Teachers Make the World Go Round (Teacher Appreciation Week)

On the first day of school, a young boy expects only the worst when he discovers that his new teacher is the "monstrous" Mrs. Green.

A celebration of the ways in which teachers change the world, from encouraging creativity, to making students laugh, to helping them form friendships, always wanting everyone to succeed and making the classroom a great place to be.

While her classmates bring in apples, make drawings, pick dandelions, and clean the blackboard, Maybella Jean Wishywashy cannot decide how to show their teacher how much she is appreciated.

Palmer's classic teaching manual builds on the simple premise that 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,...

"A brilliant young scholar's history of 175 years of teaching in America shows that teachers have always borne the brunt of shifting, often impossible expectations. In other nations, public schools are one thread in a quilt that includes free universal child care, health care, and job training. Here, schools are the whole cloth. Today we look around the world at countries like Finland and South Korea, whose students consistently outscore Americans...

"Merging real stories with theory, research, and practice, a prominent scholar offers a new approach to teaching and learning for every stakeholder in urban education. Drawing on his own experience of feeling undervalued and invisible in science classrooms as a young man of color, Christopher Emdin offers a new lens on and approach to teaching in urban schools. Putting forth his theory of Reality Pedagogy, Emdin provides practical tools to unleash...