The Chicago Handbook for Teachers: A Practical Guide to the College Classroom

Those who teach college students have extensive training in their disciplines, but unlike their counterparts at the high school or elementary school level, they often have surprisingly little instruction in the craft of teaching itself.  The Chicago Handbook for Teachers, Second Edition, is an extraordinarily helpful guide for anyone facing the daunting challenge of putting together a course and delivering it successfully.

Representing teachers at all stages of their careers, the authors, including distinguished historian Alan Brinkley, offer practical advice for almost any situation a new teacher might face, from preparing a syllabus to managing classroom dynamics. Beginning with a nuts and bolts plan for designing a course, the handbook also explains how to lead a discussion, evaluate your own teaching, give an effective lecture, supervise students' writing and research, create and grade exams, and more.

This new edition is thoroughly revised for contemporary concerns, with updated coverage on the use of electronic resources and on the challenge of creating and sustaining an inclusive classroom. A new chapter on science education and new coverage of the distinctive issues faced by adjunct faculty broaden the book’s audience considerably. The addition of sample teaching materials in the appendixes enhances the practical, hands-on focus of the second edition. Its broad scope and wealth of specific tips will make The Chicago Handbook for Teachers useful both as a comprehensive guide for beginning educators and a reference manual for experienced instructors.

Esam El-Fakahany is professor of psychiatry, pharmacology, and neuroscience at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

Alan Brinkley is the Allan Nevins Professor of History and former provost at Columbia University, where he received the Great Teacher Award. Betty Dessants is associate professor of history at Shippensburg University. Esam El-Fakahany is professor of psychiatry, pharmacology, and neuroscience at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Michael Flamm is professor of history at Ohio Wesleyan University. Charles Forcey, Jr., is a PhD candidate in modern American intellectual history at Columbia University. Mathew L. Ouellett is director of the Center for Teaching at the University of Massachussets Amherst. Eric Rothschild is a history teacher who retired in 1998 as chair of the social studies department at Scarsdale High School.