The Enduring Classroom: Teaching Then and Now (University of Chicago Press) has just been published. For those readers who may be interested in how I came to write this book and the people who helped me complete it, I offer the "Acknowledgements" page of the book.

Acknowledgements

Writing this book grew from my belief that now was the time to pull together the different strands of my experience as a high school history teacher in the Cleveland and Washington, D.C. public schools, as a district administrator in Washington D.C., as Arlington County (VA) Superintendent and, finally, as a professor at Stanford University. I have taught over six decades in classrooms where I learned and practiced the complex art of teaching.

During these years, I had also written about the history of teaching in How Teachers Taught (1993) and Hugging the Middle (2009). And in Confessions of a School Reformer (2021), I had delved into my memories of being a student in Pittsburgh (PA) public schools, a social studies teacher in Cleveland and Washington, D.C., and a professor at Stanford University.

Even as I reconstructed my professional life in this book, it became clear that teaching had been central to my daily work since 1956. But so had been doing research. Answering puzzling questions was critical to understanding my encounters in diverse classrooms. And as a professor, for the first time, I had the time to not only teach and observe teachers doing lessons in schools, but also reflect upon my experiences.  

As a researcher, then, who had spent years observing teachers in classrooms and plumbing the history of teaching in the U.S., I have slowly and, I might add, carefully drawn a few conclusions about how teachers teach. Teaching Then and Now brings together the fruits of my classroom experiences and observations that I have accumulated over a half-century about the practice of teaching.

As any author knows, no book writes itself. Writers get help from other writers who sought to understand how teachers teach in the past and now. But of equal, if not more importance, is the support I have received from family and friends.  I acknowledge here those who have helped me reach this point in my life when I could write Teaching Then and Now.

My two daughters, Sondra and Janice Cuban, and granddaughter, Barbaraciela are foremost in my mind every day. They are my immediate family. My love for them remains unconditional. Decades-long friendships with Nancy Merenstein, Sam Balk, Jane David, Bill Plitt, Sarah Blackstone and Harvey Pressman, Heather Kirkpatrick, Joel Westheimer, David and So-ching Brazer, and Milbrey McLaughlin have both stretched and fulfilled me.  I am one fortunate but sad old-timer.

Why sad? Although grateful for living a long and full life, I have lost immediate family and dear friends while writing these books. Most of all, I miss my wife Barbara who died in 2009; we had 51 years together that enriched my life and helped make me and my daughters who we are today. Recent deaths of dear friends David Mazer and Yus Merenstein, separated geographically for decades but nonetheless staying in close touch--hit me hard.  Even as I write this acknowledgement, I feel their absence.

After writing nearly two dozen books with various publishers, I returned to the University of Chicago Press. I did so because they had published my first scholarly book—Urban School Chiefs under Fire (1976). So, I want to thank Elizabeth Branch Dyson, Executive Editor at the University of Chicago Press, who acquired this book, and helpfully prodded me numerous times to sandpaper the manuscript’s rough edges.

I acknowledge here also how lucky I have been to have had a career in teaching across varied venues and having the opportunities to think and write about my experiences in classrooms.

All of the family and friends who helped me in numerous, often unspoken ways, write this book, I thank. Their help, however, does not relieve me of making clear that any errors or misinterpretations found in this book are mine and mine only.  

Larry Cuban

October 2022