Teaching for a Living Democracy: Project-Based Learning in the English and History Classroom offers both a method for civic engagement and a message of faith in the power of young people to serve as agents for change within their own communities right now.
Teachers College Record Using his own teaching practice as the foundation, Block illustrates effective, context-based principles that have allowed him to teach in ways that encourage democratic thought and civic engagement. He does not prescribe best practices, but rather invites the reader into his classroom to experience his projects, showing rather than telling what works. In his descriptions of classwork, Block presents a raw picture not only of classroom successes, but of challenges, pivots, and necessary adaptations that accurately depict the often messy space of learning.
Choice In a time when standardized tests are increasingly critiqued by teachers, students, families, and communities, Blocks work offers an important alternative to such emaciated yardsticks of learning. Indeed, by showing us what is possible in a classroom, he provides us with more than a model: He gives us hope, an animating force in any democracy.
Democracy & Education
