Meeting Students Where They Live: Motivation in Urban Schools

Motivation and hope are two items in short supply in many urban schools. But it doesn’t have to be that way, according to Richard L. Curwin. Based on input from teachers across the United States and on his own personal experiences, Curwin offers suggestions that every school can use to keep students in the classroom and looking toward a brighter future.

In Meeting Students Where They Live, Curwin urges teachers and administrators in urban schools to move away from a focus on control, uniformity, lack of tolerance, and ironclad rules toward an approach based on compassion, understanding, tolerance, and safety for all. Each chapter examines problems common to urban schools and offers comprehensive, long-reaching remedies, plus concrete strategies for engaging troubled and hard-to-reach youth.

Meeting Students Where They Live explores ways to:

Welcome all students. Build lessons that involve and engage. Stay motivated and energized. Design assignments that students will actually do. Use evaluation to encourage and build learning rather than defeat it.

Meeting Students Where They Live also includes classroom activity sheets submitted by teachers working in a variety of urban environments-from inner-city schools to a detention center.