Teaching As If Life Matters

by Uhl, Christopher; Stuchul, Dana L.

• ISBN13: 9781421400396
• ISBN10: 1421400391
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-03-29
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

What would it be like to teach as if life matters? To move beyond the typical regimen of classroom exercises, homework, and standardized tests and to guide students through life's most important lessons? Dissatisfied with traditional educational models, Christopher Uhl and Dana L. Stuchul asked themselves these same questions. What they discovered will open the eyes of today's educators to a whole new way of teaching.The authors promote an approach that fosters self-knowledge, creativity, curiosity, and an appreciation for the earth. Central to their philosophy is one question -- "What do we humans need to live meaningful lives?" The answer: healthy relationships with ourselves, each other, and the world in which we live.Teaching as if Life Matters is an open letter to teachers offering guidance and encouragement on how to nurture students in ways that make teaching and learning meaningful. In short, it is a passionate plea for transformative teaching. Informed by the alternative educational philosophies of John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, and Ivan Illich, this book invites teachers and students to participate in a new education culture.This fascinating and urgently needed book will inspire today's educators to inspire their students.

Author Biography

Christopher Uhl is a professor of biology at Pennsylvania State University. His 30-year teaching career has been marked by experimentation and innovation. It is in this vem, and because of the unfolding environmental crisis, that he wrote the book Developing Ecological Consciousness: Path to a Sustainable World. Dana L. Stuchul taught high school chemistry and environmental science before her strong interest in interdisciplinary teaching sent her to graduate school. Today she reaches in the Department of Curriculum and Instructions at Penn State. Inspired by Ivan Illich, her scholarship focuses on the arts of living, suffering, and dying.

Table of Contents

Gratitudes	p. ix
Prologue	p. xi
Teaching as if Life Doesn't Matter: Where We Went Wrong	p. 1
We Are Not Just Brains on a Stick: Relationship with Our Feeling Bodies	p. 16
Loving the Questions: Relationship with Our Minds	p. 48
Seeing Ourselves with New Eyes: Relationship with Self	p. 76
Cultivating Classroom Kinship: Relationship with the Human Other	p. 111
We Are Expressions of Everything: Relationship with Earth and the Cosmos	p. 153
Epilogue	p. 185
Bibliography	p. 189
Index	p. 195
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