by Elinor Miller, Paperback
Elinor Miller, a long-time classroom teacher and curriculum specialist, provides her insights into educating students with diverse backgrounds and learning abilities. This book, a sequel to A Banner Experience, describes her educational experiences before she moved to Frederick, MD, and explains why and how she established The Banner School there in 1982. Elinor is a teacher's teacher for sure! Not only does she understand the many obligations teachers have, she is also a grammarian of the first order, providing detailed direction on this subject. Her understanding of the benefits of challenging students to master difficult work and memorize poetry will motivate many teachers.
Her award-winning methods and high level of experience with organizing interdisciplinary science and social studies topics will encourage others to immerse their students in any of ten science topics and sixteen cultures of both the Old and New World.
This book is worth more than its price just for its extensive resources, including Word Web Vocabulary®, 101 Ways to Attack a Writing Assignment© and CommuniCards©, the latter a must for every classroom as it pinpoints the confusion many students exhibit with specific mathematical and language concepts.
by Abigail Norfleet Norfleet James, Paperback
Differentiate your teaching style to address learning differences between girls and boys in the classroom!
This practical guide to teaching boys combines classic and cutting-edge research to show you why males learn differently and, more important, how you can differentiate teaching strategies to help them succeed in the classroom.
The author's qualitative and quantitative research presents the cognitive, sensory, physical, social, and emotional differences between genders. James draws from years of classroom experience to offer strategies that have been tested, refined, and used successfully in the field. This easy-to-use handbook provides helpful examples, case studies, and troubleshooting sections illustrating how to handle the concerns that can arise when teaching boys.
Teaching the Male Brain shows you how to:
- Recognize sociological and neurobiological foundations of cognitive gender differences as they relate to education
- Look critically at curricula and teaching practices, evaluate how well they work with boys, and uncover areas where changes can be made
- Develop educational approaches based on research and classroom practice to provide a climate responsive to the learning differences of both boys and girls
Learn to use this brain-based research to provide appropriate and positive learning experiences for the students in your classroom!
by Chris Mercogliano, Hardcover
As codirector of the Albany Free School, Chris Mercogliano has had remarkable success in helping a diverse population of youngsters find their way in the world. He regrets, however, that most kids' lives are subject to some form of control from dawn until dusk. Lamenting risk-averse parents, overstructured school days, and a lack of playtime and solitude, Mercogliano argues that we are robbing our young people of "that precious, irreplaceable period in their lives that nature has set aside for exploration and innocent discovery," leaving them ill-equipped to face adulthood. The "domestication of childhood" squeezes the adventure out of kids' lives and threatens to smother the spark that animates each child with talents, dreams, and inclinations.
There is plenty that those involved with children can do to protect their spontaneity and exuberance. We can address their desperate thirst for knowledge, give them space to learn from their mistakes, and let them explore what their place in the adult world might be.
"Mercogliano is, in effect, a cultural therapist who accurately diagnoses and attentively ponders America's loss of childhood, offering fresh new ideas and creative solutions. Ultimately, he is what all good therapists are: a purveyor of hope. His message resonates with no one more than I, who grew up in the 1950s in rural Nebraska. He will help us care for our most valuable resource: children."
—Mary Pipher, author of Writing to Change the World
"Chris Mercogliano's provocative meditation on childhood sets up a dialectic among maple-sugaring, swan-diving in forest pools, slingshots, andadventuring on the one hand, and the adult-supervised 'play' of the Little League, Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Playground Movement on the other. Along the way are insights about the functions of solitude and self-organization that lead the reader to conclude: no self-organization means that no self worthy of the name will emerge. A very strong and attractive book."
—John Taylor Gatto, author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
"With deep insight, Mercogliano shows how our society is suppressing children's creative energies. But he also brings a positive message, showing how we can help young people break through conventional restraints and pursue their passions. This is a beautiful, searching, and inspiring book."
—William Crain, Professor of Psychology, The City College of New York, and author of Reclaiming Childhood: Letting Children Be Children in Our Achievement-Oriented Society
Chris Mercogliano has been a teacher at the Albany Free School, a unique, freedom-based, inner-city alternative school, since 1973. He became codirector in 1985. He is the author of Teaching the Restless: One School's Remarkable No-Ritalin Approach to Helping Children Learn and Succeed (Beacon / 3257–3 / $16.00 pb.). Mercogliano lives with his family in Albany, New York.
Biography
Chris Mercogliano has been a teacher and administrator at the Albany Free School, a unique inner-city alternative school, since 1973. He is the author of Teaching the Restless: One School's Remarkable No-Ritalin Approach to Helping Children Learn and Succeed (Beacon / 3257-2 / $16.00 pb). Mercogliano lives with his family in Albany, New York.