Reflective Planning, Teaching and Evaluation: K-12

Reflective Planning, Teaching and Evaluation, K-12 takes a constructivist approach and offers an original Reflective Action model of how thinking, caring, teachers function in real classrooms.

Judy Eby began teaching in 1969, and has been a classroom teacher, a gifted program coordinator, a teacher educator (De Paul University, University of San Diego, and San Diego State University), and a mentor teacher in the Beginning Teacher Support Academy with the San Diego Unified School District. Now retired, she still enthusiastically pursues her role as a connoisseur of best educational practices. She actively searches out and researches best practices, and shares her experiences and perceptions with other educators. She offers her experience to school districts as an educational consultant, specializing in the development of reflective action and professional portfolios for teachers.

She also volunteers in children's literacy programs on both sides of the San Diego-Tijuana border. Her most treasured project is the Tecolote Centro de Comunidad, a children's center in Tijuana, where she has created and runs a children's library for the community. She also participates in before and after school programs on both sides of the border.

Because Judy knows that teacher educators deserve to have the ideas of someone currently immersed in teacher education, she invited Adrienne Herrell, a children's literacy specialist, and Jim Hicks, a high school physics teacher, to co-author this book.

Adrienne Herrell received her Ph.D. from Florida State University in early childhood education/early literacy. She currently teaches early literacy, literacy for English language learners and reading/language arts assessment classes in the elementary credential and reading/ language arts master's programs at California State University, Fresno.

She is author, or co-author of three other books published by Merrill/Prentice Hall: Camcorder in the Classroom (1997) with Joel P. Fowler, Fifty Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners (2000), and Fifty Strategies for Assessing and Increasing Reading Comprehension (in press) with Michael Jordan. Adrienne taught for 23 years in public school in Florida but considers raising five sons to be her most valuable life experience.

Jim Hicks, an award-winning educator, has been teaching physics at Barrington High School, District 220, Barrington, IL for 35 years. He received a master's degree in physics from Purdue University in 1970 and in a Ph.D. in science education from Northwestern University in 1978. He has taught part time at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, University of Illinois at Chicago, and McHenry County College in Crystal Lake, IL.

His numerous educator awards include the Radio Shack Tandy Scholar Award as a top secondary educator in America in 1999; Instructional Innovation in Mathematics and Science Award from Business Week in 1992; Most Outstanding Physics Teacher, State of Illinois, awarded by the American Association of Physics Illinois chapter in 1991; and the Kohl Education International Foundation Award for exemplary teaching in 1985. The Omni Society of Lake County IL presented Jim with an International Youth Mentor award in 1998. He and Chris Chiaverinas of New Trier High School, District 203 in Winnetka, Illinois, were the subject of two documentaries: Rock and Roll Physics, produced and directed by Kurtis Productions of Chicago, and Amusement Park Physics, produced by Beyond 2000, an Australian based television production company.

Jim and his wife, Fran, live in Crystal Lake, IL. They have six children. "The perfect teacher, mother, and friend" is how he describes Fran, a middle-school science teacher who has offered her own reflective action in Chapter 10.