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travelinkiki's review
2.0
This book was okay. There were some very interesting and motivating chapters, and some that were downright boring. For new teachers who are interested in teaching for social justice and having a hard time of it, this would be a good book to pick up. If you are looking for tips on what to do everyday (and not necessarily interested in social justice), then you would want to skip this. For myself, I will use a couple chapters in some of my courses, but I do not plan to use the whole book.
shea_reads's review
5.0
A must read for new teachers, especially when feeling overwhelmed. I'd love to read the new edition!!
trilobiter's review
3.0
I picked up this book during grad school, and told myself that I would read it through once I'd found myself a real teaching job. That was three years ago, and at last I've more or less fulfilled that goal with a job at an English camp in South Korea. It's not exactly the teaching I was trained for, or the kind of teaching this book was meant t help with. But I found that it helped put me in touch with my roots, so to speak. I thought a little bit more about my long-term goals, and how I can adapt what I learned to the tasks at hand.
Scarcely over 200 pages long, the New Teacher Book is extremely light reading, designed to be consulted in short bursts over specific new-teacher questions. It's also a very optimistic book, promoting social justice as a primary goal of teaching in all subjects and encouraging the reader to maintain the fires of idealism. I imagine that perspective is not really universal among new teachers, but it's hard to feel bad at their exclusion. Teaching is inherently political; not at the level of Donkeys versus Elephants, but rather inclusiveness and egalitarianism versus racism, sexism, and classism. If the New Teacher Book assumes that the former is preferable to the latter, then I like its politics quite a bit.
The writing is not always stellar, with a few contributors getting all starry-eyed over the vague possibilities at hand or lapsing into cliches that turn what might be valuable insights into empty paragraphs of sameness. Perhaps that's for the best. This book is meant to be a comfort in the storm, and challenging reading is not always comforting to those who need that. I appreciated the confidence it gave me, with all the challenges I face in my new job.
Scarcely over 200 pages long, the New Teacher Book is extremely light reading, designed to be consulted in short bursts over specific new-teacher questions. It's also a very optimistic book, promoting social justice as a primary goal of teaching in all subjects and encouraging the reader to maintain the fires of idealism. I imagine that perspective is not really universal among new teachers, but it's hard to feel bad at their exclusion. Teaching is inherently political; not at the level of Donkeys versus Elephants, but rather inclusiveness and egalitarianism versus racism, sexism, and classism. If the New Teacher Book assumes that the former is preferable to the latter, then I like its politics quite a bit.
The writing is not always stellar, with a few contributors getting all starry-eyed over the vague possibilities at hand or lapsing into cliches that turn what might be valuable insights into empty paragraphs of sameness. Perhaps that's for the best. This book is meant to be a comfort in the storm, and challenging reading is not always comforting to those who need that. I appreciated the confidence it gave me, with all the challenges I face in my new job.
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