The Energy to Teach

Front Cover
Heinemann, 2001 - Business & Economics - 180 pages

Over the course of a year you and thousands of other teachers will spend countless hours with children and experience the full range of emotion associated with parenting. Every day you will be second-guessed by parents, administrators, and pundits who have never taught. Standardized tests will be mandated that try to govern the teaching transactions you make with children.

It's no wonder that many teachers these days are feeling drained and it's no surprise that Don Graves is ready to offer his uncommon insight, unwavering support, and unbounded hope for the future. "The idea for The Energy to Teach," Don relates, "began with the startling contrast I noted between much of the fatigue in the profession and the promised energy in curriculum." This led to eighteen months of extensive interviews, with educators and others across the country, beginning with the questions: What gives you energy, what takes energy away, and what, for you, is a waste of time?

Based on these interviews - plus Don's extensive experience as a teacher and researcher - The Energy to Teach offers groundbreaking insight on how highly effective teachers deal with emotional demands, and how they gain help and support from their colleagues and administrators. It explains what gives them energy, how they handle energy-draining situations, and how they cope with this never-ending emotional roller coaster.

What's more, Don offers proven-effective techniques. You'll discover how to find out exactly when energy is added, expended, or wasted; conserve more energy; build energy with colleagues; induce an energy surge when it's urgently needed; transform energy-draining situations into energy-giving events; and much more. Just as important, you'll find comfort and encouragement from someone who for two decades has served as a wise and compassionate mentor to thousands of educators.

To learn more about Donald Graves, visit www.donaldgraves.org.

About the author (2001)

Donald H. Graves was a pioneer in literacy education who ultimately revolutionized the way that writing is taught in the United States and around the world. The research study he began in the 1970s at the Atkins Academy, a rural New Hampshire elementary school, would transform writing instruction and launch a new kind of resource: professional books for educators. His bestselling book, Writing: Teachers and Children at Work, challenged teachers to let children's needs and interests, not mandates, guide instruction. For the first time, young children became engaged as writers - not just students learning to write. As they were guided to make the decisions writers make in an authentic writing process, they raised our beliefs about what young writers were capable of. Don Graves was a teacher, principal, Education Director, and Co-Director of an urban teacher preparation program. He was Professor Emeritus at the University of New Hampshire. Heinemann proudly published Don's many other titles including A Fresh Look at Writing; A Sea of Faces; The Energy to Teach; Teaching Day By Day; and Inside Writing (coauthored with Penny Kittle). Children Want to Write: Don Graves and the Revolution in Children's Writing, edited by Thomas Newkirk and Penny Kittle, pairs Don's most important writings with recovered video from his classrooms, creating a vivid and surprising portrait of the man still referred to as "the Don." NCTE's Donald H. Graves Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Writing is given annually to deserving educators who have shown exemplary understanding and insight on student improvement in writing. For additional information about Don Graves, see: - Where It All Started by Tom Newkirk - A True Friend & a Good Writer by Nancie Atwell - The Teacher as Learner: The Research of Donald Graves by Mary Ellen Giacobbe