Be the Chalkboard Champion of Your Own Book!

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chalkboard2[1]When I became a teacher 32 years ago, I started keeping a collection of items that marked my activities and successes in the classroom. I kept the sweet little notes from students and the praise letters from their parents, the thank you cards from colleagues and the district office for the extra services I performed, photographs of special projects or activities we worked on, the newspaper clippings about the programs I initiated, the evaluation forms I was especially proud of, and any awards I received.
I just kept these things in a file folder until, a few years later, when I became a scrapbooking enthusiast, I decided to transfer them all to a simple scrapbook. I arranged the items in chronological order, mounted some of them on school-themed scrapbook paper, and placed them in clear plastic page protectors. I also combed through old school yearbooks to photocopy published pictures of me at work in the classroom, on field trips with the kids, or chaperoning various school events. When the scrapbook was completed, I realized that what lay before me was a record of many classroom successes and an archive of my professional achievements.

Personally, I found my book to be a great source of solace during those periods of my career when I questioned whether or not I had made a serious vocational error! Also, I think it will make a nice table display when I eventually retire. But seriously, a book like this can become a valuable tool whenever you need to make a list of your accomplishments; if you’re looking for a new job or applying for that summer institute, for instance. Think about creating one for yourself. You can be the Chalkboard Champion of your own book!

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

Laura Bush: Spoken From the Heart

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cvr9781439155202_9781439155202_lg[1][1]Anyone fascinated by presidential history, libraries, and teachers, whether Republican or Democrat, is bound to be interested in the recent opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Museum and Library last week in Dallas, Texas. It is times like this when I like to  remember that former First Lady Laura Bush was once a teacher and a librarian.

Laura Bush gives readers a wealth of detail about her experiences in her Texas classrooms, the libraries where she worked, and the annual National Book Festival she inaugurated in her 2011 autobiography, Spoken from the Heart. The book covers the other details of her life you would expect to find in an autobiography: her childhood and education, how she met and married George Bush, her difficulty conceiving and the eventual birth of her twins, her husband’s gubernatorial and presidential elections, and her role as First Lady.

If you want to get to know Laura Bush better, be sure to read this book. You can find Spoken from the Heart on amazon.com.