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Acknowledgments

The first edition of this book was the result of a thirty-five-year journey that took me from public school teacher to teacher educator to researcher and university administrator. Given the length of this journey, you will not be surprised that I have a lot of people to thank. First, the students at Christopher Wren School and North Westminster Community School in London taught me most of what I know about learning. The research I have read and carried out since then has done little more than help me make sense of what I learned there. Second are the teachers I have worked with in those two schools and in the extended networks of teachers of which I have been a part. As someone who went straight from a bachelor’s degree to the classroom, with no training or preparation, I was fortunate to start teaching in one of London’s toughest schools—fortunate because every teacher in that school struggled and was willing to talk about his or her struggles. It is only subsequently that I have realized how lucky I was, because that openness is not found everywhere.

Mentioning individuals is always invidious, but I owe particular debts of gratitude to Sarah Sharkey and Jerry Hardy (Christopher Wren School) and Dick Gmiterek (North Westminster Community School). When I joined the University of London, I lucked out again, being mentored by two great thinkers about education—first, Margaret Brown, and later, Paul Black. As well as being extraordinary academics, they are two of the nicest people one could ever hope to meet, and their generosity to younger academics is a model I have tried to emulate.

Special thanks must go to Greg Ashman (@Greg_Ashman) for permission to use the graphic in chapter 3 from his blog Filling the Pail. Thanks also are due to Maureen Wellbery, at the American International School of Vilnius in Lithuania, for the story about all-student response systems in chapter 4. I am also grateful to the editorial staff at Solution Tree, and particularly Lesley Bolton (and Alissa Voss for the second edition), for all the work they have done in getting my manuscript to the finished book you have before you. Finally, and most important, my greatest thanks go to my partner, Siobhán Leahy. We first met at a mathematics teachers’ conference almost forty years ago, and for thirty-seven years, she has been my greatest inspiration and greatest support and has kept me grounded in the realities of daily school life. That is why the book is dedicated to her.