ABSTRACT

In an era in which the teaching enterprise is freighted with tactics, techniques, and methods, M. Robert Gardner guides us back to the spirit of teaching. He writes especially about the dilemmas and challenges of teaching, about how it feels to be trying to teach.  Gardner's provocative, often iconoclastic musings will goad teachers of all subjects to reflect anew on their calling.  Clinical readers will take special pleasure in the humane psychoanalytic sensibility that not only infuses Gardner's own teaching, but shapes his approach to the most basic questions about teaching and learning in general.

part 1|62 pages

Book I: The School of Soft Knocks

part 2|101 pages

Book II: A Gentle Symbiosis

chapter 9|7 pages

On New and Old Beginnings

chapter 10|4 pages

Gumbel's Gambit

chapter 11|6 pages

Hidden Questions

chapter 12|3 pages

On Catching Burrs

chapter 16|6 pages

On Passing Events

chapter 20|2 pages

Once More Backward

chapter 24|13 pages

Afterword

Studenthood

chapter 25|5 pages

Other Thoughts on Assessing