For the second edition of Teaching That Matters, I have chosen a new title: Conversation Classrooms: A Profound Shift from Delivery of Information to Partnership. Through conversations, teachers will build relationships with their students, and students will do so with one another.

No longer will teachers come to class with an agenda of delivering information later to be returned on quizzes and tests. Instead, they will see themselves on a bridge to bring information to share, to invite thinking, wondering, questioning, ideas, respect. Experiences are at the center, mutual understanding intrinsic, everyone free to express ideas, having the right to speak, everyone listening. Teacher and students learning together.

Education is not about treating the brain as a vessel to be filled. It is not about asking for regurgitation. To educate, from the Latin educere, means to lead out, to lead forth. Each day different. Each class unique. Some groups naturally curious, others ask lots of questions, still others remain quiet. Some students ‘get it,’ others struggle. And each day is a new day, an opportunity to learn and think, an opportunity to know each other better.