The First-Year Urban High School Teacher: Holding the Torch, Lighting the Fire

Paul Weinberg (Vanderbilt U.) and Carl Weinberg (U. of California, Los Angeles) provide this account of the former's experience in teaching mathematics in a charter school in San Jose, which was located in a highly-urbanized area. The successes and failures that occur in urban schools are presented equally, with an emphasis on how outcomes are often dictated by school policies, funding and human resources, or the lack thereof. This story should be of interest to teachers, school administrators and educators who must teach within the constraints of an urban school system. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Carl Weinberg is a professor emeritus in the Graduate School of Education at UCLA where he taught the sociology of education and curriculum studies. He began his teaching career in 1955 and taught in inner-city secondary schools in Philadelphia and Los Angeles for six years. For the past ten years of his tenure at UCLA he worked in teacher education where he introduced perspectives from humanistic and confluent education to prospective teachers. Paul J. Weinberg spent two years teaching mathematics at Leuzinger High School, a traditional urban school in Lawndale, California. He left Leuzinger to help with the start-up process of a public charter school in San Jose, California, working for the Leadership Public Schools organization as the mathematics department chair and head of assessment. He is currently doing doctoral work at Vanderbilt University's Peabody School of Education and Human Development with an academic focus on mathematics and science education.