Education Teaching Books

Very easy to read. Helpful, practical information. Many chapters with good advice on working with parents. Some information on home visiting. I definately recommend this title.

This book was suggested by fellow teachers. It's a great book for teachers that already have a handle on reading strategies. It gives great and easy to duplicate ideas.

This book provides teachers with a way to introduce the comprehension strategies. It has very orginal ways to get the kids thinking about thinking as they read. My third graders responded well to the langauge and activities provided in the book. It was a quick read, but described strategies I can use throuhgout the year in my classroom. I would recommend it to anyone teaching Harvey's and Keene's comprehension strategies.

I am an elementary teacher currently using Tanny's book to inform my small group reading instruction. It didn't take me long to realize what a goldmine of information she provides; and it all makes sense. Reading this book is what I'd imagine sitting down with the author at Starbucks to be like. She will begin your own inner conversation about the myriad ways to strengthen your students' comprehension skills, using concrete items for object lessons, wordless texts, art, music lyrics, and quotes. The examples of anchor charts Tanny shares are first-rate. If you don't own this book; get it :). You'll have it finished in less time than it took to arrive at your doorstep!

Great resource for all primary elementary teachers. Great ideas to develop schema for various comprehension strategies!

This book meets the big areas of comprehension with concrete and engaging activities that will introduce strategies to your students and provide a gradual release of responsibility!

This book describes what it is like to have Asperger's Syndrome with disarmingly simple language and adorable photos of kittens. Great for kids and adults. An absolutely lovely and well-crafted book!

This book seemed like such a bizarre idea that I just had to own it. But when I read it, I found that the concept worked well. I really enjoyed it, and my mom loved it, too. It does a fairly good job of explaining how Aspies are different, without implying that there's anything wrong with them. I also like how it spoke to the strengths of people with AS. Educational doesn't have to mean totally serious--when people are laughing, they are listening. My only problem with the book is that it only uses male pronouns. A small thing, sure, but most AS resources are targeted towards boys, and it's easy for Aspie girls to feel left out.

I have a 13 year old son who has AS. this book will be very good for younger children who dont quite understand whats going on with them. it was vert well written.

I found this at a Barnes & Noble and I read it then and there from cover to cover. The writing is geared more for elementary-aged children, but the pictures and the text, which compares cat behavior to that of a person with AS, is spot-on, if you want to gently introduce your child (AS or neuro-typical) to this unique condition to help them better understand a schoolmate, friend or even themself. It made me smile and I couldn't help inwardly cheering at how well-done this book is!

Speaking as a late-diagnosed person with AS (I'm 31 and was not diagnosed until I was 27), I gladly reccommend this book!

This is an excellent simple to read book. Very good for young and older people. My sons and I have read many times over. I would recommend to anyone!

Ellen Notbohm has succeeded in coming up with more "things" to let the reader understand the child with autism (which shows the respect learned in the first book of recognizing the child first and the diagnosis second instead of saying the autistic child). Teachers are taught little to nothing on child development and child psychology as they learn to be teachers. This includes the teachers going into special education or emotional / behavioral disorder areas.

This book should be a must for all who work with these children, from the teachers and paras (and administration)to the staff for the cafeteria, library, and front office. There are too many negative assumptions about the motives of the behaviors of these children. 10 Things will help them to walk in the shoes of these children for a moment, hopefully developing a better understanding and empathy for what they are going through, and allowing for more support and accommodations that will allow them to learn and grow as individuals.

As a general education teacher who has never worked with autistic children before, I found this book to be very enlightening. It gave me a better idea of the type of students I will be working with this next year and how to better adjust my plans to help them learn in a gen ed class.

I bought this book to prepare my son's new, mainstream school for him coming to 1st grade next year. It gives a great overview of ASD, and speaks directly to teachers about having children with autism spectrum disorders in their classroom. I donated a copy to the teacher's library at the school, and they were very receptive.

My recommendation is to read every book Ellen Notbohn writes about autism. All of her books are easy reads. The information is on target, clear and sometime humerous and always relatable. If you have a child with autism ask the teacher if they have read it, if not purchase a 2nd copy for them.

Ellen Notbohm's second book about autism, TEN THINGS YOUR STUDENT WITH AUTISM WISHES YOU KNEW, is every bit as informative and encouraging as her first. She gets to the point, writes from personal experience, provides practical insight, and she cares. Her first book, TEN THINGS YOUR CHILD WITH AUTISM WISHES YOU KNEW, addressed matters pertaining to the very young. This book continues with the older child's development. After reading her book(s), anyone who deals with the mysteries of autism should feel greatly encouraged and better equipped to help these children grow.

This book enlightened my spirit and made me wish I could teach again! it is an extremly passionate rhetoric for teachers and educators who look up to a positive change in the world and their students. I highly recommend this book for any new teachers, student teachres depressed teachers, or even lost teachers who need to know the way back to the right path of teaching!
The introductions is although half of the book but insightful of the circumanstaces of Frier's lectures and the outcomes of them especuially after his death.

This small work is packed with wonderfully articulate insights, philosophical, political and practical, about education and how we should go about teaching young students. Paulo Friere is an enemy of oppression, coercion and neo-liberalism, a proponent of the human spirit and the possibility of a better world. If you are really interested in the ideas of existentialism, socialism, democracy and social justice, you will find yourself entralled with Friere's practical ideas in this book.

I am one of 24 co-founders of Earth Intelligence Network, building the EarthGame with inputs from the Transpartisan Policy Institute and the Public Budget Office, and our biggest insight in the past year has been to realize that the 5 billion poor do not have 18 years to go to school; but that they can be taught orally, one cell call at a time, by 100 million volunteers with Internet access and Skype. We simply have to distribute free cell phones in order to help the five billion create stabilizing wealth.

It was therefore for me personally, at the age of 55, a true joy to run across both this book and Pedagogy of the Oppressed as well as Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom both of which I will review shortly.

The only two books coming close in my own reading history, apart from Chomsky, Ellul, and Marcuse, have been Radical Man: The Process of Psycho-Social Development. and Improper behavior. See also Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids and Animal Farm (Signet Classics).

The translator tells us that Friere opposed the movement of gaduate studies in education toward atomization, fragmentation, and a false science, "scientism." The translator is *damning* of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and I believe all that he says.

The translator emphasizes that across Friere's works, he condemns false claims of neutrality and objectivity, and says clearly that education is an ethical calling that has a strong need to take a stand on what is good and right.

All three of my children have rejected rote learning, even as taught in the best public school district in America, and I am deeply sympathetic with this author's views that teaching should not be about the transfer of old knowledge but rather about the interactive sharing in learning to create new knowledge. Team leaning, learning to learn, open books testing--that is the way to go, in my view. See also Edutopia: Success Stories for Learning in the Digital Age.

We learn that Friere's first book, to set this one in context, taught that education is "that specifically human act of intervention in the world."

I completely agree when it is stated that the transformation of education must be the foundation for the transformation of all else.

I copy a note "Education *makes* history" (as opposed to losing it).

Note from the book: Democracy from below. Human liberation. Educators inspire rather than shape. See The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All.

The book emphasizes that the study of the oppressed has been squelched by those in authority, inclusive of higher graduate education studies, as an ideological act that declines to recognize that the oppressed are in fact, OPPRESSED, not just poor, lazy, stupid, or otherwise self-condemned.

Note: Curiosity + education + humanity = infinite power." See A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.

Friere repeatedly returns to a key point, that thinking is an act of communication, and can only take place interactively. Teaching and research should comprise an endless cycle and not be a one-way street (didactic is a fancy word for "I talk, you listen.")

Progressive teaching respects students and favors student autonomhy. As best I can tell, Evergreen College in Washington State is the gold standard for this kind of teaching.

Friere tells us that teachers who impose no standards, no discipline, are just as bad as teachers who are authoritarian and leave no room for student autonomy or curiosity.

Friere tells us that teachers must apprehend and comprend reality, and not seek to condition students into accepting their poor conditions (or corrupt governances--see Earth Intelligence Network for a range for free offerings on reality).

Friere states firmly that "RealPolitic" is inhumane and wrong. See The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State.

The book closes with an elegant discussion of how education leads to decision-making that is aware and conscientious. I have long advocated the need for public intelligence, and for a relationship between how we learn and how we decide. "Intelligence" is about decision-support, not about spying.

My final two notes from this superb book:

1) To accept and respect differences (i.e. diversity) is essential to listening and learning.

2) Globalization (when combined with 44 dictators and the global class war) is oppressive in its ignorance (or concealment) of the human cost, the cost to humanity.

As a Texas public school administrator, I highly recommend never spending a moment of your life reading this. There is a much better book called "An Educator's Guide to Texas School Law." If you're a Texas educator, I would buy that book and avoid this one. This is a college text intended for LAW students. I was forced to buy this for a school law class as a part of my administration degree. What a waste of time. It's nothing more than a book full of case law pertaining to public education in the United States. Things your SCHOOL LAWYER should know, but not necessarily you. Your lawyer should summarize and/or you should read a more to-the-point book summarizing it.

Short version: if you're not a LAW student or a LAWYER, this book will do nothing more than bore you to tears.

Item came in brand new condition as advertised. It arrived much faster than expected. I am pleased with my purchased.

I found this book very helpful. It's laid out so you can find what you need quickly and it's thorough. I also found it written in a user friendly language.

This is a compilation of very applicable cases that help the reader understand the legal issues involved in a hands on way. The explanations are clear and concise. It is not an easy read, but it is well done and an excellent resource.

I got this book for my graduate class on School Law. At first, it was VERY intimidating as it was filled with lots of legal jargon and so on, but the book did a good job of making it fairly "easy" to read. (Though I do admit I've slept on the book a few times...) It is well organized by different sections, and the cases as well as their significance are explained clearly. I liked that it presented very straightforward information, with little slant/bias one way or another, leaving it up to the reader to make up their minds. While I was not required to read the book cover to cover for my class, I have tried to do so because I found the information pertinent and informative. It is a great reference, and definitely a book that I'll keep getting as new editions come out.

This book is inceribly informative - if you've never met, been, heard of or seen a college student. I suppose if you've spent 20 years living in a remote village on another continent you might find some of this interesting.

"Nathan" violates professional standards and common decency to discover such shocking things as: students relish independence and like to have fun, foreign students find Americans individualistic and parochial, and college campuses have many different activities.

In other words, "Nathan" (hopefully) wrecked her career to produce a devastatingly useless book.

I came across this book by accident - I am glad I did. It fit with various themes that had been bouncing around in my head since I read a report on student intellectual life at the school where I work. "Prof. Nathan" does a good job in documenting the enormous gap between the experience of college for faculty, administrators and students. Put quite simply, we inhabit different worlds. I think many college professors and administrators already know this, but "Nathan" puts some meat on the speculative bones. (Note on a pet peeve of mine: for "Nathan," as for many of the professoriate, staff - the non-student, non-faculty denizens of AnyU - never register on her radar.)

"Nathan," in her student guise, learns some interesting lessons. For example, "building community" - in the sense of trying to create spaces and opportunities for large groups of students to interact - is much more important to "Student Affairs" types than it is for the students for whom they are trying to build that community. In fact the students are very content with the community they already have, usually consisting of small homogeneous groups of friends that they met early on in their college life. The frenetic work of RA's to create opportunities for broader civic engagement usually come to naught - few students register interest, even fewer actually participate.

I don't know enough to say that "Nathan's" experiences at a large southwestern public school are representative of the experiences of today's college students in general. I am guessing that there probably are significant differences from college to college (e.g. by size of institution), and from student to student (e.g. their economic circumstances, or the degree to which they have a major or a professional destination in mind). But I think the perplexing refusal of students to "buy in" to the experience that well-intentioned faculty and SA administrators have crafted for them will resonate with many campus "adults."

I think that most students, as "Nathan's" experience demonstrates, do not experience college as the linear experience of intellectual and moral development that most faculty and administrators would want it to be. The four years of undergraduate study are less a progressive dinner than a smorgasbord of varied offerings, in which some items are eaten - as "Nathan" relates - only because they are available in a convenient time-slot. Should we be surprised? If nothing else, isn't it arguably a preview of what most graduates can expect after college? Do most college faculty and staff experience their college work - or their lives in general - as a mapped-out journey towards a defined end?

Overall assessment: a stimulating read. Recommended.

Rebekah Nathan is a professor at North Arizona University and she is the author of "My Freshman Year". In her book, she talks about her experiences working on her undercover project while attending a college as an undergraduate. Not only did she enroll in classes and join organizations, but she also signed up to live in the dorms, because thorough her book you can clearly see that Mrs. Nathan is doing her best to find out what is happening with the young generations. The main objective of the experiment was to infiltrate the minds of freshman teenagers to find out what has changed over the last 20 years of college and to learn about their interests.

Nathan calls the university she enrolled in "AnyU" where she was a faculty member. One of Nathan`s main targets was to learn about how young people get along, and most importantly what motivates them to keep going. Even though it sounds exiting to go back to college after graduating, can you imagine moving from your house to a small dorm? Mrs. Nathan tells us in the book what she is feeling throughout her experience, so you can sense when she is depressed or having a difficult time.

Another important issue that she touched on is that there is an outstanding cultural separation. She describes the relations between white people and other ethnicities as marginal and vague because white kids mostly related to other white kids. As a consequence, foreign students that come from different parts of the world to learn about the culture and relate to the people are not given the chance to do so as they hoped. So finally they end up hanging out with people from their same or common roots.

Rebekah Nathan describes her experience at AnyU as unique and special. She remarks that it is an outstanding experience that few people, especially at her age, have the opportunity to share. The book intends to relay a message to the readers, and it is that college education is indeed highly important for personal success, but the college experience, as she describes, is most important since young students develop character and discipline. This is a great book, which is not only intended for college students but also for adults who are curious about what is going on nowadays at universities.

In the published ethnography My Freshman Year, author Rebekah Nathan describes her findings about the practices, priorities, and attitudes of the new generation college freshmen. Her detailed observations are fascinating, although they may be quite obvious to college students that have been freshman in the recent past. Her study offers insight for all those who are unaware about the behavior of college freshman: why they don't seem to take their classes as seriously as before, what freshman girls talk about in their intimate conversations, who eats with whom in the dining center, and the honest answers and opinions she receives from her one-on-one interviews. Nathan's primary research method was observation, but she also interviewed a wide range of students, and posted questions in the girls' bathroom for them to respond to anonymously. Living in the dormitories, Nathan found that the cultural norm of students was one of sociability, individualism, fun, craziness, freethinking spontaneity, and rebellion against authority. This observation contrasted starkly with the formal culture of the college, which stressed advice, academics, and warnings. In regards to student academic life, she noticed that students planned and organized their class schedules and extracurricular activities around what was most important to them. Nathan goes behind the scenes by taking classes and living in the dorms. She educates the reader in depth, and finds information that current freshman students find fascinating. Particularly interesting is what the international/foreign exchange students think of American students. It points out that current American college students should take another look at themselves and also their society. For anyone who wants to learn more about today's college freshmen, I recommend My Freshman Year.
-F.T., N.O., M.C.

My Freshman Year by Rebekah Nathan is a good idea for an ethnography project, in terms of what the author did, but it falls short of what could have been a better book. Rebekah Nathan, an anthropology professor at ANYU, disguising herself as freshman student after 15 years of teaching. She stayed at the dorms, attended classes, and lived the life of a freshman student in search of her questions. Throughout this book, she searches for answers to her questions of why her students act a certain way, such as, not preparing for class, eating in class, and making little effort to get to know exchange students. The book is organized into two main parts. The first half, Nathan describes the student life in the dorm and the second half, shows the student's classroom behavior. Although Nathan presented many truths about college students, there were many places where, do to it being her job, misinterprets those facts.

Life in the dorms surprised Nathan due to student's willingness to decorate their doors and how students want a sense of community in the dorm, but is not willing to give up their personal time for it. She was also shocked by the language, unfamiliar to those outside of the education system, that the students used, which, she even referred to as a foreign language. Going to class, she found that many students do not read the material for class unless it appears on an exam, almost everyone at some point has cheated or has seen someone cheat on an exam, abide by unwritten classroom rules, and does not do what is not necessary. While these revelations are amusing and accurate to an extent, most college students are already aware of the behaviors and it is not necessarily a new finding. Perhaps it is because we, college students, experience this daily so our own bias makes it feel as if it was generalized. However, when she points out that studying old tests is considered as cheating, she crosses over the line on what cheating is really defined as. Truths such as looking over at a neighbor's test is where Nathan is correct, but she goes well beyond the definition and that is the reason why she misinterprets the facts.

Nathan generalized her points by taking a small sample of students and accounted them for the whole university which can lead to inaccurate results. For example, she claimed that students write papers in the direction that goes along with what the professor wants to hear rather than what they believe. Students feel that writing against what the professor wants to hear will result in a poor grade. But not all students write papers on the stance that will please their professor. Nathan makes a poor statement and it sounds more like students do not have their own opinions in a class room. Another example is that Nathan made many claims regarding student's behaviors in the class through a student perspective, but she rarely provides information through a professor's perspective. So the readers do not have the point of a view of why a professor that has taught 15 years at the university can be puzzled by the culture of the students that she interacts with everyday.

Nathan also did not show the variety of students such as the example of a successful student with time management skills. Instead, she showed only the bad side of students since she only discusses student's bad habits such as skipping, cheating, and not completing all the assigned homework. Since the book is biased, it is not useful as there is flawed data and can also damage the view on college students. Generally parents, professors, and the general public will read this and may get the sense that all college students show their bad side. For the book to be accepted, there should have been more coverage of the successful sides of students rather than all the bad sides, that way the book will not seem as biased.

This book was recommended to me by a classmate who has been an art teacher for 7 years. Her copy is tattered, wrinkled and obviously well used and well loved. I ordered it to help me brainstorm units and organize my new classroom.

A lot of the 125 student projects are pretty corny but provide jumping off points for creating your own fabulous lessons. I really like some of the interdisciplinary connections Hume lists and think they will help me in collaborating with the general ed teachers in my school.

Hume also lists several educational games that can be purchased or created by you for an art classroom - what a wonderful idea for substitute days!

I was very disapointed with this book. All of the pages are photocopied in black and white. There is very low resolution on the images and an art book in black and white is worthless for most aspects of class. There were a few projects that were appropriate but it was hardly worth the investment.

This book came at the perfect time. I am a first year art teacher at a K-8 school. I was looking for activities to keep my 7th and 8th graders interested and this book is providing so much more. The information is very helpful for me as well as a resource for the classroom teachers I work with.

I am really enjoying the book. I have 14 students ranging from kindergarten to 8th grade. All I can say is thank you so much for such an informative book.

It wasn't quite what we were looking for as homeschoolers. All of the pictures are in black and white and many of them are too dark to even see. I felt that some of the directions were a bit unclear. It does not say specifically what grade level each project is, but that the projects get progressivly more difficult. It does give you adaption ideas for younger students on many things. If your looking for fun, neat crafts to make in school, this probably isn't the book for you. This book does cover good topics such as basic line drawing, value, texture, etc. I feel it is a good book to have in conjuction with other art books.

I bought this book for a graduate course. It is easy to read and very clear. The authors write it in a very friendly manner. You gain a lot of information and it gives great suggestions. If you need help with what's happening in the reading world, this is the book for you!!

I will keep this book as a teaching Bible. It has amazing examples and useful material and resources.

This is one of my favorites. It has every assessment possible for reading-ready to copy and use! short chapters too!