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Learning to Connect: Relationships, Race, and Teacher Education
Learning to Connect explores how teachers learn to form meaningful relationships with students, especially across racial and cultural differences. To do so, the book draws on data from a two-year ethnographic study of No Excuses Teacher Residency (NETR) and Progressive Teacher Residency (PTR), and teachers that emerge from each program. Each program is characterized in rich complexity, with a focus on coursework relating to relationships and race, as well as fieldwork. The final part of the book explores how program graduates draw upon these experiences in their first year of full-time teaching. Two very different visions and approaches to teacher-student relationships emerge - one instrumental, the other reciprocal, with implications for the students ultimately served by each approach. Through engaging portraits and illustrative case studies, this rigorously researched yet eminently accessible book will help teacher educators (and likely other scholars, teachers and policymakers, too) to better conceptualize, support, and practice the formation of meaningful relationships with students from all backgrounds. Ultimately, Learning to Connect offers a hopeful path forward as educators become better equipped to model meaningful human connections with students, which might be especially necessary in today's deeply divided society.
241 pages, Paperback
Published October 2, 2020
6 people want to read
About the author
Victoria Theisen-Homer
1 book4 followersVictoria Theisen-Homer is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Arizona State University’s School of Social Transformation. She completed her Doctorate in Education at Harvard University. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, she was an English teacher at a large public Title-1 high school in Los Angeles. During this time, she received many awards and accolades for her teaching, including a Los Angeles Unified School District Teacher of the Year award. She credits much of her success in teaching to the well-renowned urban Teacher Education Program she completed at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 16, 2020
Educators are responsible for shaping the minds of, guiding the social interactions between and creating lasting impressions upon, future world leaders. It's no secret - even to those of us outside of the profession - that the significance of the role of educators in determining how the world ultimately functions can never be overstated. A teacher committed to fostering meaningful relationship with a student can make all the difference in the trajectory of that individual's life and the countless lives they touch. When that relationship building is informed by critical race theory, social justice, the history of the lasting effects of oppression and subjugation - then the relationship can become not only a bond that ties but a seed that transcends the traditions of hierarchical learning and blossoms into a garden of wisdom to be explored and fortified for a lifetime.
In Learning to Connect, Dr. Theisen-Homer paints an engaging and enlightening picture of how two different teacher education programs approach the same objective with strikingly different results. The narrative that is woven and the techniques illuminated within the book cast new light on the importance of teacher-training curriculae that fosters both critically-informed and intentionally-empathetic relationship-building between educators and students. It also impresses upon the reader the immediate need to get this right - to foster relationships with students efficaciously and, in so doing, to help shape the future of the world in our lifetimes and beyond.
I would highly recommend this read to anyone who values exploring questions like:
- How do we best support our educators and the critical function of education in times of underfunded schools and overcrowded classrooms?
- How do we tackle the roots of white supremacy and the hierarchies of white settler-colonialism?
- How can I better understand the relationships of power and education that informed my own development and how can I more wholly contribute to the development of others?
I would also recommend this read as a cornerstone in any academic program that seeks to instill values of relationship building and to better understand the forces that detract from impactful education in our school systems. This book would be at home in courses/tracts beyond Education and teacher training, like in those of Civic Engagement, Public Health and Social Work.
Though I am not an educator by profession, I am a longtime community organizer, movement leader and proponent of social justice who values developing a nuanced understanding of all of the social forces that converge to either oppress or uplift our communities' most marginalized voices. As such, I very much appreciated the passion and dedication to that same understanding which Victoria Theisen-Homer displayed throughout the book and I eagerly anticipate any future works that the good Dr. may produce.
In Learning to Connect, Dr. Theisen-Homer paints an engaging and enlightening picture of how two different teacher education programs approach the same objective with strikingly different results. The narrative that is woven and the techniques illuminated within the book cast new light on the importance of teacher-training curriculae that fosters both critically-informed and intentionally-empathetic relationship-building between educators and students. It also impresses upon the reader the immediate need to get this right - to foster relationships with students efficaciously and, in so doing, to help shape the future of the world in our lifetimes and beyond.
I would highly recommend this read to anyone who values exploring questions like:
- How do we best support our educators and the critical function of education in times of underfunded schools and overcrowded classrooms?
- How do we tackle the roots of white supremacy and the hierarchies of white settler-colonialism?
- How can I better understand the relationships of power and education that informed my own development and how can I more wholly contribute to the development of others?
I would also recommend this read as a cornerstone in any academic program that seeks to instill values of relationship building and to better understand the forces that detract from impactful education in our school systems. This book would be at home in courses/tracts beyond Education and teacher training, like in those of Civic Engagement, Public Health and Social Work.
Though I am not an educator by profession, I am a longtime community organizer, movement leader and proponent of social justice who values developing a nuanced understanding of all of the social forces that converge to either oppress or uplift our communities' most marginalized voices. As such, I very much appreciated the passion and dedication to that same understanding which Victoria Theisen-Homer displayed throughout the book and I eagerly anticipate any future works that the good Dr. may produce.
September 26, 2020
Learning to Connect offers compelling research about a select group of teacher-training programs and the philosophical underpinnings of their methodologies. Theisen-Homer thoughtfully analyzes the benefits and pitfalls of these programs’ approaches toward student-teacher relationships and interrogates the crucial role that racial dynamics play in reinforcing or challenging existing power structures in society. The reader gets a front-row seat to several teacher residency programs. Not only do readers peek into the training sessions and pedagogical framework of these programs, but readers also get the opportunity to follow specific residents through these programs and see how their training aligned or misaligned with their teaching experiences beyond their residencies.
I’ve been an educator for thirteen years, and I’ve worked in two diametrically opposed teaching environments with very different cultures, demographics, and challenges. My first teaching job was in an urban Title I school, but after being laid off during the Great Recession, I transitioned into my current position at a high-achieving, suburban, affluent school. When reading through the teacher residents’ experiences in the book, I could empathize with both the rewards and hardships of trying to educate students in these different environments. The specific case studies showcase the struggles teachers face when balancing many ambitious goals: ensuring rigor, maintaining classroom management, increasing student engagement, encouraging student autonomy, preventing entitlement, providing culturally relevant curriculum, and navigating the tricky waters of race relations in American society. These demands and goals are particularly hard to meet in the overcrowded public-school classrooms that many of us face.
After reading this book, I was incredibly thankful for the teacher training I got through my master’s and credential work at Pepperdine. Since the book investigates a range of different approaches to education, I found myself cringing in some sections where the residency frameworks felt so antithetical to my own teaching philosophy. However, even when I saw educational philosophies that differed from my own, I appreciated the even-handed approach that Theisen-Homer took in her analysis. She is remarkably observant of the positive and negative outcomes tied to the residencies’ various approaches.
Beyond her focus on research, Theisen-Homer ably weaves in descriptive detail to make the school sites come to life. She also connects her findings to her own experiences as a mother and former teacher, which makes this book accessible and personal. She thoughtfully catalogs her methodological approaches to her research at the end of the text for people who are interested in the data that underlies the book. She ultimately distilled her findings into a very readable and engaging book.
I’ve been an educator for thirteen years, and I’ve worked in two diametrically opposed teaching environments with very different cultures, demographics, and challenges. My first teaching job was in an urban Title I school, but after being laid off during the Great Recession, I transitioned into my current position at a high-achieving, suburban, affluent school. When reading through the teacher residents’ experiences in the book, I could empathize with both the rewards and hardships of trying to educate students in these different environments. The specific case studies showcase the struggles teachers face when balancing many ambitious goals: ensuring rigor, maintaining classroom management, increasing student engagement, encouraging student autonomy, preventing entitlement, providing culturally relevant curriculum, and navigating the tricky waters of race relations in American society. These demands and goals are particularly hard to meet in the overcrowded public-school classrooms that many of us face.
After reading this book, I was incredibly thankful for the teacher training I got through my master’s and credential work at Pepperdine. Since the book investigates a range of different approaches to education, I found myself cringing in some sections where the residency frameworks felt so antithetical to my own teaching philosophy. However, even when I saw educational philosophies that differed from my own, I appreciated the even-handed approach that Theisen-Homer took in her analysis. She is remarkably observant of the positive and negative outcomes tied to the residencies’ various approaches.
Beyond her focus on research, Theisen-Homer ably weaves in descriptive detail to make the school sites come to life. She also connects her findings to her own experiences as a mother and former teacher, which makes this book accessible and personal. She thoughtfully catalogs her methodological approaches to her research at the end of the text for people who are interested in the data that underlies the book. She ultimately distilled her findings into a very readable and engaging book.
September 23, 2020
In an extensive ethnographic study of two teacher residency programs, No Excuses and Progressive Teacher, the author/researcher explores how these programs prepare teachers to develop meaningful relationships of trust and respect with their students. This clear and accessible book uses portraits and insights to analyze two very different programs and their outcomes. I highly recommend this book for all teachers, but especially those who work in an international or multicultural milieu. I especially like the fact that this book is readable and should be of interest to anyone who cares about the education of children.
January 30, 2021
Beautifully written book that acknowledges the priceless impact of the teacher-student relationship. As a high school teacher, I find this book as wonderful insight on how those relationships are priceless. Theisen masterfully shows the great impact that teacher preparation programs have on new teachers when it comes to helping them establish those relationships.
May 24, 2024
A work of much depth, honesty, and awareness...a must-read for all those called to teaching.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews