Schoolwise: Teaching Academic Patterns of Mind

By Joan Estes Barickman

Joan Barickman has run an alternative public school for disaffected kids for some twenty years, and she has come to believe that the adult world has its collective heads in the sand by not recognizing that it's the "how" of learning that counts if there's going to be any "what" for a lot of children, even those who are natively quite bright. And she believes that focusing on the how instead of the what can make students out of non-students. After some telling analysis of the major ways American schools are structured, she focuses on a number of students she's taught, past and present, who have done more than simply survive school-or leave it early- because they have become schoolwise through the approaches she outlines in stories and anecdotes. Schoolwise offers a new and needed kind of research by classroom teachers. It's a work of synthesis, dealing with the broad topic of thinking and learning from an interdisciplinary perspective. The author uses sociology, psychology, philosophy, medicine, cognitive sciences, literature, and popular culture to inform her classroom observations, but she always begins and ends with individuals. The book is about real teachers, real children, real schools, real pain, and real success.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0867093099
• ISBN13: 9780867093094
• Release Date: November 1992
• Publisher: Heinemann
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.3" x 6.0"
• Age Range: 11 to 13 years
• Grade Range: Grades 9 to 12