Chicken soup for the soul

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Sophia R. Cohen

"This book illustrates the experiences of elementary school teachers across one year's time as they participated in a teacher development seminar focused on mathematics, and as a result changed their beliefs, their knowledge, and their practices. It explores these experiences as a means of understanding the learning that takes a teacher from a more traditional teaching practice to one that is focused on the ideas and understandings that students and teachers have of the subject matter." "The work emerges from and reports on a unique data set from a two-year study of teacher learning that was funded by the Spencer and MacArthur foundations. The teachers whose work is at the center of this study were participants in the Developing Mathematical Ideas seminar (DMI), a mathematics teacher development seminar for elementary school teachers. This seminar is one example of intensive, domain-specific professional development. In this seminar teachers study elementary mathematics content to deepen their own understanding of it, they study the development among children of the ideas central to elementary mathematics, and they experience a teaching and learning environment consistent with the pedagogy envisioned by the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics' Principles and Standards for School Mathematics. The seminar is a nationally available teacher development curriculum, thus interested educators can gain access to the resources necessary to offer similar seminars in their own communities." "Teachers' Professional Development and the Elementary Mathematics Classroom: Bringing Understandings to Light will be widely interesting to a broad audience, including mathematics teacher educators, teacher education researchers, policy makers, and classroom teachers. It will serve well as a text in a range of graduate courses dealing with teacher cognition/knowledge for teaching, mathematics methods, psychology of learning, and pedagogical theory."--Jacket.

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Humble the Poet

Life is hard, and the older we get, it only seems to get more complex. We can easily get overwhelmed trying to deal with everything all at once. We look everywhere for solutions to make the journey a bit more bearable; everywhere but within. Sometimes we gain more from letting go. Whether it's old habits, stale mindsets, regrets of the past, or simply the way we view our lives; in order to grow we have to shed the things that are holding us back. UnLearn is collection of writings to remind you of the wisdom you've already acquired, but may have lost under the weight and pressures of daily life.

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Nadine M. Lambert & Barbara L. McCombs

In How Students Learn: Reforming Schools Through Learner-Centered Educ ation, leaders in the psychological and educational communities sugges t that successful school reform must not only uphold standards but als o must recognize students' differences and unique learning styles. The volume examines current research on how students learn and presents t he theoretical perspectives and research findings of leading authors i n educational psychology. The chapters reflect the work of these disti nguished educators and psychologists in developing and articulating th e psychological knowledge base that is most releveant to education.

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Parker J. Palmer

"Teachers choose their vocation for reasons of the heart, because they care deeply about their students and about their subject. But the demands of teaching cause too many educators to lose heart. Is it possible to take heart in teaching once more so that we can continue to do what good teachers always do - give heart to our students?"--BOOK JACKET. "In The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer takes teachers on an inner journey toward reconnecting with their vocation and their students - and recovering their passion for one of the most difficult and important of human endeavors."--BOOK JACKET.