Over the last few months, I’ve been collecting books about teaching. Although a couple of game (mind and body) books from Hunter House were sent out for review for the Jan/Feb 2008 issue of ForeWord, the selection on my shelf was remarkably scanty—compared to, for example, Latin America, which is measuring over a foot; music, about the same; or travel/memoir which I finally had to throw into a box the other day because it no longer fit on one shelf.

 Why so little to say about teaching? Aren’t American schools in crisis? Are teachers and parents at East Side Los Angeles schools more upset that less than 10 out of 100 students could do grade-level math, or that their schools are failing No Child Left Behind standards and are in danger of closure or complete reorganization?

 I, for one, would like to hear more honest talk about problems and solutions than this go-nowhere cover-your-butt job protection rhetoric. But then I’d like to hear that kind of talk from the presidential candidates as well.

 Anyway, here are some wonderful picks for teachers who really enjoy their jobs.

 SpacEFLight
Stephen Kear
Illustrated by Wei Qiqin
Lulu.com
178 pages
Softcover, $19.94
978-1-4303-2638-0

There’s nothing better than an EFL job when you’re traveling the world—and there’s nothing worse than a class full of surly gum-chewing adolescents. As Kear says in his prologue, “EFL Teaching used to be … a way for backpackers to finance their travels … but the expectations are higher today, and so are the demands. Many a ‘gap year’ student, retired insurance agent or widowed grandmother have seen their inadequacies revealed on an EFL stage somewhere.” I know that speaks to me: those 13-year-olds in La Orotava just about ate me alive. Kear goes on to compare teaching to stand-up comedy, dance routines, and soap opera direction—all absolutely valid and necessary arts in my experience. But the real treasure inside this book is the selection of games. As any language teacher knows, lecturing is only good for as long as the students are actually learning. When they stop listening, better start jumping around—or better yet, motivate them to get physical with their skills.

The games are divided into six categories depending on how the students participate. In the first section, “Red and Blue,” the class is split into two halves. The next section is mostly for pairs and concerns vocabulary. The third section, called “Chatterboxing,” encourages students to speak. Sections on listening and writing conclude the volume.

I hunted high and low for books like this one during my teaching years, for there are remarkably few. I still have one that I carried around with me from Mexico to Spain and back to the US. This book come highly recommended, from one teacher to another, and can be adapted to any language.

Teaching Kids to Care: Nurturing Character and Compassion
Bettie Youngs, Joanne Wolf, Joani Wafer, and Dawn Lehman
Foreword by Larry King
Hampton Roads
216 pages
Softcover, $16.95
978-1-57174-548-4

My first reaction to this book—without even cracking the pages—was, only parents can teach kids to care. The authors agree. Not five sentences into the Preface they say, “Children learn by example and, as parents, we are their first and most effective teachers. Our actions and words set the blueprint for their characters.”

Beginning with the account of the horrific beating and consequent death of a teenager, the book questions why no one came to the boy’s rescue. Why did the other young people just stand there and watch it happen? Jump directly to parenting styles. “Understanding your particular parenting style,” say the authors, “—the things you say and do that form the basis for your children’s behavior—is not only important but imperative.”

Identifying five Essential Touchstones, Teaching Kids to Care goes on to discuss how to foment gratitude and connection, for example, into yourself, your family, your child. Testimonials and community project inspiration are contained in the end chapters, as well as an appendices of website resources and recommended readings. As Larry King writes in his foreword, “Have you noticed that some people are ‘significant’ because they live ‘in the whole world’ and not just their own space?” Hopefully this book will indeed cause parents and children to notice that success and influence is not just about money, infamy, or good looks.

 The Writer’s Workshop: Imitating Your Way to Better Writing
Gregory L. Roper
ISI Books
178 pages
Softcover, $18.00
978-1-933859-33-0

Now here’s a concept: forget the grammar. If a kid hasn’t learned to speak well by listening to his parents, then he sure as heck isn’t going to get it by looking at charts and filling in the blanks. Gregory Roper’s approach to learning to write (and speak) well—not just well but convincingly, descriptively, elegantly—is imitative. Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton all learned to write this way, musicians still learn their riffs and chord patterns in this manner, and artists their proportions, brush strokes, the use of line. Sure, says Roper, contemporary textbooks are full of writing examples from the New Yorker, Atlantic, Harper’s, and students are encouraged to imitate. But all the examples are “monotone in style: all the texts feature that contemporary conversational essay style so favored by such periodicals, a style that hides its very structure, that displays a voice not too distinctive as to offend.”

Not that Roper wants to offend, but he did want to know why the kids who read at home did so much better in school than those who did not. As a professor at Northwest Missouri State University, he and a colleague began to inquire into the puzzle and came up with the following theory: that students who read at home acquire, through this simple and seemingly passive act, the patterns of good grammar and sentence construction. As a child learns to speak through imitation, so does text seep in and instill patterns.

And, if the key to writing is reading, then the key to good writing is “deep reading” and exercises that “lead the students to think and read more carefully about the writing we teachers set before them, and then, by imitating that writing, to consider it in even more detail, and produce far more complex writing….” Roper’s textbook presents seven lessons, meant to be followed in order, with exercises in description, definition, and rhetoric. Broken into two major sections, the first deals with the construction of “Foundations” and the second “Precision Tools and Finer Crafts.” Each chapter leads with a writing assignment for students to do on their own, then several readings, examples, a section called “Why We’re Doing This,” and additional assignments of thinking and transformation. This is a superb text to shake up the college-level composition class; as challenging and exciting for teachers as for students.

The Challenge of Teaching Controversial Issues
Hilary Claire and Cathie Holden, editors
Trentham Books
196 pages
Softcover, $32.25
978-1-85856-415-9

Ask children to name a controversial topic and they might ask for a definition of terms, but they won’t have any problem naming an issue or two. Even children of the so-called “heartland”—far from the coastal clash of civilizations, are no doubt served double helpings of Farm Bill and subsidies at dinnertime, or water rights, or mine safety, or outsourcing. Not to mention drugs, sex, and hip hop music. Heck, and there’s hardly anything more controversial than money—a familiar issue that could use a little mom and pop dialectic.

Editors Claire and Holden think that teachers also need some up-to-date tools to deal with controversial questions. For deal with them they must if education is to teach to the continued existence of life on this planet. “We do not know what threats to peace, social justice and progress the next decades will bring,” they write in the Overview, “—threats which our children will not just inherit, but must diffuse. Knowing how to make sense of the arguments and how to move beyond knee-jerk reactions, having the skills and strategies to deal with conflicts are not just optional extras in their education, they are essential to the survival of their world.”

In a series of articles by English-speakers from Canada, UK, South Africa, and Pakistan, the editors present a textbook in three parts. The first offers strategies for discussion, debate, and conflict resolution. The second provides plans for introducing controversial topics into the classroom, through literature and drama, for example. This section presents and strategizes for hot topics like climate change, politics, and religion. Part Three, called “Whole School Values and Action” then focuses on issues of pedagogy.

This book should be required reading in all schools at all levels everywhere in the world. For protecting a child from harm cannot mean covering his ears and blinding his eyes. He must see and hear if he is to understand and speak.

Following a 1999 anthology about learning poetry in school, this book speaks more generally to the school experience itself. Sixty-two short essays composed by teachers, students, parents, and administrators “create a collage of the successes and failures of elementary and secondary education in the United States from the 1930s to the present.” Fortunately, most of the hindsight comes with humor. There are stories about football, moving seats, art class, and coloring. There are stories about the death of a parent, about the “white, old, tall” enemy, about social science lessons in parochial school, and the long shadow of politics. There are also stories of boyfriends and girlfriends, but mostly there are stories about teachers, teachers, teachers. This is a wonderful book for those at the back and the front of the room—even for those who like to sit right in the middle.