Teacher Tales

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Teacher Tales brings much-needed inspiration to teachers, and brings together great stories about teaching from the 2009 National Teacher of the Year and all the 2009 State Teachers of the Year, as well as other teachers and stories of thanks from students. A great teacher gift all year round. There’s always that one special teacher or student, and Chicken Soup for the Soul: Teacher Tales regales all educators with its heartfelt, inspiring, and humorous stories from inside and outside the classroom. Stories from teachers and students about their favorite memories, lasting lessons, and unforgettable moments will uplift and encourage any teacher. A foreword by Anthony J. Mullen, 2009 National Teacher of the Year, and stories from all the 2009 State Teachers of the Year.

It was never in author Joe Gilliland’s plan to become a teacher, certainly not a college teacher and most certainly not an English teacher. But that’s what happened, and he’s never looked back. In A Teacher’s Tale, he explains, how by neither planning for nor seeking a life of learning and teaching, lacking a syllabus or lesson plan, he discovered that a life in academe lay in his path—a path he’s followed for more than fifty years. A Teacher’s Tale begins in 1932 with Gilliland’s first experiences in schooling and concludes in the summer of 1955 just as he completes his apprenticeship and stands on the brink of becoming a qualified instructor in a small college in east Texas. This memoir presents a collection of stories about his experiences as a teacher and a college student. A story of schooling deeply immersed in the arts and humanities, A Teacher’s Tale shares Gilliland’s love of the university and how it compelled him to seek a life devoted to teaching, primarily in the community college arena. Through this narrative, he brings together a philosophy of higher education based on the importance of arts and humanities in today’s high- tech world.

Every teacher begins their teaching career with a desire to make a difference in the world through making a different in the life of a child (or perhaps thousands of children). However, most teachers quit within the first five years. Why? Because toxic systems produce toxic results.Tales of a Toxic Teacher shares the true story of some of the shocking experiences that happen behind the closed doors of a public school classroom. This inside look at the toxic schooling system reveals the cycles of abuse that impact both teachers and students alike with destructive and even deadly results.

In this book we demonstrate a mode of teacher education that is practical in a non-technical sense and relies on Dewey's notion of curriculum as the reconstruction of experience. We present a curriculum that emerged through collaborative self-reflection and seeks to reconstruct personal histories of schooling. As four former preservice teachers and their instructor, we engaged in jointly constructed autobiographical inquiry in order to generate data on our own past and on our current histories of teaching and learning. We wanted to illuminate parts of our lives in schools that until now belonged to our 'normal' and taken-for-granted past. We did this in order to enjoy certain degrees of awareness and choice as to which of our living stories to reinforce and which to "let run out" in our classrooms today.

Pedagogical models and methodologies for engaging with fairy tales in the classroom.

From the critically acclaimed author of Daddy Needs a Drink—hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “consistently hilarious”—comes a series of irreverent, wickedly observant essays about what it really means to be a teacher today. With his trademark wit and wisdom, Robert Wilder dissects the world’s noblest profession—whether he’s taming a classroom full of hormonal teenagers or going one-on-one with the school bully. Wilder was twenty-six when he found his true calling. Leaving a lucrative advertising career in New York, he got a job as an assistant first-grade teacher at a Santa Fe alternative school—and never looked back. Now he brings his unique perspective—as a teacher, parent, and former student—to a series of laugh-out-loud essays that show teaching at its most absurd…and most rewarding. With brutal candor he chronicles his own lively adventures in modern education, from navigating cutthroat kindergarten sign-ups to subbing for a class experiment gone wrong–and dares to tell about it. He shares the surprising lessons he’s learned in the trenches of his profession, including how to bribe a four-year-old (his own) to stop swearing in a Lutheran preschool and the best way to teach moody teenagers…manage “helicopter” parents…and cope with bullies—whether of the school-yard, Internet, or parental kind. And he offers tough love for cheaters who log on to www.SchoolSucks.com, then puts to rest forever the question of why new teachers gain weight (hint: the free donuts don’t help). In Tales from the Teachers’ Lounge, Robert Wilder charts life’s learning curve with a warmth and humor you don’t find in textbooks. By turns heartwarming, eye-opening, and uproariously funny, these pitch-perfect essays offer priceless lessons in life, family, learning, and teaching from a true lover of education.

Tales from a Teacher's Heart is a video series that tells heartwarming stories about students, schools, and teachers like you. From the lives of our authors, these true stories celebrate and explore all the ways teachers make a difference. Topics include: - the first year of teaching - teachers supporting teachers - connecting with students - and more. The Tales from a Teacher's Heart: Study Guide includes text versions of the tales, discussion questions, strategies, applications, and musings on what it means to be a teacher. Use this book for professional development, self-reflection, starting and closing meetings, and study groups.

Designed to help teachers in early years classrooms use The Seven Teachings Stories series, by Katherena Vermette, this guide provides the framework and key ideas educators need to become participants in a culturally responsive classroom community and to deepen their understanding of the Seven Teachings. With these stories, educators can create a space to discuss diverse perspectives, experiences, and traditions with young readers, and to foster a deeper understanding of ourselves as human beings and of our relationships with others. This guide is presented in three sections and includes: Key information about the Seven Teachings, Anishinaabe vocabulary, and the characters in each story. Ideas to guide student learning. Approaches and suggestions that teachers can apply to any of the seven stories. Strategies and activities to deepen readers' understanding of the abstract concepts addressed in the stories. An appendix of reproducible classroom materials.