multifaceted. After 13 years working as a teacher educator, he returned to the classroom as a teacher in a nongraded primary classroom. In Good Day, Bad Day, he describes this experience. The first half of the book contains Winograd's daily journal, where he details his everyday work. The journal describes his struggles with students, the efforts to construct a curriculum that reflected his changing beliefs about teaching, and the highs and lows typical of beginning teaching. The second half of the book formally examines various nonpedagogic aspects of teaching, including teacher-student power relations, the emotions of teaching, and the development of teacher identity. Good Day, Bad Day will be useful to teachers, teacher educators, administrators, and policymakers committed to the development of teachers who can reflect critically on their experience and then act to improve their working conditions as well as the learning conditions of students.
Trade ReviewGood Day, Bad Day: Teaching as a High-Wire Act reminds us seasoned teachers of the growth and struggles a beginning teacher must experience before they develop into a fully formed teaching professional. The information and analysis in the book would greatly benefit pre-service and novice teachers in that it vividly illustrates a typical first year in the teaching profession. Administrators and teacher educators would also benefit from this book - it will refresh their memories of what it was like to be a beginning teacher. Finally, this book can help guide all of us in the teaching profession as we search for the best ways to mentor our own beginning teachers and help them to establish their personal and professional identities. * Teacher Leaders Network *
Winograd went back into the front lines after some years in academia and discovered a great deal about himself as a reconstituted novice with the standing of an expert. He explains his anxieties, fears, and despair with preservice teachers in mind, giving them some reference points in their first years in front of a class, and also giving them a better understanding of the complexities of teaching and its rewards. He starts with an extremely honest journal he wrote in the field, and adds self-contained studies about sharing power, experiencing conflicting emotions, and theorizing flexibility. * Reference and Research Book News *
More than a companion for new teachers, Good Day, Bad Day is also a book for those who want to improve the climate of the classroom and prevent the growing problem of teacher attrition. * Teachers College Record *
Table of ContentsPart 1 Acknowledgments Part 2 Introduction Part 3 Part I: The Journal and Reflections Chapter 4 1 The Journal: From First Day to Last Part 5 Part II: Dimensions of Teaching—Three Studies Chapter 6 2 The Negotiative Dimension of Teaching: Teachers Sharing Power with the Less Powerful Chapter 7 3 The Functions of Teacher Emotions: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Chapter 8 4 Theorizing Flexibility: Teacher as High-Wire Dancer Chapter 9 5 Concluding on an Optimistic Note Part 10 References Part 11 Index Part 12 About the Author
