Category Archives: Books

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

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.

Learning at the Back Door: Reflections on Nontraditional Learning

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1954[1][1]In today’s classrooms we educators spend a lot of energy promoting life-long learning. When I contemplate this topic I am reminded of an interesting book I came across last year. The book is entitled Learning at the Back Door: Reflections on Nontraditional Learning in the Lifespan, written by Charles A. Wedemeyer, Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Wedemeyer devoted most his lengthy career as an educator to the creation and promotion of nontraditional learning methods and programs. During WWII he developed courses to enable our nation’s soldiers to earn their high school diplomas while serving overseas. Wedemeyer was an early proponent of university extension courses, and was also dabbling in long-distance learning methods such as computer courses before he passed away in 1999.

You can find his discussion of nontraditional learning methods in Learning at the Back Door, available at amazon.com.

Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family

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janm_2256_87093872[1][1]Teachers who are creating lessons about World War II war relocation camps will probably want to examine  Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family by Yoshiko Uchida. This slender volume is a beautifully written personal history of the author’s family, of their life before the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and of their internment in a war relocation camp first in Tanforan, California, and then in Topaz, Utah, during World War II.

Uchida’s purpose in writing this memoir is to describe an internment camp experience, and how she, as one of  the 110,000 internees, many of whom were American citizens, felt when she was  imprisoned by her own government simply because she happened to look like the enemy. Uchida, the daughter of Japanese immigrants, was a twenty-year-old student in her senior year at the University of Berkeley in San Francisco at the time.

Read the book for your own edification, suggest it as leisure reading for your students, or incorporate it in whole or in part in your lesson plans. Any way you go, the book is a great resource. You can find Desert Exile on amazon.

Carrie Chapman Catt: The Sufragette Teacher

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9781558611399[1][1]Carrie Chapman Catt graduated from Iowa State Agricultural College, having worked her way through school as a teacher in the summer months. Her father, a subsistence farmer, contributed only $25 a year to her education, partly because he didn’t have a lot of financial resources, but mostly because he didn’t believe in advanced education for girls. But the young woman was determined to get a college degree. After her graduation, she continued to teach, earning a stellar reputation as an educator. In time, she was promoted to the position of  superintendent of schools.
Catt could have remained in that comfortable job until retirement, but she was determined to improve the lives of the women of her day. The enfranchisement of women became her life’s passion. Catt became one of the leading forces for the Suffragist movement, which lobbied state by state, and eventually descended upon Washington, DC, to pressure Congress into passing a constitutional amendment that would grant women the right to vote. Once that goal was accomplished, Catt spent the rest of her life advocating for peace and human rights. You can read about the life of this remarkable teacher in Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life, available on amazon. I have also included a chapter about her in the book I am currently writing, tentatively titled Chalkboard Heroes.

What Makes Great Teachers? We All Want To Know!

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0470432861[1][1]What makes a great teacher? I think every dedicated educator wants to know the answer to that question. Steven Farr, who works as a recruiter for the Teach for America program, has spent ten years travelling around the country visiting classrooms, and he suggests some deceptively simple answers. You can read them in his highly acclaimed book Teaching as Leadership: The Highly Effective Teacher’s Guide to Closing the Achievement Gap. Some of Farr’s suggestions were featured on a segment of ABC News with Diane Sawyer. You can view this segment on YouTube at this link:

What Makes Great Teachers

If you want to buy Farr’s book, you can find it on amazon at this link:

Teaching As Leadership