Tag Archives: Book Reviews

Teacher Sarah Lerner helps traumatized students recover from Parkland shooting

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Teacher Sarah Lerner uses all her teacher skills to help her students recover from the traumatic mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year.

In the aftermath of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day last year, teacher Sarah Lerner has been using all her teacher skills to help her students recover from their trauma.

Sarah serves her school as an English teacher and yearbook adviser. In this year’s annual, the perceptive and responsive educator suggested to her students that they include portraits of the 14 therapy dogs that have been welcomed on campus to help the traumatized students cope. The dogs have obviously become an important part of the healing process. “I’ll be teaching and in comes a dog and these big 18-year-old adults all of a sudden become mushy 5-year-old kids, and it’s been such a comfort for us,” Sarah explained.

Sarah has also provided her students with the opportunity to express their emotions in a book she edited and published entitled Parkland Speaks: Survivors from Marjory Stoneman Douglas Share Their Stories. In the book, the teens share their experiences, grief, anger, determination, healing, and hope. The collection includes poetry, eyewitness accounts, letters, speeches, journal entries, drawings, and photographs from the traumatic events and aftermath of the events of February 14, 2018. The book is filled with expressions of loss, a rally cry for change, and hope for a safe future. A large portion of the proceeds from the sale of the book go directly to Shine MSD, an organization formed by Parkland students that promotes healing through the arts. Parkland Speaks is currently being sold for $17.99 online and in bookstores across the nation. The volume is available on amazon here.

One of 14 therapy dogs brought in to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School to help students cope with last year’s mass shooting examines his portrait in the school’s yearbook. The portraits were the brainchild of yearbook adviser and teacher Sarah Lerner.

Tisha: The true story of Anna Hobbs, a pioneer teacher in the Alaskan wilderness

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One of my favorite “teacher” books of all time is Tisha: The Story of a Young Teacher in the Alaska Wilderness. The volume is the memoir of pioneer teacher Anne Stevenson Hobbs, as told to masterful chronicler Robert Specht.

I absolutely love this action-packed true story about a young teacher who travels to the Alaskan wilderness in the 1920’s to teach in a frontier school. This book is as much an adventure story and a romance as it is a chronicle of early Alaskan history.

At the age of 19 in the 1920’s, Anne Hobbs, a plucky young lady, travels from her home in Colorado to the Alaskan wilderness with the intention of setting up a frontier school. She knows nothing about Alaska or living in the wilds, and she is completely naive about the social conditions or customs there, but she is full of a desire for adventure. She certainly finds it when she lands in a small village called Chicken. Besides encountering the expected lack of teaching materials and frigid temperatures, Anne heroically battles prejudice against the Native Alaskans when she falls in love with one of them.

If you haven’t read this book yet, run—don’t walk—to your nearest brick-and-mortar bookstore and buy it right away! You can also order Tisha on Amazon.com, but don’t wait too long to read this exciting story. This tale will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Jodee Blanco memoir shares her story as a bullied child

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As teachers, we are charged with the well-being of all of our students. In order to ensure this well-being, we are always looking for ways to protect our students from bullying. The memoir Please Stop Laughing at Me: One Woman’s Inspirational Story by Jodee Blanco, gives us one more reason to renew our efforts. In her book, the author painstakingly describes her personal experiences as the kid who was bullied all throughout her school years.

This powerful memoir describes how one child was mentally and physically abused by her classmates. It offers a bold picture of what it means to be an outcast, how even the most loving parents can get it all wrong, why schools are often unable to prevent the behavior, and how bullying has been misunderstood and mishandled by the mental health community. Her story shines a spotlight on the harsh realities and long-term consequences of bullying, and how all of us can make a difference in the lives of kids.
Within 48 hours of its release, Blanco’s memoir hit the New York Times Best-Seller List. The volume is now required reading and summer reading in hundreds of middle schools, high schools, colleges, and universities, and has become part of the curriculum in many schools.
The book was published in 2003 by Adams Media Corporation in Avon, Massachusetts. It can easily be found on amazon.com at the following link: Please Stop Laughing At Me.

Professor Azar Nafisi describes reading as a subversive activity

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Whenever I read the gripping accounts of oppressed women in other countries, I become very aware of how lucky I am to have been born into freedom here in the United States. One book that really made me grateful to be an American was Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi, published in 2008.

In Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi, a female and Iranian professor, describes her experiences as an educator at the University of Tehran during the fundamentalist revolution of 1978. When she refused to submit to an order by the male-dominated administration to wear a veil, which she considered a symbol of oppression, she was expelled from the faculty. Nafisi continued to instruct, however, by leading an underground book club attended by like-minded Iranian women. The group met in Nafisi’s home every Thursday morning to study such forbidden Western classics as Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.

As an American, it amazes me that the simple pass-time of reading a book and talking about it with others could be considered a subversive activity in some countries. So many women worldwide still struggle to attain the liberties that many of the young girls in classrooms here at home take for granted.

Nafisi’s memoir is a transfixing example of resilience in the face of adversity. You can find this absorbing book on amazon.com at Reading Lolita in Tehran.

Leonard Covello Offers Great Insights Into Pluralism in Education

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9781592135219_p0_v1_s260x420[1]Here’s a great book for anyone who is interested in progressive education or pluralism in education: Leonard Covello and the making of Benjamin Franklin High School: Education as if Citizenship Mattered. The authors are Michael C. Johanek and John L. Puckett.

Leonard Covello came to the United States in 1896 as a nine-year-old Italian immigrant. Despite immense cultural and economic pressures at home, Leonard wanted to get an education. As an adult, he analyzed the cultural and economic pressures he faced as a child and teen, which were common in Italian immigrant households at that time. He realized that Italian parents viewed the school as a wedge between their children and the family. He recognized the pressure even the youngest Italian children faced to go out and get a job rather than succeed in school. His answer? Involve the parents in the school, and involve the students in the community. The result was New York’s Benjamin Franklin High School, a truly innovative marriage of school and home. Lots of lessons in this story are relevant even in today’s times, especially for school personnel who are clamoring for more involvement from parents in the school system.

You can find this eye-opening book on amazon.com at the Leonard Covello link. You can also read the abbreviated version of Leonard Covello’s life story in my first book Chalkboard Champions: Twelve Remarkable Teachers Who Educated America’s Disenfranchised Students.