Book Reviews

The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life
by Parker J. Palmer
Jossey-Bass

The Courage to Teach takes teachers on an inner journey toward reconnecting with themselves, their students, their colleagues, and their vocations, and reclaiming their passion for one of the most challenging and important of human endeavors.
This book builds on a simple premise: good teaching cannot be reduced to technique but is rooted in the identity and integrity of the teacher. Good teaching takes myriad forms but good teachers share one trait: they are authentically present in the classroom, in community with their students and their subject. They possess “a capacity for connectedness” and are able to weave a complex web of connections between themselves, their subjects, and their students, helping their students weave a world for themselves. The connections made by good teachers are held not in their methods but in their hearts — the place where intellect, emotion, spirit, and will converge in the human self — supported by the community that emerges among us when we choose to live authentic lives.

The Educator's Professional Growth Plan: A Process for Developing Staff and Improving Instruction
by Jodi Peine
Corwin Press; Second Edition 
Recognizing that student achievement is intrinsically linked to high-quality teaching, Jodi Peine offers an invaluable guide that helps educational leaders strengthen teachers’ instructional practice with an individualized and robust professional development process.
The author provides administrators and staff developers with step-by-step guidance for designing, implementing, and sustaining a professional growth plan. Grounded in research at elementary, middle, and high school levels, the process is delivered in manageable sections with reproducible forms for every step.
The Educator's Professional Growth Plan, provides a targeted approach that accommodates the unique needs of individual teachers. Within a supportive context, educators can assume responsibility for their own learning, witness changes in their professional practice, and realize substantive gains in student performance.

Communities that Learn, Lead, and Last: Building and Sustaining Educational Expertise
by Giselle O. Martin-Kniep
Jossey-Bass

Communities That Learn, Lead, and Last offers a fresh and compelling perspective while providing practical guidance for schools and districts on how to develop “professional learning communities” that serve to instill educational ideals, share wisdom, improve practice, and enhance capacity across the system. Comprised of any combination of teachers, school leaders, staff developers, district personnel, and even students, professional learning communities, as described in this book, break new ground and challenge the status quo by focusing on the reconciliation of individual and organizational expertise, vision, and needs through a variety of collaborations, activities and projects—ranging from classroom-related work to broader issues of policy, leadership, and organizational improvement. Depending on their needs, maturity, purpose, and membership, professional learning communities can be centered on learning, leading, or lasting. Showing how such communities can become the means for improving teaching and learning, as well as promote and sustain educational innovations, the book maps out the community-building essentials, providing guidance, tools, and carefully crafted rubrics.

Starting Strong: Surviving and Thriving as a New Teacher 
by Kristen J. Nelson, Kimberly Bailey
Corwin Press; Second Edition Edition

An ideal survival guide for novice teachers, Starting Strong helps new teachers gain confidence and competence to flourish and reduce stress during the first teaching year. The authors provide time-tested strategies and guidelines for designing curriculum and instruction, classroom layout suggestions for an optimal learning environment, and frameworks for establishing procedures that promote positive individual and group behavior. This invaluable handbook also offers: Methods for effective assessment; samples of oral and written communication for parents and colleagues; ways to create classroom newsletters; techniques for using Web sites for interactive learning; reflection questions for teachers at the end of each chapter