The Student-Centered Classroom: Transforming Your Teaching and Grading Practices

Student-centered classrooms make it possible for schools to fulfill their best and most enduring promise: to give students a fair chance to grow up literate, open-minded, and prepared to succeed. With this resource as your guide, you will learn six teaching practices to help you leave behind one-size-fits-all lessons, tests, and grades in favor of a student-centered approach that is interactive, individualized, and rigorous.

Use this resource to create a coherent, effective, and immensely satisfying student-centered approach in any grade level or content area:

• Learn how to use the two essential qualities of education, respect and agency, to help students achieve learning goals.
• Find affirmation in being part of a community of educators that is creating the potential for a much-needed shift in the approach to education and academic rigor.
• Discover ways to use speaking, listening, writing, and reading in new and creative ways.
• Explore the essential components of a student-centered approach to evaluation and assessment.
• Understand how to counter misconceptions about student-centered learning when communicating with colleagues, administrators, and parents.

Contents:
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
About the Author
Introduction
Chapter 1: Encourage Academic Success
Chapter 2: Support Personal Growth
Chapter 3: Make Space for Speaking and Listening
Chapter 4: Deepen Understanding With Writing and Reading
Chapter 5: Meet Individual Needs in the Evaluation Process
Chapter 6: Communicate With the School Community
Conclusion
Appendix: Frequently Asked Questions
References and Resources

Jeanetta Jones Miller has been an educator since 1986. Her education experiences range from California to Connecticut, and from working with continuation high school students in a voluntary diploma program to integrating all subject areas with fifth graders to taking a student-centered approach in high school. She has taught American studies and senior projects, as well as a variety of English courses. Jeanetta has served as department chair and mentored many teachers with a consistent focus on research, development, and implementation of strategies that help all students engage deeply in learning.

Jeanetta has participated in a number of organizations related to her teaching and leadership goals, including the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the Connecticut Writing Project. She served on district committees that studied graduation standards, K-12 language arts, and aspects of learning such as reflection and self-direction. She was a lead writer for Newtown High School's (Connecticut) successful application for recognition as a US Department of Education Blue Ribbon School. In 2010, she won NCTE's James Moffett Classroom Research Award. The proposal that resulted in this award articulates Jeanetta's conviction that individual classroom teachers can take a student-centered approach to teaching and evaluation within a traditional school culture, which was further developed in a 2013 article for English Journal that has since served as a resource for professional development programs. Jeanetta has also contributed to California English. With two colleagues, she wrote High Stakes High School, a Kaplan publication designed to help parents navigate standardized testing.

Jeanetta received a bachelor's degree from Mills College and qualified for both multiple- and single-subject teaching credentials at California State University - East Bay. As a graduate, she earned a master's degree in education from Western Connecticut State University and an intermediate administrator's certificate from Sacred Heart University.