Sketches in Democracy

Notes from an Urban Classroom

By (author) Lisa DeLorenzo

Not available to order

Publication date:

29 February 2012

Length of book:

168 pages

Publisher

R&L Education

ISBN-13: 9781610483056

Sketches of Democracy is a captivating book that chronicles the first year in the life of a new urban high school. Based on journal entries and educational literature, this book traces the author’s challenging journey toward creating a democratic community of learners within a tangle of socio-economic and political issues. An experienced public school teacher and university educator, DeLorenzo brings a unique perspective to the teaching/learning process. Her poignant anecdotal stories, along with information from authoritative sources, provide a narrative that is deeply reflective and affecting. This book is a must-read for teachers, teacher candidates, and teacher educators who share a passion for teaching those on the margins of society.
The author sings in two voices—the urban classroom teacher and the educational researcher—artfully harmonizing her journal writings and recollections about specific events within her teaching day with her analyses of those events within the larger educational and social system. By using a narrative style, the author’s hope is to provide a rich contextual description of what it means to be an urban teacher that also serves as a jumping off point for preservice teachers to develop appropriate urban teaching philosophies. She bolsters the narrative with relevant and poignant findings from educational research, greatly increasing the ability to generalize from her singular experience.

The author never uses deficit language in discussing these difficult topics, instead choosing to focus on what the students have instead of what they do not. The author displays amazing empathy as she attempts to really understand who her students are while at the same time discovering herself.

This book would be a valuable resource in a preservice teacher preparation program, with an eye toward aiding the development of a critical pedagogy framework that is better fit to current urban teaching contexts. This book would also provide a seed for in-service teachers to critically reflect on their practice through a book study group or personal journaling. Educational administrators might consider this book in re-evaluating the negative and pervasive effects of inequity of power within their school communities. Ultimately, this book argues for the inherent connection between education and democracy. To that end, this book offers a pragmatic and philosophical beacon of hope