TEACHING BY HEART by Thomas
J. DeLong is subtitled “One Professor's Journey to Inspire” and this Harvard
Business School professor does a magnificent job of sharing his insights on
teaching in that venue and others. For me, it is a wonderful piece to prompt
reflection, such as when he says, “understanding your patterns of behavior is
crucial to any discussion about teaching.
You need to ask yourself: What is it that I do consistently that assists
me living and teaching, that leverages my talents in unique ways? Just as
important, you need to understand those emotional or behavioral patterns that
sabotage your efforts to make a difference.”
I also especially like how he
focuses on the student experience, asking, “What are the students’ internal
dialogues revolving around? Are they in the classroom or somewhere else? How
might I pull them back into the moment …?”
DeLong also explores topics like working to have students feel
psychologically safe, take risks, and teaching each individual. I have not
finished the entire book, but am particularly curious about chapters like
Eleven: Why Managing, Mentoring and Teaching Overlap as well as Fourteen: Mr.
Rogers – Improving the Teaching Neighborhood. TEACHING BY HEART has potential
to encourage much discussion, particularly as we work through our Strategic
Planning process.
I recently attended a parent presentation on
teen mental health so in addition to thinking about the importance of educators
in students’ lives, it seems appropriate to turn also to books dealing with the
parents’ role.
THE POWER OF SHOWING UP by
Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson is the latest parenting book from the collaborative
team who wrote The Whole Brain Child
(a New York Times bestseller), No-Drama Discipline and The Yes Brain. In their latest work,
Siegel (a clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA) and Bryson (licensed
clinical social worker) focus on “How Parental Presence Shapes Who Our Kids
Become and How Their Brains Get Wired.”
The authors note 4 S’s: Safe, Seen, Soothed and Secure which
every child needs to feel and discuss how to help your child develop those
feelings. I liked the simple line
drawings and illustrations which were interspersed and which cleverly
reinforced messages about how a parent’s facial expression and/or tone of voice
can have more impact than the words used. Overall, this text seemed geared to
parents of younger children and will be a valuable resource for them. Students
in our psychology classes may also find some content of interest although there
is no index and no bibliography. The
final chapter “From the Playground to the Dorm Room” could apply to their own
lives in terms of feeling safe (“draw personal boundaries and make wise choices”),
seeing and soothing themselves through reflection, and experiencing security by
developing healthy interdependence. THE POWER OF SHOWING UP received starred
reviews from both Library Journal and
School Library Journal.
HITTING A STRAIGHT LICK WITH A CROOKED STICK by Zora Neale
Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)
is a newly published collection of short stories from the Harlem Renaissance. Originally
published between 1921 and 1934, they are arranged chronologically and
illustrate Zora Neale Hurston’s evolution as a writer. These 21 stories involve
explorations of racism, sexism, class differences, regionalism, coming of age
themes and human conflict. Many are set in Hurston’s home town of Eatonville,
Florida while others take place in Harlem. Writing in The Washington Post, Naomi Jackson (The Star Side of Bird Hill), notes
that “Hurston's work has been a guiding light for my own writing, especially
its radical insistence on the value of singular attention to black communities,
the black vernacular and black oral traditions of speech and storytelling.” 
