Real Learning, Real Work: School-to-Work As High School Reform(Transforming Teaching)

First Published in 1998. A central paradox of American education today is that classrooms are often not conducive to learning. Young people who are bright, active participants in outside-of- school settings become disengaged or hostile in the classroom. Through detailed portrayals of innovative programs, Real Learning, Real Work demonstrates how students can learn to embrace what they learn in the classroom when they are able to use the intellectual tools of the sciences and the humanities to make sense of their outside experience.

Table of Contents:
CHAPTER 1Project-Based Learning: Spilling into LifeI. Stories from the FieldII. Design Principles for ProjectsCHAPTER 2Grounding Projects in Community Life: The Search for Utmost SatisfactionI. Stories from the FieldII. Connecting Community Service and Work-Based LearningCHAPTER 3Connecting School and WorkI. New Combinations of Learning and WorkII. Making Workplaces into Learning Environments: Learning Plans and Internship ProjectsIII. Making Schoolwork More Like Real Work: Senior Projects, Field Studies, and Career ExplorationIV. Developing Common Criteria for Real Work and SchoolworkCHAPTER 4Margaret Vickers -- Working to Learn: Building Science Understandings Through Work-Based LearningI. Stories from the FieldII. Science in School: Changing the SubjectCHAPTER 5Robert C. Riordan -- Hands On, Heads Up: Uncovering the Humanities in Work-Based Learning Programs I. Hands on Humanities at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School II. Rethinking Curriculum and Pedagogy: Design Principles III. Writing and Reflection in School-to-Work Programs IV. Work-Based Learning and the Humanities Standards CHAPTER 6 Lessons from the Field I. Design Issues for Schools II. The Big Picture of High School Reform

About the Author :
Future in Boston. She has 30 years of experience in the education field and is a former editor of The HarvardEducation Newsletter.

Review :
"Here's an extremely valuable contribution to the vitally important but perplexing problem of how to ease the transition of young people from school to the world of work. Practical, thoughtful, and wise, this is a valuable guide for practitioners as well as policy makers." -- Robert B. Reich, Former Secretary of Labor, Professor at Brandeis University "If educators, business leaders or policy analysts miss this book, they are ignoring the most promising route to improving American high schools--the melding of improved academic learning, with actual experience in the workplace, in community service and in other realms." -- Harold Howe II, former United States Commissioner of Education "Drawing from research and from a fistful of telling examples, Steinberg and her colleagues make a convincing case for a powerful secondary education that is situated in real places as well as in traditional disciplines. This is an important book that tells the stories of better secondary schools and reminds us how complex and yet how commonsensical a sound education for adolescents can and must become." -- Theodore R. Sizer, founder and Chairman of the Coalition of Essential Schools "At last a book that has something for everyone who has ever thought about why we must reform high schools. This book should be required reading for teachers and principals in secondary schools throughout the country." -- Doris Alvarez, principal of Hoover High School, 1997 National Principal of the Year