Structure and Improvisation in Creative Teaching provides a convincing argument for viewing teaching and learning as improvisational activities, and the chapters work together as a response to Sawyer’s question, “What makes good teachers great?” Their studies and stories suggest that skillful teaching with improvisation requires teachers to create and flexibly implement curriculum materials (i.e., the curriculum paradox); to scaffold individual
student learning while being receptive to the needs and interests of the classroom community (i.e., the learning paradox); and to manage the tension between this responsiveness to students and the responsibility to plans, standards, and subject matter (i.e., the teacher paradox). It is our hope that the examples provided in these chapters will inspire teacher preparation and professional development programs to embrace the notion of teaching as improvisation, and to provide teachers with opportunities to explicitly examine, unpack, and approximate the instructional practices that draw on the kind of presence at the heart of the three paradoxes.