Teachers Stories

The first ever picture book addressing how a disabled child might want to be spoken to.What happened to you? Was it a shark? A burglar? A lion? Did it fall off?Every time Joe goes out the questions are the same . . . what happened to his leg? But is this even a question Joe has to answer?A ground-breaking, funny story that helps children understand what it might feel like to be seen as different.'A revolutionary book on disability.' Inclusive Storytime'Catchpole's beautifully judged, child-friendly words ably evoke the fatigue and wariness of repeatedly being asked the same question rather than simply being accepted and allowed to play, while George's warm images amplify the delight of shared imagination.' The Guardian'Wonderful, delightful and important. [...] Not only will it help nondisabled adults and children understand what it is like to be singled out for being different, but it will empower disabled children and help them realise they don't have to justify themselves to people they don't know.' Jen Campbell, bestselling author of Franklin's Flying Bookshop'With beautifully characterful illustrations and plenty of calming white space, it exudes gentle energy and humour to appeal to every child. This is a stunningly clever book.' BookTrust'The beauty of What Happened to You? is its focus on empathy... a brilliant book to open up the conversation with pre-school kids.' Disability Arts Online'A groundbreaking picture book reflecting the world of a visibly disabled child... a funny and very enjoyable read that will nevertheless perform an urgently needed task and generate very useful discussion at home and school.' LoveReading4Kids

Why do new teachers change schools or leave the profession? Stories from Novice Teachers: This is Induction? attempts to address this question. In this book, we feature the stories of a dozen novice teachers and how they were, or were not, mentored or inducted by their schools. Using data collected over a three-year period-close to 1,000 emails and face-to-face interviews, the cases presented in this book can inform school principals and district-level administrators of the situations that promote or hinder new teacher growth so that we can lower attrition rates and foster student achievement. The cases presented in this book range from problems in the faculty lounge to unsupportive colleagues to 'too much' induction.

Language Teachers’ Professional Knowledge Landscapes is a collection of fourteen narratives from teachers of different languages, at different school levels, in different contexts across Australia. This volume brings together not simply language teacher stories, but also more political stories of the problems associated with school programs and contexts. Highlighted through these stories are some of the major political issues in schools that impact language teachers’ work, and their students’ success in sustained language study. The book is conceptually framed by the work of Clandinin and Connelly (1996) and their notion of ‘levels’ of stories told by teachers about their classrooms: the secret, the sacred and the cover stories. The term ‘professional knowledge landscape’ is used to indicate how teachers can critically situate their work, and thereby understand it better. The collection includes the stories of two outstanding primary language educators, and a story of mixed success in a rural program in teaching the local Aboriginal language (Ngarrabul). There are stories of frustration with policy failures, particularly in supporting the learning of Asian languages. Many of the teacher narrators ask the confronting question: ‘What blocks language learning in Australia?’ They offer the strategies which they have developed, that they see making a difference. Other narratives offer autoethnographic tracking of careers, for example, as a teacher of Latin and Classics, Japanese, French, Spanish, Russian, and of teachers’ ongoing vigour and creativity in advocacy. A number of teachers examine their own identity story for the intercultural learning, which they then offer and extend in student learning. Consistently expressed, there is the need for teachers to take up individual responsibility, while still being strongly supported by their professional community: ‘It is us’ who make the difference, one teacher concludes. Supported by a strong Foreword by Canadian scholar F. Michael Connelly, this ground-breaking collection of narratives represents a form of social research in providing critical illustrations of the issues needing attention for national language education enhancement. It is the only extended inquiry into language teaching in the context of an active policy initiative environment, and the first volume to address the language education landscape through the voices of active language teachers.

Incredible stories of struggle, redemption, and the power of education from the teachers taught by Erin Gruwell and the #1 New York Times bestselling authors of The Freedom Writers Diary Don’t miss the public television documentary Freedom Writers: Stories from the Heart “These are the most influential professionals most of us will ever meet. The effects of their work will last forever.”—From the foreword by Anna Quindlen Now documented in a bestselling book, feature film, and public television documentary, the Freedom Writers phenomenon came about in 1994, when Erin Gruwell stepped into Room 203 and began her first teaching job out of college. Long Beach, California, was still reeling from the deadly violence that erupted during the Rodney King riots, and the kids in Erin’s classroom reflected the anger, resentment, and hopelessness of their community. Undaunted, Erin fostered an educational philosophy that valued and promoted diversity, tolerance, and communication, and in the process, she transformed her students’ lives, as well as her own. Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writers went on to establish the Freedom Writers Foundation to replicate the success of Room 203 and provide all students with hope and opportunities to realize their academic potential. Since then, the foundation has trained more than 800 teachers around the world. Teaching Hope unites the voices of these Freedom Writer Teachers, who share uplifting, devastating, and poignant stories from their classrooms, stories that provide insight into the struggles and triumphs of education in all of its forms. Mirroring an academic year, these dispatches from the front lines of education take us from the anticipation of the first day to the disillusionment, challenges, and triumphs of the school year. These are the voices of teachers who persevere in the face of intolerance, rigid administration, and countless other challenges, and continue to reach out and teach those who are deemed unteachable. Their stories inspire everyone to make a difference in the world around them.

If countless books and movies are to be believed, America’s Wild West was, at heart, a world of cowboys and Indians, sheriffs and gunslingers, scruffy settlers and mountain men—a man’s world. Here, Chris Enss, in the latest of her popular books to take on this stereotype, tells the stories of twelve courageous women who faced down schoolrooms full of children on the open prairies and in the mining towns of the Old West. Between 1847 and 1858, more than 600 women teachers traveled across the untamed frontier to provide youngsters with an education, and the numbers grew rapidly in the decades to come, as women took advantage of one of the few career opportunities for respectable work for ladies of the era. Enduring hardship, the dozen women whose stories are movingly told in the pages of Frontier Teachers demonstrated the utmost dedication and sacrifice necessary to bring formal education to the Wild West. As immortalized in works of art and literature, for many students their women teachers were heroic figures who introduced them to a world of possibilities—and changed America forever.

This book addresses one of the most persistent issues confronting governments, educations systems and schools today: the attraction, preparation, and retention of early career teachers. It draws on the stories of sixty graduate teachers from Australia to identify the key barriers, interferences and obstacles to teacher resilience and what might be done about it. Based on these stories, five interrelated themes - policies and practices, school culture, teacher identity, teachers’ work, and relationships – provide a framework for dialogue around what kinds of conditions need to be created and sustained in order to promote early career teacher resilience. The book provides a set of resources – stories, discussion, comments, reflective questions and insights from the literature – to promote conversations among stakeholders rather than providing yet another ‘how to do’ list for improving the daily lives of early career teachers. Teaching is a complex, fragile and uncertain profession. It operates in an environment of unprecedented educational reforms designed to control, manage and manipulate pedagogical judgements. Teacher resilience must take account of both the context and circumstances of individual schools (especially those in economically disadvantaged communities) and the diversity of backgrounds and talents of early career teachers themselves. The book acknowledges that the substantial level of change required– cultural, structural, pedagogical and relational – to improve early career teacher resilience demands a great deal of cooperation and support from governments, education systems, schools, universities and communities: teachers cannot do it alone. This book is written to generate conversations amongst early career teachers, teacher colleagues, school leaders, education administrators, academics and community leaders about the kinds of pedagogical and relational conditions required to promote early career teacher resilience and wellbeing.

The author describes his day-to-day experiences as a teacher at a private school in New York, including the anxieties, foibles, generosities, hopes, and complaints that comprise every teacher's life. -- Dust jacket.

Despite limitations and challenges, teaching about difficult histories is an essential aspect of social studies courses and units across grade levels. This practical resource highlights stories of K–12 practitioners who have critically examined and reflected on their experiences with planning and teaching histories identified as difficult. Featuring the voices of teacher educators, classroom teachers, and museum educators, these stories provide readers with rare examples of how to plan for, teach, and reflect on difficult histories. The book is divided into four main sections: Centering Difficult History Content, Centering Teacher and Student Identities, Centering Local and Contemporary Contexts, and Centering Teacher Decision-making. Key topics include teaching about genocide, slavery, immigration, war, racial violence, and terrorism. This dynamic book highlights the practitioner’s perspective to reveal how teachers can and do think critically about their motivations and the methods they use to engage students in rigorous, complex, and appropriate studies of the past. Book Features: Expanded notions of what difficult histories can be and how they can be approached pedagogically.Thoughtful pictures of practice of some of the most complex histories to teach. Stories of K–12 teachers and museum educators with the research of leading scholars in social studies education. Examples from a wide range of educational contexts in the United States and other countries. Resources useful to teachers and teacher educators. Contributors include LaGarrett J. King, Cinthia Salinas, Stephanie van Hover, Amanda Vickery, Sohyun An, H. James (Jim) Garrett, Christopher C. Martell, and Jennifer Hauver.

"This book is a godsend a moving portrait for anyone wanting to go beyond the simplified labels and metrics and really understand an urban high school, and its highly individual, resilient, eager and brilliant students and educators." -- Dave Eggers, co-founder, 826 National and ScholarMatch Darrell is a reflective, brilliant young man, who never thought of himself as a good student. He always struggled with his reading and writing skills. Darrell's father, a single parent, couldn't afford private tutors. By the end of middle school, Darrell's grades and his confidence were at an all time low. Then everything changed. When education journalist Kristina Rizga first met Darrell at Mission High School, he was taking AP calculus class, writing a ten-page research paper, and had received several college acceptance letters. And Darrell was not an exception. More than 80 percent of Mission High seniors go to college every year, even though the school teaches large numbers of English learners and students from poor families. So, why has the federal government been threatening to close Mission High -- and schools like it across the country? The United States has been on a century long road toward increased standardization in our public schools, which resulted in a system that reduces the quality of education to primarily one metric: standardized test scores. According to this number, Mission High is a "low-performing" school even though its college enrollment, graduation, attendance rates and student surveys are some of the best in the country. The qualities that matter the most in learning -- skills like critical thinking, intellectual engagement, resilience, empathy, self-management, and cultural flexibility -- can't be measured by multiple-choice questions designed by distant testing companies, Rizga argues, but they can be detected by skilled teachers in effective, personalized and humane classrooms that work for all students, not just the most motivated ones. Based on four years of reporting with unprecedented access, the unforgettable, intimate stories in these pages throw open the doors to America's most talked about -- and arguably least understood -- public school classrooms where the largely invisible voices of our smart, resilient students and their committed educators can offer a clear and hopeful blueprint for what it takes to help all students succeed.

Teachers show up in different forms and in many chapters of a child's life. Teaching is literacy and numeracy but, most importantly, it's showing up with your whole heart. It's walking kids-and yourself-through the hardest conversations about trauma, loss, grief, racism, or violence. As we work to piece together our education system in the fallout from global pandemic, the focus must be on the teachers. If the people in charge-those teachers-aren't OK, the students don't stand a chance. Dr. Jody Carrington and Laurie McIntosh bring together theory and practice, weaving the science of human development with real-life stories and tangible strategies told by those most qualified to share them-our teachers. This book is for those who need a place to land when they want to be reminded that, simply by the choice of their profession, they are a powerful force in shaping our world. "Teachers These Days is filled with heartfelt happies and heartbreaking hurts. I connect with the theory-into-practice way that it is set up, and I appreciated the voices of the others in their raw, poignant stories." -Barbara Gruener, teacher and school counselor "Teachers These Days honors the work and experience of educators while providing a familiar context to all teachers. The section on grief is captivating and visceral and beautiful." -Meaghan Reist and Shelley Smith, vice principals and creators of Culture Curators EDU