Publisher Description

This collection consists of theoretical discussions, personal reflections, research reports, and policy suggestions sourced in the experiences of our most vulnerable students with an eye to making schools places all students might love rather than hate. The essays take up these issues from the perspectives of poverty, gender, race, ethnicity, ability, language, and religion among others. These essays also provide practical advice for teachers and administrators—both practicing and pre-service—for making classrooms and schools spaces that would encourage our students to say, "I love school."

Author Biography

Steven P. Jones is a professor in the College of Education at Missouri State University and Executive Director of the Academy for Educational Studies. He is author of Blame Teachers: The Emotional Reasons for Educational Reform?a book that investigates how and why so many people try to justify educational change by deriding the efforts and effectiveness of our public school teachers. A former high school English teacher in Jefferson County, Colorado, Jones received his B.A. in English from the University of Denver, his MA in Educational Administration from the University of Colorado (Boulder), and his Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Chicago.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Laura Ruth JohnsonIntroduction: Why Kids Love (or Hate) School Everybody's Listening when it Matters: Students Love School When its Relevant to their Lives We Really Hated School: The Journey of Two Black PhD's From Alienation to Transformation by Meeting the Needs of Muslim Learners in an Islamophobic "Teachers always have, like, something new": Mexican American Adolescents' Perceptions of Classrooms in which they Learn, or Don't Learn The Power of Schools to Redirect Pathways: Shaping and Supporting Students' Love of Learning Across Time and Place Under the School Roof, Inside Classroom Walls: The Power of Place-Based Plot Patterns to Shape School Stories of Happiness and Glee or Humiliation and Shame for Elementary Students Kids Love a Classroom for Everyone Forgotten Learners: Academically Strong Kids in Struggling Schools Chain Link Poetry Creating Liberating Classroom Conditions: Alternative School Settings Igniting Passion among Students (and Teachers) for Civic Engagement: Loving, Seeing, and Hearing our Students: A Framework for Engagement in Science Restorative practices in Public School Education: Beyond Sensitization to Skills-Building and Organizational Change

Review

"At a time when education policy seems more influenced by think tanks than by insider knowledge of classrooms, Why Kids Love (and Hate) School: Reflections on Difference does the necessary work of gathering perspectives from the field. The diverse teacher, researcher, and student voices that erupt from these chapters tell a multitude of stories in a cacophony of styles—in turn humorous, cajoling, indignant, intimate, academic, and more. Individually and collectively, they allow readers to experience schooling—its joys and sorrows, triumphs and tragedies—through the eyes of the students the institution was least designed to serve." — Isabel Nuñez, Professor and Chair Department of Educational Studies, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne

Review Quote

" Why Kids Love (and Hate) School underscores how essential relevancy and relationships are to learning. This book gives voice to our students and how we can help create meaningful learning environments with them."

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