For most teachers, summer is a time for rest and rejuvenation. . . . and reading. This summer, we have reviewed books from three of our favorite authors, Donald Graves, Roland Barth, and Robert Fried. All have given us books worth delving into on a warm summer day.

With Energy to Spare

The Energy to Teach
By Donald H. Graves
Heinemann, 2001
ISBN 0-325-00326-2

For Donald Graves, education philosopher and writing-guru, the glass is always half full. That is an impressive perspective considering he's now in his seventies.

Graves continues to generate interesting books worthy of our time and energy. In his most recent work, The Energy to Teach, Graves moves away from his usual focus on writing instruction to examine a topic that all teachers will be interested in—energy.

Graves gives sage advice for world-weary teachers: Change the way you look at situations that ordinarily sap your energy in order to find ways to get invigorated by them.

He also advocates serious reflection on the energy-sapping and energy-giving experiences in your life. He makes suggestions about how you can maximize your interactions and time to get more energy from your job.

Graves' focus is not on the lack of physical energy to teach, but rather a lack of emotional energy. If you are looking for a book of quick, helpful forms or worksheets that will save you time, you will have to look elsewhere. In fact, Graves questions the "multitask" society we live in. However, if you are clenching your teeth because your job is frustrating you to the point of emotional exhaustion, you may find this book helpful.

Teachers can face many frustrations: unmotivated students, unsupportive parents, testing programs that seem to get in the way of education, federal and state regulations, and over-stressed administrators who treat teachers as if they were the problem. All of these situations drain teachers' emotional energy and lead to "burnout."

Each spring, many teachers scan the classified ads, looking for a way out of their chosen profession. Some of these teachers do in fact leave, particularly new ones. Sometimes the "emotional roller coaster" that Graves describes is more than many teachers can handle. But many more stay because they feel called to teach.

By carefully examining what builds and saps your energy, you can reenergize yourself, according to Graves. He stresses focusing on the positive aspects of your job and continually refocusing yourself on what will help your students learn.

Graves feels that most teachers are energized when they see that students are learning. To that end, he provides practical advice designed to help educators connect to students and help them learn.

Summer is traditionally a time for teachers to recapture some of the vitality drained throughout the school year. Read The Energy to Teach this summer, and you may have a chance to retain more energy than you thought possible.

Reformer at the Helm

Learning By Heart
By Roland S. Barth
Jossey-Bass
ISBN: 0-787-95543-4

School reform is hardly a new topic for teachers. For years, reformers have made efforts to reshape America's schools, and many educational pundits, like Roland Barth himself, have added to the plethora of material written about the subject.

For most teachers, however, reform has long been a carrot dangled before them—keep toiling away in less than ideal conditions, with less than adequate pay and things will improve, reform will happen. Yet, this has been an elusive promise at best. Many teachers (and principals) have, quite unfortunately, lost faith.

Although well intentioned, too often reform has been approached as a top-down proposition, with educational researchers, state departments of education, superintendents, and even Congress handing down edicts from on high. Herein lies the problem, according to Barth.

Top-down reform is rarely embraced by those at the classroom level, however. Barth doesn't discount the efforts by educational leaders to make reform. To the contrary, he devotes several spirited chapters dedicated to the importance of the principal's role in school-based change. But his real purpose is to motivate and inspire those directly involved in a school, at any level, who are willing to help define what that reform should mean. He also argues that teachers should become assertive agents of school change, working alongside their principals.

In his introduction, Barth invites his readers to view this book as a "conversation" about how to make schools better. He makes good his promise by letting readers in on many personal reflections, anecdotes, and conversations he has had with hundreds of educators. His analogies to sailing, his "other" passion, are particularly apt. These are truly pleasurable to read.

Offering a list of conditions in the school culture that support the renewal of the school, Barth gives us a blueprint for approaching reform, one issue at a time.

For classroom reform, he uses many examples from outdoor education programs (he is a trustee at an Outward Bound school). While these examples are instructive, it is difficult to imagine them working in a more traditional school that is bound by standards of learning and held accountable by multiple choice tests. How many teachers are willing to take on the standardized test movement, now embraced by the nation and dictated by law?

Nevertheless, his arguments are persuasive. Experiential learning does develop a more motivated and deeply engaged student. While difficult, it is not impossible to find the balance between the learning of facts and hands-on learning experiences that allow students to process the facts and apply what they have learned. But for specifc suggestions on how to accomplish this, readers will need to turn elsewhere.

The real conversation that Barth refers to begins when readers start answering some of the tough questions posed in the final chapter of the book. Those educators who have the courage to answer the questions, and then to take them into their schools and begin discussing them, will find themselves involved in a sometimes thorny, but ultimately rewarding, conversation, indeed.

Vowing to Do No Harm

The Passionate Leaner
by Robert L. Fried
Beacon Press, 2001
ISBN 0-8070-3144-5

Any parent or teacher who has forgotten, or has never experienced, the joy of watching a student learn a new concept, idea, or skill must read Robert Fried's newest release, The Passionate Learner.

Based on the premise that all children are born with a voracious appetite for learning, the question becomes: How do parents and teachers fuel that appetite as children traverse formal education?

Unsuccessful students present challenges for parents and teachers, and often these challenges lead to frustration and despair for both children and adults. Apathy plagues classrooms in epic proportions across the nation, and general opposition to rules and routines has become commonplace. Fried proposes that teachers and parents, working individually and cooperatively, can help to revive the "passionate learner" that lies dormant in children. Problems with behavior and attitude will diminish when the desire to learn is ignited.

Essentially, the classroom should mirror the coach/athlete relationship. When the teacher leaves the role of classroom czar and assumes the role of classroom coach, children feel less threat of failure and more support toward success. When the role of teacher changes, students will share responsibility for their successes and failures.

In order to nurture the passionate learner in each child, Fried provisions that teachers should be like doctors and "vow first to do no harm, and promise to resist measures that deprive children of their natural exuberance as learners, their impulse to ask questions, to figure things out, to wonder, to express, to investigate, to construct, to imagine."

While many teachers already accept their role as teacher-coach, for other teachers Fried's call is challenging. Fried encourages teachers to design courses and units based on true education-oriented goals rather than just focusing on objectives dictated by standardized tests or curricula. He then extends the challenge to make sure the assessments evaluate student progress toward those goals and that assignments and grades are designed to help students focus on the "depth and quality" of their work. Student production and evaluation should not be an exercise in obedience to a teacher's demands.

Parents must remain true partners and, when necessary, step into the role of teacher to ensure that the love of learning burns steadily in their children, both in school and out.

Working together, parents and teachers can meet Fried's final challenge:

"Children come to us as passionate learners. It's our charge to help them develop the disposition to sustain, over a lifetime, an openness to things worth knowing."