Puzzling Moments....Empowering Teachers within our Urban Classrooms-Posting for Sept 18th

I had the awesome privilege of reading a Puzzling Moments, Teachable Moments: Practicing Teacher Research in Urban Classrooms (2009). I am always reading literature which connects with the school system in which I work in. I started thinking about the lack of teacher action research taking place with the group of teachers I mentor.  I started to look at how many problems we discuss, but rarely do they investigate or research ways to improve their practice.  I thought about the schools CCLC meetings, and ways that this book could serve as a starting point for developing research from our “puzzling moments”.  I felt that the reading could be easily applied to their teaching practice, simply because it addresses not only puzzling moments for teachers, but students as well.  I thought of the book as a resource, for teacher research. I especially enjoyed reading the chapters and thinking to myself, “wow this sounds like something that has happened to one of my teachers and they had no idea what to do”.  This books serves not only as resource to the “what should I do” or “what am I doing wrong” questions, but also focusing on the notion, that as teachers they can acquire the tools to serve as their own researchers and bring solutions which are unique to our classroom settings. This book focused on the strengthens, rather than the weaknesses commonly associated with urban classroom students. With the focus on the students strengthens, the book empowers educators to focus on what the students can do, rather than what they can’t do to inform their own teaching pedagogy.  How could this book serve as a support to a school leader within an Urban school system to support their teachers?