Fall 2018: Books for Educators

There's a little-known school in Halifax that kids are excited to attend every day, right through until they graduate. It's a place where they absorb "real-world" skills, including critical thinking, and complex literacy, math and second-language abilities, so that they stick. They gather for intense, whole-school discussions on local issues, create art using geometric calculations, and dig into the school garden while learning about the biology of the native plant garden — all in one typical …

Talking, Listening, and Teaching demonstrates how important it is for teachers to understand and monitor classroom communication patterns and resolve problems that may hamper students' learning. Using examples from real classrooms, the author explains

How classroom talk is different from communication outside the classroom

How to gather and analyze data about classroom talk

What type of questioning generates good discussions

Why and how to give feedback to students

How nonverbal communication impacts …

In their new critical reader, editors Mary Jane Harkins and Sonya E. Singer argue that ‘sorting’ ourselves into identity categories results in sexism, racism, heterosexism, homophobia, classism, ableism, and other ‘isms’. This book’s 19 innovative chapters invite educators, teachers and education students to reflect on schooling practices as a contextualized social process, which requires having and retaining at the forefront of thinking, the intricate inter-weavings of the systemic an …

In an educational milieu in which standards and accountability hold sway, schools can become places of stress, marginalization, and isolation instead of learning communities that nurture a sense of meaning and purpose. In Ensouling Our Schools, author Jennifer Katz weaves together methods of creating schools that engender mental, spiritual, and emotional health while developing intellectual thought and critical analysis.

Kevin Lamoureux contributes his expertise regarding Indigenous approaches to …

“Am I safe here?” LGBTQ students ask this question every day within the school system. In this book, Donn Short treats students as the experts, asking them to shine a light on the marginalization and bullying faced by LGBTQ youth. They insightfully identify that safety comes from a culture that values equity and social justice, not just security cameras, and they envision a future in which LGBTQ youth are an expected, respected, and celebrated part of school life. Am I Safe Here? offers a pa …

If there is one sector of society that should be cultivating deep thought in itself and others, it is academia. Yet the corporatisation of the contemporary university has sped up the clock, demanding increased speed and efficiency from faculty regardless of the consequences for education and scholarship.

In The Slow Professor, Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber discuss how adopting the principles of the Slow movement in academic life can counter this erosion of humanistic education. Focusing on th …

Academics often speak about love for their subject, mathematicians discuss their love for figures and numbers, and elementary school teachers speak about their love of children. As multidimensional as love is, it is often a taboo subject relative to teachers and students. In Love and Compassion, John P. Miller explores different forms of love, including self-love, the love of others, compassion, the love of learning, and cosmic love, and how these dimensions of love have the potential to improve …

Sit your butt down and learn your three Rs: ranting, resisting, and respect.

In two new plays, Canada‘s king of black comedy takes on the failing education system. Both Parents Night and The Bigger Issue are set in public-school classrooms after hours and involve confrontations between stressed-out teachers and ticked-off parents. Both sympathize with embattled educators and evince Walker’s trademark understanding of poverty and the working classes. In both, Walker’s signature moves work: t …