An essential manual for educators that presents a clear road map to professional resilience.
Veteran educator Hazel offers a practical and incisive guide for new teachers.
The author has spent 25 years in education and has supported many instructors in their first few years as the founder of teacherEDU, a “learning community for new teachers.” She writes that she noticed “a significant gap that exists between our teacher training programs and the realities of being a teacher in our current education systems. This book aims to fill that gap.” Thoughtfully organized into 10 lessons, the book mixes useful strategies—including tips on activities to help one develop relationships with students during the first two weeks—with essential advice in sections such as “Find Your People” (stressing the importance of having teacher friends and collaboration partners) and “Parents Are Essential to Student Success.” Throughout the book are “Yeah, But...” sections that address common questions and concerns, including reservations about the applicability of advice to individual circumstances. Hazel skillfully answers each query and assures readers on how to proceed with lesson-ending “Action Steps.” The author also includes email templates and parent-communication checklists for sometimes-difficult beginning-of-the-year contacts and a guide for navigating difficult conversations with parents. Later lessons effectively extend into the broader aspects of a teacher’s life (“Lesson 6: Yes, It Is Nice To Have the Summers Off”). Additionally, the author tackles the challenges of public perception, political maneuvering at the state and school-board levels, and negative stereotypes about teachers. Overall, by blending practical advice with empathetic guidance, Hazel ably prepares new educators for the technical aspects of their roles and braces them for the emotional and social challenges they’ll likely face. There’s an array of quick-reference graphics and charts, as well, including a helpful one that interprets common student behaviors and notes what they may be attempting to convey by silence, for example, or by reluctance to participate in activities.
An essential manual for educators that presents a clear road map to professional resilience.Pub Date: March 24, 2024
ISBN: 9781738259304
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Teacheredu
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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