Members' Studio
In this section, we'd like to feature members' literary and
art contributions related to education and/or unionism. If you have something to contribute,
let our webster
know. Give your name, job title, work location, home phone and the type of material you have.
What You Weren't Taught About Teaching:
A Survival Guide Book review by Mindy Pines
Almost all of Megan Murphy Laibovitz's advice in
What You Weren't Taught About Teaching: A Survival Guide is amazingly on-point.
I wish someone had alerted me to her suggestions as it
took me a few years of stumbling to figure out much of what she
recommends. (Of course, I might not have been ready to pay attention
to what she says until after my years of stumbling.)
She goes beyond essential nuts-and-bolts advice on
supplies, schedules, and curriculum that you should have
and know before the first day of school. Her stress on
documentation of everything from phoning parents to keeping
copies of memos you write to everyone including students,
parents, administrators and office staff is something that
though I do by second nature now (after thirteen years of
teaching) is not something I heeded to at first.
Her expectations for lesson plans are realistic,
contradicting much of what my education professors
espoused in my credential program. Her eschewal for
this pedogical theory over that was inspiring. "Think
back to all the theories you were taught in your education
courses... store your favorite parts...then delete the
theories from your memory," she recommends particularly
since the education pendulum constantly swings one way
or another. I wish my administrators in my first years
had encouraged me as Laibovitz does: Be yourself.
Develop your own style that reflects you.
Equally refreshing is Laibovitz's advice to
find out your district's leave policy and to take
your personal days when and as you need them.
Perhaps the only thing missing in
What You Weren't Taught About Teaching: A Survival Guide is to advise new teachers to learn what is in their union contracts, understand their rights in the workplace and participate in their unions to make teaching in general and the school and society in which they work a better place.
Mindy Pines is a technology resource
teacher at Lakeshore Elementary School and UESF's communications representative.
By Megan Murphy Laibovitz
Learning Publications, Inc., 57 pages, $8.95 plus shipping
800-222-1525
ISBN: 1-55691-215-3
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