Teaching Is a Privilege: Twelve Essential Understandings for Beginning Teachers

(Paperback)

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Description

New teachers have a high attrition rate, often due to concerns about classroom discipline, interactions with parents, meeting the diverse needs of students, and pressures of high academic standards. Teaching Is a Privilege offers beginning teachers twelve essential understandings necessary to meet these challenges and thrive in the classroom. The understandings are based on a core belief that teaching is a privilege worthy of continuous, thoughtful self-reflection and compassionate treatment of children and their families. The result is higher teacher morale and higher-achieving students.

The book focuses on development of the relationship side of teaching-attitudes, perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors-which builds trust and translates into a positive classroom climate. The intention is to inspire new teachers to begin their professional lives with an informed, optimistic belief system that deepens their understanding of what is possible and then to provide them with ways to get there. The twelve essential understandings serve as the foundation of their teaching practices and ultimately lead to happy, high-achieving, respectful students, and an exemplary, personally satisfying teaching career.

Reviews

Manvell's book provides an essential tool for examining how our attitudes, as teachers, affect the way our students see themselves, and ultimately, how they function as adult members of our society. Through carefully selected journal entries, we hear thevoices of preservice teachers as they enter the classroom for the first time and discover the complexities and challenges of working daily to meet the needs of diverse learners. Teaching is a Privilege is a book that every preservice teacher shouldhave. It is a book to have at one's side in the first year of teaching and in the years aftera resource to turn to again and again, not just for wonderful suggestions for creating the best classroom environment possible but also to find reassurance andaffirmation in facing the daily challenges and joy of teaching.. -- Joan Bouza Koster, author of Growing Artists and cofounder of TeachPeaceNow.org
Recommended. * Choice Reviews *
Manvell's twelve understandings of teaching and its joys and challenges reflect a fluency not only of sound educational practices but also of the realities of being a teacher. This honest and practical book offers new teachers the critical tools and reflections necessary to significantly improve their chances at a long and satisfying career. -- Nathan Eklund, author of How Was Your Day at School
Manvell's book provides an essential tool for examining how our attitudes, as teachers, affect the way our students see themselves, and ultimately, how they function as adult members of our society. Through carefully selected journal entries, we hear the voices of preservice teachers as they enter the classroom for the first time and discover the complexities and challenges of working daily to meet the needs of diverse learners. Teaching is a Privilege is a book that every preservice teacher should have. It is a book to have at one's side in the first year of teaching and in the years aftera resource to turn to again and again, not just for wonderful suggestions for creating the best classroom environment possible but also to find reassurance and affirmation in facing the daily challenges and joy of teaching. -- Joan Bouza Koster, author of Growing Artists and cofounder of TeachPeaceNow.org

Author Bio

Elizabeth Manvell is a lifelong educator with a Masters Degree in Education and a Certificate of Advanced Study in school and district administration from the State University of New York at Cortland. After a long career in teaching, as an elementary principal, and in regional staff development, she most recently served as a college instructor and supervisor for student teachers. She now spends her time thinking, researching, and writing about education. She continues to be inspired by the unique role teachers play in the lives of children and families, and by what compassion and tenacity can accomplish on their behalf.