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SONIA NIETO (Ed.). Why We Teach Now. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. (2015). 276 pp. $29.95 (paperback). (ISBN 978-0-8077-5587-7).
Teaching and learning after the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2002) has increased teacher accountability through greater amounts of testing and the standardization of the core curriculum. Approximately 4050% of teachers are exiting the profession after five years, citing dissatisfaction, lack of respect, and poor administrative support as the main reasons for high teacher attrition (Ingersoll, 2012). As a result of the high level of American teachers leaving the teaching profession, Sonia Nieto (2005) published a compilation of stories called Why We Teach. Why We Teach sought to increase teacher accountability, featuring stories from 25 teachers with varied amounts of experience (1-35+ years) prior to the implementation of the NCLB act. Why We Teach Now serves as a follow-up to Nieto (2005), focusing on the impact that the NCLB act has had on teachers. Why We Teach (Nieto, 2005) asked teachers what motivated them to teach, despite the pressure to maintain test scores and teach a highly standardized curriculum. Nieto (2005) gathered perspectives from 23 teachers at various stages of their career, as well as teachers who have retired and/or left the profession, and discovered that teachers continued to teach simply because they wanted to make a difference in the lives of future generations. The desire to make a difference has been labeled as the discourse of possibility, a way of thinking critically but hopefully about teaching and learning in the quest for equality and social justice (pp. 10-11). Even though...