Educators Books

This book is an excellent resource for anyone who works with children. As a child care professional, I have used the previous edition many times to assist in the identification of a child's illness. The color pictures are especially helpful. The parent handouts are a great source of information for parents and child care providers. I found the language to be medically informative but non-technical enough to understand. It is a great resource!

It's a little bit pricey, but you get excellent overview of the field in Essa's book.

She strives for economy over quantity, so you get reviews of Piaget, Vygotsky, Erikson, Malsow, and the other names that influence early childhood in a concise but informative format.

It's a great companion after J.A. Brewer's, Feeny/Moracik's, and G.S. Morrison's introductory early childhood texts.

For anyone involved in a child-related field, this book will be very helpful. Although sometimes outdated, Griffin's stories will hit home for those who have experience working with preschoolers. Read straight through or pick a topic; Griffin covers cognitive and physical development, different arenas of the classroom (i.e. arts and music, stories and reading, etc.), dealing with parents and other topics. Her inclusion of case studies and personal testimonies from children truly add to her explanations and claims.

I've spent weeks scouring the net trying to find information about web based pedagogy for a uni assignment. Tough stuff- there's not much of it out there.

I got this book, and it has everything I've been looking for. Student centred pedagogy, teaching, the lot. And it's written by authors with some clout, apparently they have all been doing this a long time, and it's not idealist, but realist.

If you're studying 'e-learning' seriously, then this book is a must-have.

It's not about Math,It's about Life, truly emphasizes that math is everywhere in our everday lives. This book makes making math applicable to students of all ages almost effortless. A highlight of the book is a listing of careers that relate to math. The question of "What will I need this for?" will finally be answered.

Also included in this book are quotes, A-Z graphing activies, empowerment activities for girls, and real life activities.

Any math teacher should have this book for their reference.

Father William Mackey, the subject of the book, was one of the few "white" westerners(a Jesuit priest for that matter) to develop a close affinity with the people of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. The book is a great way to learn about a person who was welcomed and loved by the Bhutanese. A Jesuit priest, Father Mackey was instrumental in introducing western education in Bhutan in the 1960s.He is still remembered affectionately in Bhutan and he touched the life of many a Bhutanese ranging from the royal family to farmers in rural Bhutan. The late Father Mackey, was accorded the highest civilian honor, the medal of the "Heart Son of Bhutan" by the present monarch of Bhutan,His Majesty King Jigme Singye Wangchuck. A legend in Bhutan, there are numerous stories about this missionary who did not prosetylize and was least interested in converting the predominantly Buddhist Bhutanese. The author of the book had the good fortune of interviewing Father Mackey extensively. A great story of a good man.

I didn't know until this morning that Amazon sales ranks went as low as 5,100,000th. That is the rank assigned to my father's toothsome memoir, "Joyful Trek." Why a book this readable and informative should sink into those gloomy depths, I don't well understand. My dad, Robert H. Williams, was a West Texas farm boy who grew up to go to Harvard (all right, for only one semester, but that was on a graduate fellowship), to report for newspapers in Boston, Dallas, Denver, and elsewhere, to sail around the world as a radio operator in the Merchant Marine, to see combat in both world wars, and to invent a mailing machine and sell it for enough that he could finally return to Texas and be a rancher. His memoir is full of detailed and zestful stories. Here is a sample, set in 1921, when he was job-hunting in Galveston, Texas:

"Just about sundown, passing for the nth time a sign which said 'SEAMAN'S EMPLOYMENT BUREAU,' I stuck my head in the door. I did not especially want to go to sea, and how could there be a vacancy when hundreds of old seadogs were on the beach.

"A big man about fifty with bulging midsection was talking on the telephone. I presently got his drift: a ship was looking for a radio operator. I had little notion of the duties of a ship's radio operator and not the slightest knowledge of the kind of wireless equipment aboard a ship. I was, however, an expert with a key and had a fair knowledge of radio theory and of CW (continuous wave) equipment, meaning equipment using the then-new three-element vacuum tubes. The man on the telephone must have seen that I was listening with interest, and I mumbled, while he was talking, that I had been radio officer for the First Army Air Service. Instantly he said, 'Hold it! I've got you an operator.'

"I was flabbergasted. I tried to tell him that I had no idea what the job required, but he had already hung up. He was not even slightly concerned about my protest. He almost pushed me into a Cadillac parked at the curb and drove me round the bay to the waiting ship. He said he was port captain. As I kept trying to protest, he explained that the important thing to the ship's owners was to have on board a radio operator so the owners could get insurance. In view of my qualifications, for which he simply took my word, asking not a single question, they could sign me on temporarily without a license. That did not entirely satisfy me, but a job was a job. And the sudden vision of the kind of job it might be began to tantalize me."

I give "Joyful Trek" four stars instead of five lest my closeness to the author and his subjects might influence me. But I am sure that if I had never heard of Robert H. Williams I would find his book absorbing--a vivid account of an energetic and imaginative life that took in most of the twentieth century and a bit of the nineteenth.

What is it like to teach Inuit children in Canada's Arctic? What is it like to be a first-year teacher? What is it like to be thousands of miles away from one's home and family? These are just some of the questions that the author addresses in this slim compilation (l54 pages) of 38 letters, 65 journal entries, and 4 pages of pictures.
Pelly Bay, now called Kugaaruk, is in Canada's central Arctic. Ellen Langs Gray, a young teacher from southern Ontario, taught there for four years starting in August of 1990. The letters she wrote home and her journal entries depict her first year of teaching and living there. Through Lang's writing we experience northern life and culture and gain insights into the challenges and joys of being a teacher of Inuit students.This book is full of terrific descriptions.
Some examples include a church service:
"I went to church this week. Not only was I the only non-Catholic there, I was the only non-Inuit. Talk about being a minority. When I arrived at 10:55, there were two people there. I couldn't understand why they'd set up so many chairs. The service started at 11:05, and people drifted in at 11:10 or at 11:20, right up until 11:40. By then, there were about 150 people. You couldn't hear the priest at times because of all the babies and toddlers, not that it bothered me, who couldn't understand a word. I quite enjoyed it, though."
everyday life in the north:
"There is something wrong with the water system at school. We run out of water a couple of times a week and have to phone for an emergency refill. I haven't yet run out of water at home. I've learned to time my laundry, etc. around delivery days. You can get extra or after-hours delivery if you run out, but it costs 15.00."
and the challenges of teaching:
"I've got my class routines more or less under control. The slang word the kids use here is "boring." Everything is boring" reading is boring, math drill is boring, not letting them chew snuff is boring, falling in the mud is boring, lining up quietly is boring, and they groan it with such a look of disgust. It hurts my feelings somewhat to have all my carefully-thought-out ideas dismissed as "so boring", but I'm getting used to it now. I just groan back at them."
This book is an enjoyable read. For anyone interested in teaching, working in the north, or the life of the Inuit it is a bargain!

Firstly, I wish to state that I enjoyed this DVD about the life of Yogananda completely. It tells us the difficulties Yogananda faced in establishing his foothold on American soil. The narration is superb in quality but fails to bring the viewer to a deeper understanding on Yogananda's early mission in America.

Thus the only negative point I feel about this DVD is that it is too short and brief. The 30-minute viewing time does not justify the price of this DVD. Furthermore it has no extras or useful additional tidbits on the early life of Yogananda in America.

A fairly dense book to read. The founder of the deep ecology movement puts forth his treatise on the importance of emotionality in everyday life and in forming one's belief system. Worth the time.