Download or read book The Battle for Room 314 written by Ed Boland and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this insightfully honest and moving memoir about the realities of teaching in an inner-city school, Ed Boland "smashes the dangerous myth of the hero-teacher [and] shows us how high the stakes are for our most vulnerable students" (Piper Kerman, author of Orange is the New Black). In a fit of idealism, Ed Boland left a twenty-year career as a non-profit executive to teach in a tough New York City public high school. But his hopes quickly collided headlong with the appalling reality of his students' lives and a hobbled education system unable to help them. Freddy runs a drug ring for his incarcerated brother; Nee-cole is homeschooled on the subway by her brilliant homeless mother; Byron's Ivy League dream is dashed because he is undocumented. In the end, Boland isn't hoisted on his students' shoulders and no one passes AP anything. This is no urban fairy tale of at-risk kids saved by a Hollywood hero, but a searing indictment of schools that claim to be progressive but still fail their students. Told with compassion, humor, and a keen eye, Boland's story is sure to ignite debate about the future of American education and attempts to reform it.
Download or read book Worth Writing About written by Jake Wizner and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-10-10 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who am I? This is the question that many adolescents ask during the turbulent middle and high school years. In Worth Writing About: Exploring Memoir with Adolescents, Jake Wizner addresses how searching for the answer to this question leads his students to reflection, to reading, and ultimately to deeper, more meaningful writing. Wizner, a 20-year teaching veteran, believes that a well-designed memoir unit not only aligns with the Common Core State Standards but also forges community in the classroom, encourages kids to read nonfiction, and works wonders with students who struggle with their writing'sor with their lives.Worth Writing About addresses the most common challenges teachers face when teaching memoir writing: How do you help students who say that nothing interesting has happened in their lives? How do you help students balance what is meaningful with what is too personal to share? How do you help students overcome the I don't remember syndrome?Wizner delves into the craft of writing, from using mentor texts to crafting leads and memorable endings. He uses student models from his own classroom to show the deep, important work his students produce during the memoir unit. By writing about themselves and how they view the world around them, students discover more about themselves and how they want to move forward in the future.
Download or read book Writing a Life written by Katherine Bomer and published by Heinemann Educational Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Writing a Life, Katherine Bomer presents classroom-tested strategies for tapping memoir's power, including ways to help kids generate ideas to write about, elaborate on and make meaning from their memories, and learn craft from published memoirs.
Download or read book Memoirs of a Middle School Teacher written by Patricia Patrick Marr and published by Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 2022-11-03 with total page 53 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Middle-schoolers are interesting creatures. Teaching them was both challenging and fulfilling. Sixth grade, in my opinion, is the most difficult grade to teach. Too many times to count, mothers claimed that their child had never done "that" before. I learned to respond, "That's because he wasn't in the sixth grade before." As hard as it was at times, as I look back on my days in middle school, I can reminisce with a chuckle at most of their antics. Too often, though, it was I who said or did something foolish in the heat of the moment. If I had kept notes, I could have filled hundreds of pages with the comical things that happened in the middle grades. Instead, these are my memories.
Download or read book Memoirs of TEACHING the GOOD the BAD and the INAPPROPRIATE with Strategies for Teaching to Children Not to Tests written by Catherine Iaccarino and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2013-03-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catherine Iaccarino, a veteran teacher of both young students and instructors, shares various strategies for departing from the text. Instead, she focuses on methods for teaching children how they can learn along with what to learn. In Memoirs of Teaching; The Good, The Bad and The Inappropriate with Strategies for Teaching to Children Not to Tests readers will see what makes Noah Webster spin in his grave, short vowels so sad, and how Shakespeare's wild and crazy "Henry V" and "Hamlet" inspire and motivate fifth grade students. Through the kinesthetic approach readers observe how fingers can compute the sounds of letters into words. Forget about the box and learn to think in a circle. This book is divided into two parts. It humorously highlights teaching situations with outcomes that span from the good, to the bad and the incredibly inappropriate. Readers may feel free to snicker at the faux pas, cringe at the irony of laws and orders, or relate to an experience that warmed their heart to a teacher. The book then moves on to provide successful instructional methods to bring the joy back to learning and teaching. Often, the lessons learned are much more valuable than the intention of the lesson planned. Recognizing these teachable moments is when true learning takes place.
Download or read book New Directions in Teaching Memoir written by Dan Kirby and published by Heinemann Educational Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Students want to do work that's meaningful to them. As their teacher, you can support secondary writers as they learn about the writing process, but you can also offer them something greater: an opportunity to tell their own story and to mold it into an artful work of memory. When students read and write memoir, they explore their lives with pen and paper, make connections to the lives of others, and often discover something deeply personal and surprisingly universal in their writing and their lives. New Directions in Teaching Memoir demonstrates how to teach this evocative genre and shows you the power it holds for students and for instruction. More than merely personal narrative or family stories, memoir engages students because it emphasizes the importance of students own stories, feelings, and ideas. It also provides numerous opportunities for instruction in revision, editing, and craft. Dan and Dawn Latta Kirby present a unique way to introduce students to memoir and an in-depth instructional approach they have developed over time - the studio workshop. The studio approach takes the key attributes of fine-arts studio classrooms, and applies them to writing instruction to help transform your classroom into a more disciplined, guided, interactive, and authentic environment that supports risk taking for writers and gives you opportunities to coach students one-on-one. New Directions in Teaching Memoir also contains all the important tools you'll need to succeed with memoir, including: what the process of composing a memoir looks like extensive suggestions for responding to and evaluating student work, including reproducible rubrics and handouts ideas for supporting students' efforts by incorporating memoir into your literature curriculum numerous examples of student work the artistic importance of presentational features, including style and format new versions of memoir especially designed for student writers. Read New Directions in Teaching Memoir and make memoir a meaningful part of your curriculum today.
Download or read book Memoirs of an Inner City Elementary School Principal written by Pat Michaux and published by Author House. This book was released on 2011-06-07 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sixteen challenging years as an inner city principal makes Pat Michaux a bona fide expert in the field. "Memoirs of an Inner City Elementary School Principal" brings out the compassion, warmth, and candor prevelent inJohnson School's environment. You will laugh, cry, stare, and wonderas Pat Michaux's stories unfurl in real life situations.A must read for anyone with children and also those who purport to teach those children.
Download or read book WildFlowers written by Judy Fitch and published by Author House. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a senior high school teacher, I fell in love with my students every single year. My stories will make you laugh, cry, and cringe at the reality of the lives of our wildflowers. Kids are kids, however, these kids needed me more than your average child of priviledge. Most parents love their children, however, a mother at the age of fourteen, I believe, cannot offer what a mother at the age of thirty can offer. For many, violence and poverty were their facts of life. Many came to school for food, hugs, love, and support. My priceless experiences in the 'slammer' proved to be the most rewarding of all. Each day I thought how the situations in which these kids found themselves, was more often than not, the result of faulty parenting. Growing up was not about T-ball, picnics, vacations, and college. Growing up for some wildflowers was all about survival. My career involved love, baby showers, funerals, talent shows, proms, and courtroom appearances. I believe everyone is given a gift. My gift was the uncanny ability to communicate with at-risk teenagers. I spoke their language. I understood that there were reasons, not excuses, for their problems. These wildflowers were born into this world just as sweet and innocent as every other child. Their surroundings dictated and directed their futures. For years, I went to bed worrying about them and I awoke wondering what would happen each and every day to my wildflowers. They loved me because I loved them. If reading my book helps just one teacher to help make a difference in just one wildflower's life, my promise to my father to write this book will have made it all worth while.
Download or read book Teacher written by Michael Copperman and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Michael Copperman left Stanford University for the Mississippi Delta in 2002, he imagined he would lift underprivileged children from the narrow horizons of rural poverty. Well-meaning but naïve, the Asian American from the West Coast soon lost his bearings in a world divided between black and white. He had no idea how to manage a classroom or help children navigate the considerable challenges they faced. In trying to help students, he often found he couldn't afford to give what they required--sometimes with heartbreaking consequences. His desperate efforts to save child after child were misguided but sincere. He offered children the best invitations to success he could manage. But he still felt like an outsider who was failing the children and himself. Teach For America has for a decade been the nation's largest employer of recent college graduates but has come under increasing criticism in recent years even as it has grown exponentially. This memoir considers the distance between the idealism of the organization's creed that "One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education and reach their full potential" and what it actually means to teach in America's poorest and most troubled public schools. Copperman's memoir vividly captures his disorientation in the divided world of the Delta, even as the author marvels at the wit and resilience of the children in his classroom. To them, he is at once an authority figure and a stranger minority than even they are--a lone Asian, an outsider among outsiders. His journey is of great relevance to teachers, administrators, and parents longing for quality education in America. His frank story shows that the solutions for impoverished schools are far from simple.
Download or read book The Memory String written by Eve Bunting and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2000-08-21 with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each button on Laura’s memory string represents a piece of her family history. The buttons Laura cherishes the most belonged to her mother—a button from her prom dress, a white one off her wedding dress, and a single small button from the nightgown she was wearing on the day she died. When the string breaks, Laura’s new stepmother, Jane, is there to comfort Laura and search for a missing button, just as Laura’s mother would have done. But it’s not the same—Jane isn’t Mom. In Eve Bunting’s moving story, beautifully illustrated by Ted Rand, Laura discovers that a memory string is not just for remembering the past: it’s also for recording new memories.
Download or read book I m the Teacher You re the Student written by Patrick Allitt and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is it really like to be a college professor in an American classroom today? An award-winning teacher with over twenty years of experience answers this question by offering an enlightening and entertaining behind-the-scenes view of a typical semester in his American history course. The unique result—part diary, part sustained reflection—recreates both the unstudied realities and intensely satisfying challenges that teachers encounter in university lecture halls. From the initial selection of reading materials through the assignment of final grades to each student, Patrick Allitt reports with keen insight and humor on the rewards and frustrations of teaching students who often are unable to draw a distinction between the words "novel" and "book." Readers get to know members of the class, many of whom thrive while others struggle with assignments, plead for better grades, and weep over failures. Although Allitt finds much to admire in today's students, he laments their frequent lack of preparedness—students who arrive in his classroom without basic writing skills, unpracticed with reading assignments. With sharp wit, a critical eye, and steady sympathy for both educators and students, I'm the Teacher, You're the Student examines issues both large and small, from the ethics of student-teacher relationships to how best to evaluate class participation and grade writing assignments. It offers invaluable guidance to those concerned with the state of higher education today, to young faculty facing the classroom for the first time, and to parents whose children are heading off to college.
Download or read book Educating Esm written by Esmé Raji Codell and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2009-09-01 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At once "a pop culture phenomenon" (Publishers Weekly) and "screamingly funny" (Booklist), Educating Esmé "should be read by anyone who's interested in the future of public education" (Boston Phoenix Literary Section). A must-read for parents, new teachers, and classroom veterans, Educating Esmé is the exuberant diary of Esmé Raji Codell’s first year teaching in a Chicago public school. Fresh-mouthed and free-spirited, the irrepressible Madame Esmé—as she prefers to be called—does the cha-cha during multiplication tables, roller-skates down the hallways, and puts on rousing performances with at-risk students in the library. Her diary opens a window into a real-life classroom from a teacher’s perspective. While battling bureaucrats, gang members, abusive parents, and her own insecurities, this gifted young woman reveals what it takes to be an exceptional teacher. Heroine to thousands of parents and educators, Esmé now shares more of her ingenious and yet down-to-earth approaches to the classroom in a supplementary guide to help new teachers hit the ground running. As relevant and iconoclastic as when it was first published, Educating Esmé is a classic, as is Madame Esmé herself.
Download or read book Stories from the Classroom written by John Smeby and published by Dog Ear Publishing. This book was released on 2017-12-18 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Whether you are new to the profession or in need of a reminder why you entered it in the first place, Stories is a collection of vivid, heartfelt, eye-opening recollections” -Tamera Cruz, educator “This book is a gift ... not just for educators, but for everyone!” -Kenyon and Taccara Martin, co-authors (Soul-Ties Personal Growth Collection) After 23 years as a teacher, coach and counselor, California educator John Smeby offers us Stories from the Classroom. Set in a city emerging from bankruptcy and still recovering from a 2015 terrorist attack. John uncovers a more human, compassionate side of San Bernardino that many might miss. In this down-to-earth, sometimes heartbreaking and often humorous collection of stories, he recounts both the struggles and victories he found inside the classrooms and hallways of Cajon High School and beyond. Whether you are (or have ever been) an educator, student or parent, Smeby’s journey will resonate with unflinching honesty. The anecdotes and stories he shares offer a unique look inside our educational system, both public and private. A teacher will often see a student seated at a desk. In Stories, John challenges us to look beyond the student, and recognize the human being within. “I would like to thank you not as a student to a teacher but as a friend to a friend. I will forget little by little my high school experience, but I promise I will never forget what you have taught me “–Juan Andrade, former student
Download or read book Marshfield Dreams written by Ralph Fletcher and published by Henry Holt and Company (BYR). This book was released on 2005-09-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The colorful boyhood of a popular author comes to life in this personal account Imagine learning from a nosy classmate that your mother is having yet another baby. To Ralph's classmates, news of one more Fletcher baby is just "scuttlebutt." But for Ralph, the oldest of nine, being part of a large family means more kids to join in the fun—from making tripods in the woods and "snicking" up the rug, to raising chicks and even discovering a meteor (well, maybe). It doesn't feel like there's life beyond Marshfield, Massachusetts. Then one day Dad's new job moves the family to Chicago, and there's so much Ralph has to leave behind. In this humorous and captivating memoir, Ralph Fletcher traces the roots of his storytelling.
Download or read book Losing My Faculties written by Brendan Halpin and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-03-31 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his first nine years as a teacher, Brendan Halpin goes from wide-eyed idealist to cynical, heartbroken idealist. Unique among teaching memoirs, Losing My Faculties is not the story of a heroic teacher who transforms the lives of his hardbitten students; rather, it’s the inspirational and often unpretty truth about people who choose to get up ridiculously early day after day and year after year to go stand in front of teenagers. It’s also a rarely-seen, all-access view of both suburban and urban education, including the ugly truth behind the mythology at a much-hyped charter school.
Download or read book I d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had written by Tony Danza and published by Crown Archetype. This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had is television, screen and stage star Tony Danza’s absorbing account of a year spent teaching tenth-grade English at Northeast High -- Philadelphia’s largest high school with 3600 students. Entering Northeast’s crowded halls in September of 2009, Tony found his way to a classroom filled with twenty-six students who were determined not to cut him any slack. They cared nothing about “Mr. Danza’s” showbiz credentials, and they immediately put him on the hot seat. Featuring indelible portraits of students and teachers alike, I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had reveals just how hard it is to keep today’s technologically savvy – and often alienated -- students engaged, how impressively committed most teachers are, and the outsized role counseling plays in a teacher’s day, given the psychological burdens many students carry. The book also makes vivid how a modern high school works, showing Tony in a myriad of roles – from lecturing on To Kill a Mockingbird to “coaching” the football team to organizing a talent show to leading far-flung field trips to hosting teacher gripe sessions. A surprisingly poignant account, I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny but is mostly filled with hard-won wisdom and feel-good tears.
Download or read book Voices from the Middle written by Michele M. Chamberlain and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-10 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I stepped foot into the classroom for the first time when I was 40 years old, full of passion for science and intent to change the lives of every student who walked through my doors. What I did not realize was how profoundly they would end up changing mine. All of the stories in this book are true. While these stories occurred over several years and in different settings, they are retold in these chapters under the guise of a single school year; one building, one classroom.For 180 days, our stories are intertwined-theirs and mine. The details of our shared experiences unfold against the backdrop of rattling lockers and long, winding hallways that connect our comings and goings.We share new discoveries. Tediously long days and longer weekends. Anxious moments. Pizza. First relationships. Broken hearts and missed opportunities. Perseverance. Resilience. Hope.Friendship and Love.This is our story.Hear our voices.
