The Passionate Teacher: A Practical Guide

Every teacher could be a passionate teacher—one who engages young people in the excitement of learning and ideas—if teaching were not being undermined by the ways we "do business" in schools. The Passionate Teacher draws on the voices, stories, and success of teachers in urban, suburban, and rural classrooms to provide a guide to becoming, and remaining, a passionate teacher despite day-to-day obstacles. A new afterword speaks to the special challenges facing first-year teachers.

"Convinces us of the value of passion by actually taking us into classrooms where teachers dissolve student disinterest not with 'tricks' but rather with an authentic commitment to what and who they are teaching." —Teacher Magazine

"A deeply felt meditation on the vital role of passion in good teaching . . . stuffed with . . . samples, stories, interviews with good teachers, lists of things to try. . . . Fried writes about education with passionate, engrossing pragmatism." —Anthony Rotundo, The Washington Post

"An inspiring look at a few of the best in our profession, practical suggestions, even insights into the ruts into which we occasionally fall. This is a marvelous book. I'd like to put a half-dozen copies in my teachers' lounge!" —Lawrence Bickford, math and computer science teacher, Hopkinton School, Contoocook, New Hampshire

"This is a book filled with details, the actual stories, the tradeoffs and compromises, the breakthroughs that make teaching worthwhile. It's my ideal of a 'how-to' book." —Deborah Meier, author of The Power of Their Ideas