Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works (and How to Teach It to Everyone)

We romanticize teachers, and we vilify them, but we don't do much to help. This beautifully written, defiantly hopeful book points the way to a better future for American teachers and the children they teach.--Paul Tough, bestselling author of How Children Succeed
In vivid detail, Elizabeth Green chronicles the long, uncertain, but ultimately promising efforts, based on research, to improve teaching in American schools.--Howard Gardner, coauthor of The App Generation and author of Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences
Elizabeth Green draws upon years of interviews and research as an education writer and CEO of Chalkbeat to make the case for why teaching is a craft and that it can be taught to anyone. Her excellent book should be read for a detailed account of the history of teacher education, an international context, and an entertaining narrative.--Jonathan Wai
Peek[s] into real classrooms, allowing readers to observe what great teachers do and how.--Kate Tuttle
Both a history of the research on effective teaching as well as a consideration of how that research might best be implemented. What emerges is the gaping chasm between what the best teachers do and how we go about evaluating what they've done.--Sebastian Stockman
In this fascinating and accessible book, Elizabeth Green tells the story of the country's leading researchers on the all-important questions of what makes for an effective classroom teacher and how teachers can be trained to do their jobs better. That the story feels completely fresh is testament not only to Green's skill as a reporter and writer but also to how beside-the-point much of the national conversation about education is. Green's book ought to persuade the country to focus on what really matters in education.--Nicholas Lemann, professor and dean emeritus at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Elizabeth Green reveals, in cinematic detail, what makes great teaching such a dazzling intellectual challenge--and why it has taken us so unforgivably long to care. A must-read book for every American teacher and taxpayer.--Amanda Ripley, author of The Smartest Kids in the World
[Green] makes the case through thoughtful details that great teachers are made, not born... she brings hope and renewal to the field.--Angela Leeper
Green has spent years looking at what makes a great teacher--and whether the teachers we remember most fondly were born great or simply learned key skills.--Greg Toppo
At the heart of Green's exploration is a powerfully simple idea: that teaching is not some mystical talent but a set of best practices that can be codified and learned through extensive hands-on coaching, self-scrutiny, and collaboration.--Sara Mosle
[S]hould be part of every new teacher's education.--Michael S. Roth
Timely... Elizabeth Green shows herself to be a talented young journalist.--Sol Stern