Active Learning

Barry Gilmore was the Middle School Head and later the Assistant Head of School for Teaching and Learning at Hutchison School in Memphis, Tennessee. A National Board Certified Teacher, he taught English and social studies for nearly twenty years. Barry is the author of seven education books and the former president of the Tennessee Council of Teachers of English. Awards for his teaching have come from NCTE, TCTE, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Tennessee Holocaust Commission. He passed away in 2019 at the age of 50 and is dearly missed by his students, family, friends and fellow faculty. Gravity Goldberg is an international educational consultant and author of eight books on teaching. Mindsets & Moves (Corwin Literacy, 2015) put her on the world stage with its practical ways to cultivate student agency, leading to speaking engagements and foreign translations of her work. She has almost 20 years of teaching experience, including positions as a science teacher, reading specialist, third grade teacher, special educator, literacy coach, staff developer, assistant professor, educational consultant, and yoga teacher. Gravity holds a B.A. and M.Ed. from Boston College and a doctorate in education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is the founding director of Gravity Goldberg, LLC, a team that provides side-by-side coaching for teachers.

"Gravity and Barry have crafted a far-reaching, practical encyclopedia of teaching unhooked from any particular educational bias other than becoming a responsive, effective, powerful educator. Whoever you are, at whatever stage of your career, this book will help you to find new ways to engage, push, and support your students in any subject. Like a surgeon's assistant, they have found a way to present you with the exact tool you need at the moment you need it, as if they were standing over your shoulder as you teach, ready to say - look at what's happening, try this. Just reading this book made me feel more empowered to teach." -- Kate Roberts "This is your go-to professional book for preparing students for today and their future! Learn the teaching moves, learning tools, collaborative structures, and reading and writing routines that develop students' creative, empathetic, problem-solving, and independent thinking while fostering trusting relationships. You'll find tips for getting started, using assessments that inform instruction and intervention, suggestions for using the book as well as charts that open each chapter showcasing all the teaching and learning methods at-a-glance!" -- Laura Robb "Active Learning: 40 Teaching Methods to Engage Students in Every Class and Every Subject, is a brilliant book you will consistently reach for, reread, and talk about with others. Across each page, Barry Gilmore and Gravity Goldberg provide practical and actionable strategies for engaging the mind, body, heart, and souls of everyone in the learning community. While deeply grounded in research, this text clearly lays out classroom-ready ideas that enable practitioners to foster a strong sense of community interdependence while simultaneously promoting student independence. This professional text leaves readers more prepared to approach daily work with trust, confidence, and joy." -- Pam Koutrakos "This book addresses a fundamental, yet sometimes overlooked, aspect of education: teaching students how to think. By breaking down the correlation between student behaviors and the 'why' behind teaching practices, Gilmore and Goldberg present practical methods to promote thinking in any classroom in a way that is accessible and actionable for new and veteran teachers. I highly recommend this book to any teacher who wants to center and grow their students' thinking." -- Carmen Lacherza "Barry Gilmore and Gravity Goldberg conceptualize "gold standard" teaching methods through the lens of current educational research on cognition and motivation. It is a must read for all teachers entering secondary education who are seeking a well-rounded toolkit of instructional practices. Moreover, this text is valuable for veteran teachers, who likely incorporate these teaching methods daily, but can now appreciate the purpose, foundation, and most effective implementation strategies to strengthen their practice." -- Dr. Brad Siegel "This is a very solid foundation text that I would hope to be used for new teachers and/or in new teacher training programs. I would have loved this type of easy-to-use manual as I planned lessons during my first few years of teaching!" -- Theresa Walter