Category Archives: Books

Here s a list of books written for teachers that are worth reading. Enjoy!

Pat Nixon: The Pretty Teacher of Whittier High School

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cvr9781416576051_9781416576051_lg[1][1]I was really surprised to learn that former First Lady Pat Ryan Nixon had been employed for several years in the 1930’s as a business teacher at Whittier Union High School in Whittier, California. In fact, she was working as a teacher when she met her future husband, a young and ambitious city attorney named Richard Nixon. Pretty and popular, the former Miss Ryan instructed courses in typing, bookkeeping, business principles, and stenography. Her students remembered her fondly, writes Julie Nixon Eisenhower in a very detailed and very personal biography about her mother published in 1986. You can read all about Pat Nixon’s teaching career in the book Pat Nixon: the Untold Story, available on amazon.com.

LBJ, the Schoolteacher

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9780679729457_p0_v1_s260x420[1][1]I was very surprised to learn that President Lyndon Johnson had once been a schoolteacher in Cotulla, Texas, where he taught a class junior high school class comprised primarily of Mexican American students, and then as a high school speech and debate teacher in Houston. By all accounts he was an excellent teacher, and, had he stayed in the profession, probably would have enjoyed a very successful career there. I enjoyed learning all about his challenges and successes as an educator. When I read this book, I learned a lot of scandalous things about this president, too. Stuff that would be juicy enough for any daytime drama or prime-time reality show. You can read the detail about LBJ’s career as a teacher—and the scuttlebutt, if you’re interested—in The Path to Power, Book One of Robert A. Caro’s trilogy about this intriguing historical figure.

Freedom’s Children: Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own Stories

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Freedoms_childr-210[1][1]For any teacher who is teaching a course in U.S. History, or for anyone who is intrigued by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s, this slender volume is a must-read. The book contains an inspirational collection of true stories by thirty African Americans who were children or teenaged activists during that period of time. These young people tell about what it was like for them to fight segregation in the South, to sit in an all-white restaurant and ask to be served, to refuse to give up a seat at the front of the bus, to be among the first to integrate the public schools, and to face the frightening potential for violence, arrest, and even death to advance the cause of civil liberty. Anecdotes about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, sit-ins, the integration of Jim Crow schools, Freedom Rides, the Children’s Crusade, and Freedom Summer are among the topics included. You can find Freedom’s Children on amazon.com.

From Classroom to White House: Chalkboard Politicians

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9780786464869_p0_v1_s260x420[1][2]I was fascinated by this little book that tells anecdotes about our nation’s presidents and first ladies as students and as teachers. In addition, the book describes the educational issues the presidents addressed during their White House years, the complications  in education at their time in history, and an overview of American schooling over time. I was amazed to learn that John F. Kennedy’s teacher said he could “seldom locate his possessions,” and that the teacher of George H.W. Bush described the young student as “somewhat eccentric,” and that Bill Clinton’s sixth-grade teacher called him a “motormouth.” If you’re  a teacher as intrigued by presidential history as I am, you’ve got to read  From Classroom to White House, which can easily be found on amazon.com.

Carrie McLain: A Pioneer Teacher in Northwestern Alaska

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51f8ZZ5X-FL._SL500_SS500_[1][1]Carrie McLain was born in 1895 in Astoria, Long Island, New York. When she was just a child of ten, her father moved Carrie and her four siblings to the fledgling village of Nome on the ice-crusted coast of northwestern Alaska. There she grew to adulthood, became a pioneer teacher, married, and reared a family of one son and three daughters. McLain tells the fascinating story of her provincial life in Pioneer Teacher: Turn of the Century Classroom in Remote Northwestern Alaska. Anyone interested in learning more about rugged existence on the frigid Alaskan frontier would be interested in reading this slender volume  (it’s only 70 pages, including photographs). Pioneer Teacher can be found on amazon.