Teaching Books

If you are an English Second Language student from a Latin country, you need this. No matter your learning rate, this will greatly improve your vocabulary. It won't help your accent, but there are great choices on CDs for that purpose. This is a way to build your word store fairly painlessly.
Highly reccomended

"A Civilization of Love" is a quick read but it packs a lot of authentic Catholic social teaching. What I really liked about this book is how it focused on a broad set of social issues that span the political spectrum. Too often prominent Catholics focus their attention on either conservative issues (abortion, homosexuality, divorce, contraception, euthanasia, etc.) or liberal ones (poverty, environmentalism, workers' rights, immigration, etc). Mr. Anderson discusses the importance of ALL of these things to Catholics and how they are ALL part and parcel of our "culture of death".

All of these issues stem in his view from a society that "sees human beings as the products of blind, mechanical, and amoral forces, one in which human life has only a kind of quantitative, economic value. Individuals are see as units of production or consumption, and those who cannot prove they have value in these terms are increasingly subject to removal."

As noted in previous reviews, the author does have a rather annoying tendency to name-drop. I think he was trying to lend credence to his arguments by implying that they are supported by high level members of the Church hierarchy. But it came off as rather un-Christian boastfulness. Jesus got his message across pretty effectively without constant mention of His high-level connections, know what I mean?

All in all, I highly recommend this book for all Catholics interested in making this world a better place.

The author has offered a very practical challenge for living in a loving manner in today's world. His approach is intelligent and encouraging.

This book properly positions family, Catholic education, the spirituality of work, and the right to life as values that should be promulgated by everyone including the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, this isn't always the case quite often by the Church, for details, google isaiah59.

I found the book a little dry and, for the most part, not very relevant to my life. If I were on a board of directors, or working for the UN, I might have found this book more relevant.

Some excerpts:

p. 50: "Ironically, this French intellectual embraced by the political Left had breathed new life into the legacy of the German philosophical icon of the Nazis: Friedrich Nietzsche - at least in regard to how Sartre had advanced the rejection of Christianity, Christian morality, and indeed any traditional criteria for judging moral conduct."

p. 100: "But our experience of industrialization within Western nations during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries should make us better appreciate the experiences of the equally dramatic course of economic development globally, especially the impact on poor, developing countries."

p. 150: "Fears of an imagined Catholic fifth column or the alleged subservience of American Catholics to a 'foreign prince' are, for the overwhelming majority of Americans, a thing of the past."

Carl Anderson has written a scholarly-sounding book that is well-written and informative with regard to a certain reading of history and of the important papal encyclicals over the years. But it is impossible to read what he has written as an honest paean to love in light of what he leaves out of the book, and in the severe partisanship that characterizes his other political writings and activities over the years.

Like George Weigel, his writing is littered with references to his own frequent conversations with Pope John Paul II and other high Church officials. These stories come across as more self-reverential than illuminating with regard to the issues under discussion.

As a former Reagan Administration official, who welcomed George Bush to speak before the Knights of Columbus during the heat of the 2004 presidential campaign but publicly shunned and disparaged his fellow Catholic John Kerry, Anderson seems challenged when it comes to practicing what he preaches. His recent open letter belittling another Catholic Senator, Joseph Biden, focuses in the same way on the criminalization of abortion, like so many conservative authors who choose to elevate a single Supreme Court decision as the unparalleled moral test of our time.

In contrast, Anderson's book tells the story of a woman whom he and his wife assisted with an adoption in response to an unintended pregnancy. He also rightly boasts about the efforts of the Knights of Columbus to support the needs of women during pregnancies stressed by poverty or social circumstance. He cites Pope John Paul's encyclical Evangelium Vitae in insisting that we are called to promote life not only by condemning the evil, but also by promoting the good. Indeed, the US Bishops' Conference offered the same citation in their Faithful Citizenship document in November 2007, while going on to suggest that constructive measures to deal with abortion are as important as efforts to criminalize it.

But when it comes to politics, Mr Anderson has no patience for lilly-livered abortion reducers like Biden and Obama. He focuses in his open letter on Biden's discomfort with criminalization, while ignoring Biden's expressed determination to work for abortion reduction. What the open letter to Biden made explicit, the book offers implicitly in the subjects it leaves out. There is no discussion of the $3 trillion war in Iraq, the neglect of the global warming problem that the Vatican has spoken of relentlessly for the past year, and no talk about the unfolding global economic crisis that has resulted from the conservative obsession with deregulation.

It is telling that all of the other Amazon reviewers to date have loved this book with 4- or 5-star ratings. One suspects that the large swath of the Knights of Columbus who will be voting for Senators Obama and Biden have chosen to spend their money on less political treatments of the wonderful subject of love.

I couldn't believe how much the lsat changed in the newer version, I am so glad I had a chance to review them before taking the test. Well worth the money!

This product is the perfect resource for creating a school to home connection. Each weekly lesson includes a brief letter to parents explaining the skill used in the completion of the assignment. Parent and child work together-reading and responding to the passage. It is skill-building for the student and provides parents with insight into the skills and strategies their child needs in order to become a better reader.

We used this as part of our weekly reading homework. Children and parents loved it. They read the text each night for three nights then got the question sheet on the fourth night for homework. The stories are interesting and engaging. The letters to parents helped guide the parents. Awesome book!

This is a great how-to book for one specific phonics & spelling teaching strategy. It has made a big difference in my third graders ability to sound out unknown words and incorporate their knowledge of spelling patterns. Making Words is geared for K-3rd. Making Big Words is for 3rd thru 5th graders. It's a hands-on approach and it is very adaptable. You can do it just as suggested or adjust it to your students' particular need. It includes hundreds of lessons. It can also be used in coordination with thematic units that you may be using in your room. A great resource. Worth every penny. I just love Patricia Cunningham!

I teach Title 1 disadvantaged reading students, most are learning English as a second language. I did a word a day with my 6th, 7th , and 8th graders. The making words lessons allowed me to introduce vocabulary, point out spelling patterns, talk about vowel variances, and talk about how our words are made up. I asked them to write the words as well as manipulate the letters. Sometimes, I asked them to group the words if there were several words with the same spelling pattern.

Subject Matters is a great, practical book for teachers. It is well written with a great voice of the authors. It is true that many content teachers rely on textbooks that may not be meeting the students' needs. This book offers an easy and practical alternative and supplement to traditional teaching that will benefit the learners in our classrooms, make teaching more interesting for us and create real, life-long learners.

If you worry that your students "just aren't getting the text," here is help for you.

This book is an easy guide for content area teachers to use to help when teaching their subjects. Strategies for before, during and after reading are given.

There are ideas to help you find other sources of information to supplement the text and give students more choices in their learning.

This is an excellent book for all teachers.

This book is a must for anyone who thinks reading is for language arts. I hate to read 99.999998% of books. This book hits every area that causes me to hate reading. It's a must read for teachers and those that hate reading. It gives referances of what some might like as to what people like me need to think about in choosing a book. (btw I am a student teacher of math)

I was assigned this book while obtaining my teaching certificate in college. It has useful strategies for helping student learn to read different types of books but the authors assume the teachers have extra time in class to teach these tactics. Unfortunately, most high school teachers are hampered by the amount of information to teach in their subject areas that it is difficult to implement the book's suggestions. Teachers can help those students during tutoring which makes the book useful.

This book is very readable and user-friendly. Daniels offers up a treasure trove of helpful ideas for teachers; especially beginners or those with classrooms filled with students who don't like to read.
I recommend this book highly for all secondary level teachers.

I initially read this book as a study group member. I subsequently bought 5 more copies to share with teachers. The words of wisdom from these students would benefit any first time teacher from Elementary School to High School, and would benefit any teacher who needs a reminder of what to do or not do in order to have a productive mutually respected school year!

This book ROCKS. I wish that all of my teachers would read it. High school kids are sick of being treated like second class citizens or caged animals and finally here we get some respect. Thank you Kathleen Cushman for listening to intelligent teenagers and getting their words into print.

This book was awesome! If I had read this before my first year of teaching, I would have been a much better teacher. I'm really glad I came across it in a bookstore and bought it on a whim as I entered my second year of teaching. It's a book that I know I will read again after a bad day to connected to my students' point of view. It's also a book that I plan to share with many of my colleagues. It really hepled me see things from a kids' perspective. I think it will change my teaching for the better.

If you eat chips in class, the teacher will give you a detention.
If you eat chips while working, your boss will fire you.
Ms. Cushman likes it when kids say what they want. But she forgot that when they graduate and go to work, they can't always get what they want. You have to listen to your boss at work or lose your job.
Following orders at school is good practice for the day you start working for a living.

I was in the bookstore browsing and found this book. I've been teaching college students for over ten years, but only began teaching community college four years ago, and thus feel a bit at sea sometimes with the "high school mentality." This book contains some things that are obvious to those who have been teaching for a long time, but it's almost certain that at least one or two of the views of the kids will be helpful and will translate directly into classroom practice in a way that few books on teaching do.
The insights this book provides into what highschools are like, especially for kids in large city schools, are invaluable. I was surprised to find myself already following a piece of advice I read in the book in the classroom the next day. Definetely worth reading.

I homeschool several teenage students and I tutor math as well. I love this book. I think Saxon makes math understandable above any other books I have seen or used. Thorough explanations of each concept and lots of practice.

This book make algebra easy. I would recommend it to anyone.

The service was great, but when the book arrived, it had much more writting in the book than stated. But what was worse, all the back answer pages were cut out. There was no mention of pages missing. I certainly would not have bought this book if I had known that pages were missing.

This book is a fun approach in communicating the elements of art, fun for teacher and student. And what could be better than getting kids to take an interest in reading and art. Can you say future children's book Illustrator? This book will open many more books. I would highly recommend it for the elementary art teacher or home schooler.

This is an excellent book.It helps children visualize ideas from their favorite books and to apply them to a visual art experience.

This is a book full of ideas for teaching art classes to young children.

This book has a lot of ideas for lesson planning in the art room. It is divided into sections so that lessons are easy to find and also offers many great children's books to base lessons off of. GREAT!

I would recommend this book for elementary classroom teachers. It provides outstanding projects and ideas for integrating Art into Language Arts. The author does and excellent job of teaching the elements of art and principles of design in the art projects! I am an Art Teacher and have taught many of the projects in the book. All projects were successful!

I'm quite disappointed that there are people in this world who can openly dissent from church teaching yet write and act as though the Church is the one dissenting. Wills thinks of himself as God by interpreting the bible to his own likings and to fit his own beliefs.

What Jesus Meant began in a promising manner; however, by the time I finished I couldn't help wondering if I had just finished a more modern and cleverly disguised manifesto of liberation theology. If Wills isn't truly embracing liberation theology, then he's certainly giving it a nod, wink, smile and pat on the back. He is also quick to point out that Jesus spent the majority of his time with "sinners" but he forgets to point out that Jesus would heal these people, instructing them to "sin no more" Jesus is reduced to an anti-religious, open minded and liberal hippie. I would recommend spending your money elsewhere.

Garry has showed us his Jesus--a gigantic nursery school nanny.

"Now, children, be nice! Share with your friends; and remember, we are ALL friends! And if you get mad at someone, give them a BIG HUG, and think nice thoughts! Because, remember, God loves you!"

So spake Garry's Nanny-Jesus, traveling throughout Palestine.

Garry is the latest of the Annointed, telling us what Jesus REALLY meant.

Thanks, Garry. But, I ain't buyin' it.

As several reviewers have said, your Jesus is astonishingly modern. Quite a Liberal; did he not mention global warming and "liberation theology"?

Garry's interpretation of Jesus leaves me feeling like a powerless toddler. He takes away our drives, our aspirations, our desires, and puts us in the nursery, where we are all friends, we are all the same, and we are all at the mercy of our caring, superior teachers. And is this not what the Annointed want? For us to be ignorant children, sitting at their feet, getting bite-sized portions of their benevolent wisdom? I think so, because, to me, this book dripped with arrogance. Not honest, Nietzschean arrogance, but some other kind--subtle, hiding in the shadows and in the squirrelly, slightly-condescending language.

Why should I believe Garry's interpretation of an interpretation? The gospels are interpretations of Palestinians about Jesus, assuming he really existed. Even more--they are the interpretations of the recollections of those who interpreted Jesus!

Some of Garry's nonsense: "Miracles, as it were, work themselves around such men (reviewer's note: Garry is talking about St. Francis and 'the Baal Shem Tov.' Who?! Never heard of BS Tov. Why not Paramahansa Yogananda or Sai Baba? But continuing:) Jesus is the preeminent example of this. The fact that he seems like other wonder-working holy men--Appollonius of Tyana, for instance--does not mean that he is an imitation of them. Rather, they are a reaching out toward him. They are a hunger and he the food. They are an ache, he the easement. As Chesterton said, his story resembles the great myths of mankind because he is the fulfillment of the myths." (What Jesus Meant, 2006, p. xxvii)

Cheap C.S. Lewis imitation, Garry; it is also total nonsense. Just read what you wrote--total blather. Besides, Jesus is an imitation of them, and they an imitation of him, because they all imitate the myths.

I am most familiar with the Garry Wills who writes scholarly historical treatises on the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, even Henry Adams (Henry Adams and the Making of America). Lately, he's been busy writing essays on spiritual issues as a devout Catholic, and as I always liked and respected historical work, I took this slim volume for a spin . . .

. . . And a worthwhile use of time it was. Wills explicates the difficulty we sinful humans have in dealing with Jesus as he was, not what we want him to be. With the lone exception of justifying homosexuality as natural and not sinful, through a rather self-consciously torturous argument, Wills makes cogent and though-provoking points. He relies on ideas from masters of the faith such as Augustine, St. Francis, and Chesterton, and his own translations of the "marketplace Greek" of the New testament.

A couple of interesting points. In the Garden, as Jesus returns to where he left Peter and a small set of the disciples with the admonition to stay awake while he prayed, Wills translates the aphorism "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" as a complete sentence that may have applied to Jesus, not Peter as the semi-colon in the NASB translation implies. And indeed, as the God-Man prayed prostrate on the ground and sweat blood in his anguish, His flesh was weak even as His spirit said "Not My will but Thine."

At another spot, discussing the Last Supper and the meaning of the breaking of bread, Wills refers to the "Our Father" and points out the difficulty of translating "daily" bread, as the word rendered "daily" means roughly "approaching" in English, and more literally can be rendered "to come", " or "to be". The "to be" sense is captured in "daily", but Wills links the prayer for the bread "To come" to the Lord's offering of the bread, representing His body, at the Last Supper! Intriguing, and spiritually powerful.

And not very Catholic! His ideas about the Last Supper seem decidedly non-transsubstantiational, if that's a word.

As a 26 year old Catholic I love Reading this guys work. It is so comical. He is a poster boy of the old guard still trying to reinterpret Christianity to serve their tired old hippie agenda. Thank God young Catholics and most of all young Priests don't fall for this hogwash. Of all this clowns books this is the worst(well Papal Sin was pretty darn dumb). In it he actualy deigns to tell us what Jesus realy meant. Because you know, two thousand years of scholarship not to mention the gospels have been wrong. The ego mania on this man knows no end. Apparently he fancies himself a lone prophet telling us the truth. Go Gary!!