ABSTRACT
Butterflies grow through metamorphosis, but for human beings, change is usually not so sudden. Instead, it happens in bits and pieces, in spurts and plateaus. Pat Howard had not changed overnight. She still gave spelling tests every Friday; she still taught social studies through dittos and textbooks. Her children still read Basal readers rather than library books. Although desks were arranged in clusters rather than rows and children’s projects lined the edges of the classroom, many things had not changed. The day was still compartmentalized into separate subjects; the curriculum still followed textbooks; and the children still worked silently much of the time. Writing was the exception, not the new rule. Mrs Howard’s teaching had become a combination of contrasts-of teacher-directed and childcentered, of skills-incontext and skills-in-isolation.
