Since the original Small Teaching appeared in the fall of 2016, its two simple premises have been embraced by teachers around the world. The first premise is that we can improve the learning, personal development, and well‐being of our students by paying attention to the small choices we make as we are designing learning experiences for them. The second premise is that those small choices will have the greatest impact if they are informed by current research on how human beings learn. Put those two premises together, and you have a program designed to improve education on an everyday scale, without the need for massive investments of time and money, or without falling into the trap of mindlessly embracing the latest fad in educational theory or educational technology.

The original book was intended for teachers in the physical classrooms of higher education, where I have spent most of my career. But the applicability of its core principles to the online classroom was apparent to a veteran of online teaching, Flower Darby, who approached me a few years ago with the proposal to co‐author the book's first sequel, Small Teaching Online. That book appeared just before the pandemic hit in March of 2020, at a time that teachers everywhere were suddenly confronted with the challenge of teaching online, many for the first time. Flower had written a terrific book (with just a little help from me), which meant that Small Teaching Online helped promote the concept of small teaching to a wider audience.

I had always believed that the learning principles I had researched for both of those books were ones that applied to adult learners, college‐aged students, and high school students. I wasn't quite sure about their applicability to elementary students, although my wife, a kindergarten teacher, had assured me that she saw them at play in her kindergarten classroom as I saw them in my college‐level courses. But it was not until Sarah Connell Sanders had drafted the book that you hold in your hands that I became fully convinced that the concept of small teaching belonged in the elementary classroom as well. Sarah has translated the core ideas from the original book into a program that can improve the learning and development of your students through simple, everyday changes to your teaching practice.

I will confess, though, that what makes me especially excited to introduce this book to the world, and what makes it stand out in a crowded field of education books, is the quality of the writing. Although I earned all of my degrees in English literature, for the past two decades I have been researching and writing about education. I have learned from painful experience that many of the articles and books I read in this field are written with barely serviceable prose, designed to make a point and move on. But as someone who has continued to write about and teach writing and literature, I have a deep appreciation for a book that not only gives me great ideas, but presents those ideas in beautiful prose and engaging stories.

You are holding just such a book in your hands. I first became acquainted with the writing of Sarah Connell Sanders by admiring her essays in our local city magazine, where she writes about culture, food, fashion, and more. When I finally met her in person, and discovered that she was a veteran teacher and school librarian working in the same public school district where my wife also taught, I realized immediately that she was the ideal person to share the gospel of small teaching to elementary educators everywhere. As with Small Teaching Online, I made a small contribution to the creation of this book, but most of the words you will read are Sarah's. I hope that you will find as much pleasure as I have in reading her graceful prose.

One of Sarah's accomplishments in this book is the way in which it pushes the ideas from the original book into new territories, and offers new reflections on the idea of small teaching. You will find my favorite example of such a reflection in the book's introduction, in a pair of sentences that I wish I had written myself:

I want to know the fundamentals of how children learn and then be allowed to use my own creativity and experience to apply those lessons to my own classroom. No matter what new state mandate or administrative fiat has been sent down to shape my classroom, I want to make sure I am still staying true to the basic principles of education that will ensure my students are safe, happy, and learning.

This might be the best description of what I hope all three Small Teaching books offer to teachers everywhere: an accessible introduction to some new research on how their students learn, some examples of how teachers can translate that research into daily classrooms routines, and a deep respect for the creativity and commitment of readers.

I have spent my whole life among teachers: my mother, my wife, some of my siblings and their spouses, friends from high school and college, and all of the colleagues that both my wife and I have worked with over the past two or three decades. Teachers have always been the most creative people I have known in my life. The teachers I know don't need to have someone standing over them and ensuring that they are doing their best work. They are dedicated to their work and to their students. Give them the information they need, and they will find ways to surprise themselves and their students with what they dream up.

I hope that Sarah's ideas, and the concept of small teaching, will give you some new fodder for your teacherly creativity. I hope that the opportunity to exercise your pedagogical imagination in new ways will inspire you to take renewed joy in your work. I hope, finally, it will give you a reminder of what inspired you to become a teacher in the first place.