Showing titles in Educators

In Gift of Gratitude, author Claire E. Hallinan shares her gratitude for the gifts that she was given by her past: the ability to think of all experiences as positive, the strengths that she determined to be resilient, and the future that she believed to be hopeful through her unique learning experiences. It is these gifts that she is able to share in her very own classroom as a teacher today.

I traveled from Washington to California when I was 18 years old to receive missionary training. What I found when I arrived here was a handsome young man that wanted to date me. He was John Hargrove, a brilliant student of the Bible. We saw each other daily and fell in love. Two and a half months later, we married and stayed together for 58 years until he passed away. The best thing he gave me were five wonderful children. This is his story.

The year is 1940. The place is Amsterdam, Holland. In a Europe that is torn apart by a Nazi regime, Sonia is forced to come to grips with unbelievable losses: her husband, her family, her way of life - all by the age of 21. In And No More Sorrow, Pelzman, Sonia's daughter, vividly and masterfully presents her mother's story against the historical backdrop that took place during Hitler's regime. Sonja's story teaches the listener that ultimately, it is hope, love, family, and friends that motivate and guide us through our most challenging moments.

In The Power of a Plant, globally acclaimed teacher and self-proclaimed CEO (Chief Eternal Optimist) Stephen Ritz shows you how, in one of the nation's poorest communities, his students thrive in school and in life by growing, cooking, eating, and sharing the bounty of their green classroom.

Why would the multimillionaire producer of Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, and Miss Saigon take his limo from Manhattan to the struggling former steel town of Levittown, Pennsylvania, to see a high school production of Les Misérables? To see the show performed by the astoundingly successful theater company at Harry S Truman High School, run by its legendary director, Lou Volpe. Broadway turns to Truman High when trying out controversial shows such as Rent and Spring Awakening before they move on to high school theater programs across the nation. Volpe’s students from this blue-collar town go on to become Emmy-winning producers, entertainment executives, newscasters, and community-theater founders.

In these memoirs, Father Theodore Hesburgh chronicles the transformation of Notre Dame from a somewhat mediocre midwestern university into a major teaching and research institution.

The Pursuit of Happiness: Ten Ways to Increase Your Happiness shows how you can change your mindset and increase your happiness. What if a few new habits could increase your happiness? What if you could increase your happiness with a few simple steps? Imagine waking up in the morning feeling happy and ready to take on the day.

Kaufman's Hill opens with a prosaic neighborhood scene: The author and some other young boys are playing by the creek, one of their usual stomping grounds. But it soon becomes clear that much more is going on; the boy-narrator is struggling to find his way in a middle-class Catholic neighborhood dominated by bullies, the Creelys, who often terrify him.

Born 1706 in Boston, Benjamin Franklin was the 15th of his father's 17 children. He went to school as a child with the intent of becoming a minister, as his father, Josiah, intended. However, that idea was dropped after Franklin showed a keen interest in reading and writing. He was apprenticed to his brother, James, at a young age, but after fighting with his brother he quit the job and moved to Philadelphia, where he worked for a man named Samuel Keimer.

Discover the lessons from Martin Luther King that can transform your life! Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. not only advocated for civil rights and human equality but also strongly supported the end of poverty, the end of all war, and the rights of workers. This crusader of rights has his own holiday dedicated to honoring him and all the work he was able to achieve in his lifetime. He is a man who was able to change the direction of history. A man such as this is sure to have imparted wisdom that we could all benefit from.

In his first nine years as a teacher, Brendan Halpin goes from wide-eyed idealist to cynical, heartbroken idealist. Unique among teaching memoirs, Losing My Faculties is not the story of a heroic teacher who transforms the lives of his hardbitten students; rather, it's the inspirational and often unpretty truth about people who choose to get up ridiculously early day after day and year after year to go stand in front of teenagers.

Imagine finding out that you had been brainwashed into believing you were helping people, but you were actually hurting them. For years, Nehemiah Flynt provided therapeutic foster care without realizing the harm he was helping the government inflict on innocent children and families. By the grace of God, the blinders fell off and he began to see the wickedness of "the system."

Preeti was barely six years old when doctors diagnosed her deteriorating vision as a condition due to optic atrophy. Those were difficult days but with the support and encouragement of her parents she learnt to get the best out of her disability. She looked for possibilities, focused on every positive she could dream of, always playing her best shot at facing challenges and failures with dignity and without shame.

This world of ours has changed, if you haven't noticed.

The way we communicate, consume, shop, swap, and date has all changed - we have all changed - because of the Internet. But perhaps it has changed one man most of all. This is the true rags-to-riches, recluse-to-extrovert, fat-to-skinny ShoeMoney Story. Penned with the same irreverence for authority and grammar as his widely read blog, Shoemoney.com, Nothing's Changed but My Change chronicles the journey from a difficult childhood as the fat "dumb" kid to a grown-up place of prominence.

A detailed and well-written look at life in New York City from the 1920s to today through a memorable memoir about a boy who bounced around among different relatives and caregivers, through his school years, followed by his service during World War II. Cohen shares about his marriage and how he built a distinguished career as an educator in the New York City public school system despite his tough childhood and teen years, seeking out friends and romance resulting in a full and fulfilling life.

An explosive new look at the pressures on today's teachers and the pitfalls of school reform, Confessions of a Bad Teacher presents a passionate appeal to save public schools, before it's too late. When John Owens left a lucrative job to teach English at a public school in New York City's South Bronx, he thought he could do some good. Faced with a flood of struggling students, Owens devised ingenious ways to engage every last one. But as his students began to thrive under his tutelage, Owens found himself increasingly mired in a broken educational system.

Still Waters in a Storm is an after-school program held in a small room in Bushwick, Brooklyn; it is a place for kids to practice reading and writing in English, Spanish, and Latin. For the students, many living in constant fear of deportation, Still Waters is a refuge. For Stephen Haff, a former public-school teacher, it is the sanctuary he built following a breakdown caused by bipolar depression. At Still Waters, all agreed that there would only be one rule: “Everyone listens to everyone.” And this has unlocked spectacular potential.

Speaking My Soul is the honest story of linguist John R. Rickford's life from his early years as the youngest of ten children in Guyana to his status as Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Stanford, of the transformation of his identity from colored or mixed race in Guyana to black in the USA, and of his work championing Black Talk and its speakers. In this engaging memoir, Rickford recalls landmark events for his racial identity.

In 1972 Lorene Cary, a bright black teenager from Philadelphia, was transplanted into the formerly all-white, all-male environs of the elite St. Paul's School in New Hampshire, where she became a scholarship student in a "boot camp" for future American leaders. Like any good student, she was determined to succeed. But Cary was also determined to succeed without selling out. This wonderfully frank and perceptive memoir describes the perils and ambiguities of that double role, in which failing calculus and winning a student election could both be interpreted as betrayals of one's skin.

On August 15, 2014, I received a phone call that would forever change my life. My husband of 19 years, Larry, and only child, nine-year-old Landon, had just died in a plane crash. This is my survival story. I say survival because at times I thought I would die of a broken heart. Although this story is the raw, vulnerable truth of grief, my survival is anchored in hope and faith that was shaken to its core. God met me right where I was and walked with me on the most difficult and burdensome journey of my life. My prayer is that my story helps pave the path for others on this journey.