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Scholarship March 29, 2017

Jane Addams in the Classroom: Essays Bringing Jane Addams’s Innovative Ideas On Education To The Teachers of Today and Tomorrow

The Wabash Center

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Author
Schaafsma, David, ed.
Publisher
University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL
ISBN
9780252080258
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction - In Search for a Forum: Jane Addams, Hull-House, and Connecting Learning and Life (David Schaafsma and Todd DeStigter)

ch. 1 In Good Company: Jane Addams’s Democratic Experimentalism (Todd DeStigter)
ch. 2 “To Learn from Life Itself ”: Experience and Education at Hull House” (Bridget K. O’Rourke)
ch. 3 Problems of Memory, History, and Social Change: The Case of Jane Addams (Petra Munro Hendry)
ch. 4 Jane Addams: Citizen Writers and a “Wider Justice” (Lanette Grate)
ch. 5 Student Stories and Jane Addams: Unfolding Reciprocity in an English Classroom (Beth Steffen)
ch. 6 Scaling Fences with Jane, William, and August: Meeting the Objective and Subjective Needs of Future University Students and Future Teachers (D ar ren Tug gle)
ch. 7 A Timeless Problem: Competing Goals (Jennifer Krikava)
ch. 8 Surveying the Territory: The Family and Social Claims (Erin Vail)
ch. 9 Story and the Possibilities of Imagination: Addams’s Legacy and the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award (Susan C. Griffith)
ch. 10 Participating in History: The Museum as a Site for Radical Empathy, Hull-House (Lisa Lee and Lisa Junkin Lopez)
ch. 11 Manifestations of Altruism: Sympathetic Understanding, Narrative, and Democracy (David Schaafsma)

Afterword. The Fire Within: Evocations toward a Committed Life (Ruth Vinz)

Contributors
Index
Click Here for Book Review
Abstract: Once intent on being good to people, Jane Addams later dedicated herself to the idea of being good with people, establishing mutually-responsive and reciprocal relationships with those she served at Hull House. The essays in Jane Addams in the Classroom explore how Addams's life, work, and philosophy provide invaluable lessons for teachers seeking connection with their students.

Balancing theoretical and practical considerations, the collection examines Addams's emphasis on listening to and learning from those around her and encourages contemporary educators to connect with students through innovative projects and teaching methods. In the first essays, Addams scholars lay out how her narratives drew on experience, history, and story to explicate theories she intended as guides to practice. Six teacher-scholars then establish Addams's ongoing relevance by connecting her principles to exciting events in their own classrooms. An examination of the Jane Addams Children's Book Award and a fictional essay on Addams's work and ideas round out the volume.

Accessible and wide-ranging, Jane Addams in the Classroom offers inspiration for educators while adding to the ongoing reconsideration of Addams's contributions to American thought.

Contributors include Todd DeStigter, Lanette Grate, Susan Griffith, Lisa Junkin, Jennifer Krikava, Lisa Lee, Petra Munro, Bridget O'Rourke, David Schaafsma, Beth Steffen, Darren Tuggle, Erin Vail, and Ruth Vinz.

"These well-crafted essays continue the conversation about Jane Addams as a distinctive voice in American letters, one that appeals to scholars across academic disciplines. David Schaafsma's collection speaks to a wide variety of readers, particularly those who are themselves teachers."--Katherine Joslin, author of Jane Addams: A Writer's Life

"Jane Addams in the Classroom makes major contributions to scholarship on Jane Addams--but also, more broadly, to educational leadership models and teachers’ own individual avenues to social activism. By connecting with Addams as a theorizing story-teller, as well as with scholarship on Dewey, Freire, and other advocates for progressive pedagogy, this collection provides a useful lens for educators seeking to examine their own teaching practices critically. Given the pivotal role that Addams played in community-based education promoting sustained civic engagement, this book is long overdue."--Sarah R. Robbins, author of Managing Literacy, Mothering America (From the Publisher)