Making School Count Promoting Urban Student Motivation and Success

"Making School Count" reports on four years of classroom research in which alternative teaching strategies, designed to motivate under-achieving inner-city, African-American middle school students were used and evaluated.

The book offers insights into the discrepancy between students' academic dreams (their high performance aspirations) and the realities of their classroom performance.

Issues include:

*the authors' convictions that the disproportionate under-achievement of African-American students is the result of inappropriate teaching strategies

*the prevalent use of a Eur-centric curriculum

*results of the authors' research

*a guide for teachers wishing to carry out their own research

*a study of the collaboration between a university and a schools in an attempt to bring about change from the ground up.

Chapter 1 Life in an urban classroom; Chapter 2 The personal journey of a teacher; Chapter 3 Developing teaching strategies that honor and motivate diverse learners; Chapter 4 The culture of the school; Chapter 5 Teacher action research; Chapter 6 Realizing student potential with alternative strategies; Chapter 7 What gets in the way of student success?; Chapter 8 Taking on the role of detective; Chapter 9 Turning student aspirations into realities;

Karen Manheim Teel is a classroom teacher researcher in the San Francisco East Bay area, teaching 7th and 8th grade history. She received her doctorate from U.C. Berkeley in 1993 and a Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship in 1994., Andrea DeBruin-Parecki is an assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Northern Iowa. She has been actively involved with culturally diverse schools and communities through her research in family literacy, authentic assessment and motivation.