Teacher Training Books

The poems tickle the funnybone, pull on the heartstrings and definitely hit the target for anyone who has had the often inexplicable experience of working with students. The title poem hits home as I work in the town I live in and am always encountering students who find it incredulous that teachers buy groceries and toilet paper!! A recommended read for the rookie or veteran teacher!!!

This book is a clever and sometimes thought-provoking collection of prose and poetry about the realities of teaching in today's world. It's a cute read for a teacher at the end of a long day and should be shared with colleagues!

The poems in this book are a must read for any teacher! I've read my book at least 50 times and it just gets better. The insight and humor keeps my attitude towards teaching fresh...even after 26 years! Every student teacher and new teacher that I mentor gets a copy.

Hide Your Ex-Lax under The Wheaties lifted my spirits tremendously and helped me realize that all the good things in teaching far out weigh the troubles. "Music & More," a CD by Moonlighting Teachers has taken some of the poems and readings from Ex-Lax and set them to music. What a fun addition to this book! You must listen to it too!

everyone knows society as a whole (including ur precious school) are fixed.
Schools are designed to teach basic 'knowledge' and perpetuate myth, fear and awe of authority, and develop unquestioning mentalities. Basically..just show up to work on time adults...

one phrase...."HOME SCHOOL"

The title says it all, but most Americans refuse to believe it. Feelings are what's important, not facts. Self-esteem, that's the objective, not achievement. Kids can't read or write, but they feel really good about being stupid! What a joke!!! The next time the sales clerk can't give you correct change, try to convince yourself it's okay because he has such a high opinion of himself, he'll make a wonderful contribution to society some day. He will. Honestly. But society will have changed a bit by then. Thanks to public schools, more and more Americans are becoming functionally illiterate while at the same time their self-esteem assures them everything's just fine. Their chests may be pumped up with a phony sense of pride, but their heads will be empty. But that's the way somebody wants it. George Orwell had a name for these empty-headed, blissfully ignorant citizens. He called them "proles." Think about it. Maureen's book deals primarily with education and public policy. Other books on these topics include None Dare Call It Education, The Harsh Truth About Public Schools, Legally STUPiD: Why Johnny doesn't have to read, Public Schools Against America: The Hidden Agenda and The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America.

Millionaire in 365 Days: The Daily Plan to Get There

If your kids come home with C's and D's, but feel good about "trying their best", then you better read this book.

They could improve their grades quickly by taking "dumb" courses, easy ones and then shoot right to the top with A's and B's....scary future for our children....

This book is ABSOLUTELY accurate when it comes to how the self-esteem movement has turned our schools away from academics and the gathering of knowledge. Instead, what we now have in place of safe, well organized places where knowledge can be taught, are amateur therapy clinics.

I got into the teaching game late in life, in my late 30's. I liked kids (still do; most of them anyway) and realized that it was through the efforts of a few good teachers that had taught me that I knew anything academic outside of the blue-collar world in which I was raised. My father had to leave school while in 8th grade in order to go to work, my mother was a (reluctant) high school graduate, and they both , especially my father, constantly stressed the importance of education to me as I grew up.

In school, I started out as a promising student, only to end up a goof; the kind of kid I see a lot of; able, but largely unmotivated. Therefore, I have large gaps in various areas of knowledge, which, to this day, I am trying to fill.

At any rate, when I decided to go back to get my teacher certification in reading, which is not one of the areas I am weak in, I was amazed at some of the utter nonsense being taught by my college professors that I was expected to believe. I already had a BBA in business administration, and had substituted for several years from K-12, but to hear so called "experts" saying that to grade papers using red ink could be harmful to a child's psyche, that female teachers should never wear open toed shoes because of a phenomena called "toe cleavage," that turned on adolescent boys, that tests shouldn't be difficult because every child DESERVES to be successful regardless whether they have done anything to achieve said success or not, etc., was almost too much to absorb! There were times I had to almost pinch myself in order to realize that these things were really being said, and were meant to be taken seriously!

I have spent years trying to teach kids things that, I know from experience, they will be expected to know in order to be considered literate adults; fighting every single day against the "I am entitled to a good grade because I am ME" attitudes the self esteem movement has created, but I am afraid that it is a losing battle, because the self esteem movement has become the ESTABLISHED way of teaching (and indeed THINKING) the past 30-40 years. Teachers like myself are considered "troublemakers" when all we are trying to do is the job of educating our kids so that they can compete in the real world with kids that ARE literate, and that DON'T think that they are ENTITLED to make a living regardless of whether they can do the job or NOT! This book lays it all out and tells it like it really is; and it is NOT a pretty picture.

This book was first published in 2000 (hardcover). And you would think by now that Dr. Stout's inside report on the danger of the self-esteem curriculum would have resulted in drastic improvements in public education in America. Unfortunately, that has not happened. Just before I wrote this review (June '06) I searched the Internet for "self-esteem curriculum" and received 6,320,000 hits. Clearly, the problem remains.

Writing with candor, compassion, wit, and a slight liberal slant - I would disagree with her views on national healthcare, the Second Amendment, and her citing the Matthew Shepard murder as an example of a homophobic hate crime (which we now know was not the case) - Dr. Stout is, on the whole, fair in her presentation. She provides a rare glimpse into the mysterious world of teacher education. And what she reveals is a world of professionals so wrapped up in their own ideas and theories that they are unable (unwilling?) to recognise the devastation being wrought on the nation and its children.

School as therapy centre has produced (and continues to produce) literally thousands of young Americans who are pathologically self-centred, hedonistic, anti-intellectual, unable to cope with the demands of life in the real world, and unwilling to accept the responsibilities that come with living in a democratic society. And as a result that society is at increasing risk of disintegration as these individuals enter adulthood and assume positions in education, business, and government.

My main criticism of Dr. Stout is her failure to recognise that morality and virtue (which she strongly supports) must have a more substantial foundation (i.e., God) than merely the collective agreement of society. After all, the 1960s saw a generation of college students openly rebel against society and its mores and morals in large part because they saw no basis greater than society, no absolute foundation, upon which those mores and morals rested.

In conclusion, the problems Professor Stout identifies have only grown in the six years since her book was published as has the need for parents and other concerned citizens to pay heed and take action before this nation degenerates into anarchy, barbarism, or, in response to those, totalitarianism. This is a book all Americans should read because the problems identified therein are a clear and present danger to the nation, perhaps the greatest danger we are currently facing. We ignore them at our own peril.

Once every two or three years I am pressed into service teaching the course "Fundamentals of Arithmetic and Logic." The course is designed to give elementary school teachers the background in mathematics that they need. This book is designed for that course, which is the context in which I examined it.
The coverage is standard for such courses, nearly identical to what we cover in our course. The chapter headings are:

*) Thinking critically
*) Sets and whole numbers
*) Numeration and computation
*) Number theory
*) Integers
*) Fractions and rational numbers
*) Decimals, real numbers and proportional reasoning
*) Algebraic reasoning and representation
*) Statistics: The interpretation of data
*) Probability
*) Geometric figures
*) Measurement: Length, area, and volume
*) Transformations, symmetries, and tilings
*) Congruence, constructions, and similarity

This book has a large number of colored illustrations, which is a big help over the uniform black on white format. I am constantly using multi-colored chalk or whiteboard markers in my presentations for math and computer science. There are a large number of exercises at the ends of the chapters and solutions to many are included at the end.
Unlike some other books, there is not a lot of ink expended in covering technological applications. I never use a calculator when I am teaching the fundamentals class and I consider this a positive characteristic of the book. These students need to understand the theory behind these operations and calculators can often disguise what is really being done
I do not know if and when I will teach our fundamentals class again, our math and computer science departments are in a dramatic state of unpredictability. However, at this time, this book tops my list of potential texts.

I would recommend this book for anyone intrested in teaching younger children mathmatics. It starts on the basics such as addition and goes through geometery. It is very helpful in reminding adults how to do some basic math that we might have forgot. I used this book two semesters in a row at CSU Stainislaus. There isn't a single Liberal Study major who hasn't used this book. This book has "Highlights from History" that tell you about the people that created the different math ideas. "Hands On" gives you fun math activities to try and pieces from the NCTM standards and many more helpful articles throughout the chapters. This book makes teaching math intresting for you and the children you teach it to.

It's a little bit pricey, but you get excellent overview of the field in Essa's book.

She strives for economy over quantity, so you get reviews of Piaget, Vygotsky, Erikson, Malsow, and the other names that influence early childhood in a concise but informative format.

It's a great companion after J.A. Brewer's, Feeny/Moracik's, and G.S. Morrison's introductory early childhood texts.