Library
Have you read any interesting books lately?
Something that really changed the way you approach the classroom?
Leave a comment if you have a title or author you would recommend.
These authors can be found here, in alphabetical order:
- Bruno Bettleheim
- Marie Clay
- Esme Raji Codell
- Dorothy Evans
- Gerard Jones
- Gareth B. Matthews
- Maria Montessori
- Debbie Silver
- Sylvia Ashton-Warner
Bettleheim, Bruno:
- The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales
(Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1977)
There are many quotable quotes in this book. Here are a few:
p.4 Literature is devalued when it does not convey meaning into one’s life.
p.10 Children do not ask, “Do I want to be good?”
They ask, “Who do I want to be like?”
p.25 The fairytale is therapeutic because it allows the reader to find their own solutions through contemplating what the story implies about his/her own inner conflict. The unrealistic nature of fairytales is important because it’s not concerned with useful info. about the external world, but the inner processes taking place in an individual.
p.36-7 Although fairytales are unusual and highly improbable, they are phrased in a way that is ordinary, as if it could happen to you. They deal with universal human problems and desireable solutions.
p.39 Children must be reassured there is a happy outcome possible. Again, on p.47 he mentions that we need to be able to have hope for ourselves, even after we may have done something wrong.
p.44 I love that he sticks it to the Ant & Grasshopper fable. I’ve always felt uncomfortable about the outcome of that story. It’s so cruel and hopeless.
p.48 Scientifically correct answers leave children feeling intellectually deflated. A fairytale conveys the message in a way that corresponds with the child’s thinking.
Clay, Marie:
Reading Recovery: A guidebook for teachers in training
An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement
Running Records for Classroom Teachers
Ironically, I am finding the ‘Reading Recovery: A guidebook for teachers in training’ to be very tedious reading. There are gems of wisdom hidden in blocks of text that might be more inspiring if I were currently trying to crack the code of a particular student’s literacy. Here are the gems:
Teacher and system must take into account if a child’s prior learning has taught her/him how to work with a large group of children, how to obey institutional rules, how to meet the minute by minute expectations of the teacher, and how to compete for her/his attention with other children.
Ms. Clay recommends a maximum of 20 students in a Primary or Grade One class to help the teacher give individual attention to a student’s progress in reading and writing.
As teachers, we must OBSERVE what children are able to do. What strategies are they using? How is their word recognition? Watch and keep notes.
p.23 ”Many teachers who think of reading and writing as language activities find it difficult to think about what children are looking at when they look at print. What signals in the print are the children attending to? Sometimes we can see in their writing the answer to a question like that. Sometimes what they say tells us what they are looking at. Most of the time we really do not know what the early reader is attending to in print.”
Codell, Esme Raji:
Educating Esme- Diary of a Teacher’s First Year
(Algonquin Books: Chapel Hill, 2001)
A hilarious book. So, so, so very excellent and inspiring. She is so energetic and has a million great ideas and perspectives for the classroom. To quote a passage in the afterword, “Even more refreshing in a book about education, the author is not some professional pedagogue steeped in the wisdom sifted from 40 years in academia. She is young, rash, exuberant, alternately innocent and street-wise, always child-wise, and sometimes irrational. But, she is never irrelevant.” Read it! You have to! I’m adding Esme’s children’s literature website to my blogroll.
Evans, Dorothy:
- No Other Teacher Is You
(Carlton Press: New York, 1974)
Although dated, Mrs. Evans offers helpful advice on discipline (It’s not punishment, it’s training) and the routine for new teachers in a primary classroom. She encourages planning the future and writing down everything you do in a journal. She is a big fan of using manipulatives- clay, blocks, found objects. These are rich stimuli to the senses. On the first day of school, Mrs. Evans sends home a letter to the parents, to get them on board with “training” the primary students to follow directions (in a game like Simon Says), to recognize their written name, to play with children of the same age, to feel confident speaking freely with “a good language flow,” and to manage their own personal possessions. She quotes Montessori and asks parents to “teach teaching, not correcting.”
Jones, Gerard:
Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes and Make-Believe Violence.
(Basic Books: New York, 2002)
“After years of research with psychologists, educators, parents and children, Jones argues that young people love fantasy violence not because the media indoctrinates them, but because it gives them coping skills they desperately need.”
p.36: “A child’s imagination doesn’t behave like the cells of the body with a predictable, somatic response. Playing a game or choosing a TV show is a conscious choice, an individual action, and part of a complex exchange between what a child needs and what the entertainment provides.”
p.49&50: “But I believe that we burden children with something they shouldn’t have to carry when we dump our adult anxieties inappropriately onto their fantasies.”
p.56: “We don’t help children learn the difference between fantasy and reality when we allow their fantasies to provoke reactions from us that are more appropriate to reality. … We teach them that pretend shooting makes adults feel threatened in reality, and therefore their own fantasies must be more dangerous and powerful than they thought. The result for the child is more anxiety…”
p.60: “When we are at peace with our fears and angers, we are best able to love.”
p.62: “The children know it is all magical play. The same magic destroys and ressurects, creates an orphan or a mother- or the Green Slime. The ability to imagine is the magic; putting it into action is the play; playing it out is the safe way to discharge the idea.”
p.76: “Entertainment violence embraces far more than the superhero fantasies of early childhood, takes more problematic forms and plays more complex roles. But, at heart it’s about the joy of feeling big and strong, the freedom of being able to survive anything and to overcome any obstacle. It’s about action, power, and mastering life.”
p.88 & 89: “Cartoons, comics, video games…are all about exaggerations of emotions and situations to make them clearer and more powerful to children. Make-believe violence is a cartoon of conflict.”
p.94: “Barbie, Britney Spears, guns, Pokemon…are these products teaching my children exaggerated gender traits and negative behaviour, or are they allowing them to play with concerns that real life has already given them?”
p.95: “I’ve been letting go of the idea that her fantasies are supposed to validate my values. I don’t know that my fantasies at her age had anything to do with the values I ended up with, and I don’t see why she should have the same fantasies to deal with her world that I had in a very different world.”
p.98: “We often hear that entertainment violence will make children more frightened of real violence, or numb them to its horror, or make them believe that the world is meaner than it is. In fact, reality can have those effects- especially the distorted version of reality shown to us by the commercial news media. Fantasy provides an antidote. It can help people take control of their fears and approach life’s scarier aspects more realistically.”
p.101: “(Make-believe play) provides correctives, happy endings, that help children to believe that what frightens them can be overcome. It helps them navigate their concerns…to manipulate troubling ideas until those ideas become familiar and lose their power…Children crave (fantasy) raw, loud, and angry (because) they need it to be strong enough to match and master their anxiety and anger.”
Matthews, Gareth B.:
Philosophy and the Young Child.
(Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1980)
I came upon this author during research on the subject of ‘philosophy with children.’ Conversations with children are most revealing of vital human essence! To question and question, and then to question the answer given to that question. What a wonderful idea, what a wonderful pursuit, and so far I love this book!
Chapters bear titles such as: Puzzlement, Play, Reasoning, Fantasy, Anxiety and Naiveté.
Montessori, Maria:
Spontaneous Activity in Education
(Robert Bentley Inc.: Cambridge, 1971)
This book will be very inspirational, I can feel it. Copyright 1917!
Silver, Debbie:
Drumming to the Beat of Different Marchers
(Incentive Publications: Nashville, 2005)
This book was given to me at Christmas and I am so looking forward to reading it! Here’s the synopsis: Debbie shares her wisdom and humour. Educators looking for ways to improve their instructional skills in a differentiated classroom are guaranteed to find great practical strategies. Debbie’s story of success integrates research-based models, teaching strategies, management tips, and inspirational “from the heart” lessons for addressing individual differences.
Ashton-Warner, Sylvia:
Teacher
(Simon & Schuster: New York, 1986)
This book promises to be steeped in ecology and natural philosophy. My favourites! First copyright was in 1963.
p. 58: “What I feel about their work has nothing to do with it. The thing is for them to write what is on their minds and if they do or do not accomplish that, it is you who are good or bad. From the teacher’s end it boils down to whether or not she is a good conversationalist; whether or not she has the gift or the wisdom to listen to another; the ability to draw out and preserve that other’s line of thought.”
