Showing titles in Educators

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s experience begins the night he has chosen to embark on a four-year wandering retreat, slipping past the monastery gates. Alone for the first time in his life, he sets out into the unknown. His initial motivation is to step away from his life of privilege and to explore the deepest, most hidden aspects of his being, but what he discovers throughout his retreat - about himself and about the world around us - comes to define his meditation practice and teaching.

How could a 66-year-old grandmother, who gave her life to helping people with their health, become the subject of a malicious smear campaign which resulted in her being classified as a serious threat to public health in Australia? This book exposes the hypocrisy of the organization Friends of Science in Medicine who act as 'friends of science', but are in reality pharmaceutical apologists and the 'Enemies of Truth in Medical Science'. Barbara became collateral damage in the war on any dissent from mainstream medical dogma.

Maybe it was a grandparent or a teacher or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching and gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly 20 years ago. Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you?

Over her twenty-five-year career, English teacher Carol Atherton has taught generations of students texts that will be familiar to many of us from our own schooldays. But while the staples of exam syllabuses and reading lists remain largely unchanged, their significance – and their relevance - evolves with each class as they encounter them for the first time. Each chapter of Reading Lessons invites us to take a fresh look at these novels, plays and poems, revealing how they have shaped our beliefs, our values, and how we interact as a society.

Vince Copley was born on a government mission into poverty in 1936. By the time he was 15, five of his family had died. But at a home for Aboriginal boys, he befriended future leaders Charlie Perkins, John Moriarty and Gordon Briscoe. They were friendships that would last a lifetime. 'Always remember you're as good as anybody else,' his mother, Kate, often told him. And he was, a champion footballer and premiership-winning coach. But change was in the air, and Copley knew he had more to contribute. In The Wonder of Little Things, Copley tells his story.

As the middle of five kids growing up in dire poverty, the odds were low on Katriona O'Sullivan making anything of her life. She became a mother at 15 and ended up homeless. Five rackety years followed - barely coping, drinking to escape - until Katriona, now living in her father's native Dublin, hit rock bottom. Poor is the extraordinary story - moving, funny, brave, and sometimes startling - of how Katriona turned her life around.

Have you ever wondered what really happens during the day when your precious little angels are at school? In this book, the Two Mr Ps take you on a side-splittingly funny journey through the weird and wonderful world of primary schools. They also explore the pressures of modern-day teaching, revealing exactly what it takes to wrangle a chaotic classroom (or seven) on a weekly basis. From the absolute characters found in the staffroom to school-trip mishaps and everything else in between, Put a Wet Paper Towel on It is a must-hear for teachers and parents alike.

Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields - except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST).

Jadie never spoke. She never laughed, or cried, or uttered any sound. Despite efforts to reach her, Jadie remained locked in her own troubled world - until one remarkable teacher persuaded her to break her self-imposed silence. Nothing in all of Torey Hayden's experience could have prepared her for the shock of what Jadie told her - a story too horrendous for Torey's professional colleagues to acknowledge.

Andy West teaches philosophy in prisons. He has conversations with people inside about their lives, discusses their ideas and feelings and listens as the men and women he works with explore new ways to think about their situation. Could we ever be good if we never felt shame? What makes a person worthy of forgiveness? Could someone in prison ever be more free than someone outside? These questions about how to live are ones we all need to ask, but in this setting they are even more urgent.

His name was Kevin but his keepers called him Zoo Boy. He didn't talk. He hid under tables and surrounded himself with a cage of chairs. He hadn't been out of the building in the four years since he'd come in. He was afraid of water and wouldn't take a shower. He was afraid to be naked, to change his clothes. He was nearly 16. Desperate to see change in the boy, the staff of Kevin's adolescent treatment center hired Hayden. As Hayden read to him and encouraged him to read, crawling down into his cage of chairs with him, Kevin talked.

Brendan James Murray has been a secondary school teacher for more than 10 years. In that time, he has seen hundreds of kids move through his classes - troubled, brilliant, funny, passionate, struggling: every single one brings unique qualities or circumstances into school with them, every day. In this astonishing powerful portrait of a single school year, Brendan James Murray shows the ups and downs of school for teachers and students.

Here is the gritty, powerful story of Thomas Sowell's life-long education in the school of hard knocks, a journey that took him from Harlem to the Marines, the Ivy League, and a career as a controversial writer, teacher, and economist in government and private industry. It is also the story of the dramatically changing times in which this personal odyssey took place.

At 22, Dan Brown came to the Bronx's P.S. 85 as an eager, fresh-faced teacher. Unbeknownst to him, his assigned class, 4-217, was the designated "dumping ground" for all fourth-grade problem cases, and his students would prove to be more challenging than he could ever anticipate. Intent on being a caring, dedicated teacher but confronted with unruly children, absent parents, and a failing administration, Dan was pushed to the limit time and again: he found himself screaming with rage, punching his fist through a blackboard out of sheer frustration, often just wanting to give up and walk away.

From a probability of death or life in a vegetative state after a severe traumatic brain injury, Nicole used a negative prognosis as a powerful motivator to build a successful career as a rehabilitation counsellor. She is a living testament to how the strategies outlined in this book can work for you. Has a brain injury thrown your life into a cycle of chaos and frustration? Are you worried about the future for yourself or someone you care about because of the impact of a brain injury?

Parents rejoiced to send them back to school, while teachers prepared to face them all again … Five. Days. A. Week! Coming out the other side of the pandemic years, podcast sensations Lee and Adam Parkinson–aka the Two Mr Ps–bring you the most hilarious, ridiculous anecdotes from inside our primary schools. Join in on the classroom antics as they share the unexpected pitfalls of online teaching, all the reasons you need a strong stomach to take on Early Years and why not every household item makes a suitable Harry Potter wand …

Over 20 years ago, the students in first-year teacher Erin Gruwell’s high school class in Long Beach, California, were labeled “unteachable” - but she saw past that. Instead of treating them as scores on a test, she understood that each of them had a unique story to tell. Inspired by books like Anne Frank’s diary, her students began writing their own diaries, eventually dubbing themselves the Freedom Writers. Together, they co-authored The Freedom Writers Diary, which launched a movement that remains incredibly relevant and impactful today.

The first definitive exploration of the changing role of the twenty-first-century First Lady, painting a comprehensive portrait of Jill Biden—from a White House correspondent for The New York Times.

Paper Belt on Fire is the unlikely account of how two outsiders with no experience in finance—a charter school principal and defrocked philosopher—start a venture capital fund to short the higher education bubble. Against the contempt of the education establishment, they discover, mentor, and back the leading lights in the next generation of dropout innovators and in the end make their investors millions. Can such a madcap strategy help renew American creativity? This story is the behind-the-scenes romp of one team that threw educational authorities into a panic.

In The Light of the World, Elizabeth Alexander finds herself at an existential crossroads after the sudden death of her husband, who was just 50. Reflecting with gratitude on the exquisite beauty of her married life that was, grappling with the subsequent void, and feeling a reenergized devotion to her two teenage sons, Alexander channels her poetic sensibilities into a rich, lucid prose that describes a very personal and yet universal quest for meaning, understanding, and acceptance.