Although Brill, by the end of Class Warfare, comes to recognize the limits of the education reform movement he so admires, he somehow maintains his commitment to the idea that teachers can completely overcome poverty. There’s a reason, I think, why this ideology is so attractive to many of the wealthy charter school founders and donors Brill profiles, from hedge funder Whitney Tilson to investment manager and banking heir Boykin Curry. If the United States could somehow guarantee poor people a fair shot at the American dream through shifting education policies alone, then perhaps we wouldn’t have to feel so damn bad about inequality—about low tax rates and loopholes that benefit the superrich and prevent us from expanding access to childcare and food stamps; about private primary and secondary schools that cost as much annually as an Ivy League college, and provide similar benefits; about moving to a different neighborhood, or to the suburbs, to avoid sending our children to school with kids who are not like them.
Laura Shaw on 02 Aug 11The investigation focused on how teachers manage emotional events and, in particular, what positive strategies they use while doing so. A total of 60 hours of observation took place in the classrooms of six teachers who had been nominated for having exceptional positive classroom environments. These observations were reduced to prominent themes: (1) fostering classroom relationships, (2) setting and managing emotional guidelines, (3) being emotionally aware, and (4) managing emotional situations. The study provided support for Harvey and Evans' (2003) model of the classroom emotional climate.
