Resources

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: What makes a good college teacher? This book provides an evidence- based answer to that question by presenting a set of "model teaching characteristics" that define what makes a good college teacher. Based on six fundamental areas of teaching competency known as Model Teaching Characteristics outlined by The Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP), this book describes how college faculty from all disciplines and at all levels of experience can use these characteristics to evaluate, guide, and improve their teaching. Evidence based research supports the inclusion of each characteristic, each of which is illustrated through example, to help readers master the skills. Readers learn to evaluate their teaching abilities by providing guidance on what to document and how to accumulate and organize the evidence. Two introductory chapters outline the model teaching characteristics followed by six chapters, each devoted to one of the characteristics: training, instructional methods, course content, assessment, syllabus construction, and student evaluations. (From the Publisher)

Click Here for Book Review A guide for students, groups, and organizations seeking to foster interfaith dialogue and promote understanding across religious lines In this book, renowned interfaith leader Eboo Patel offers a clear, detailed, and practical guide to interfaith leadership, illustrated with compelling examples. Patel explains what interfaith leadership is and explores the core competencies and skills of interfaith leadership, before turning to the issues interfaith leaders face and how they can prepare to solve them. Interfaith leaders seek points of connection and commonality—in their neighborhoods, schools, college campuses, companies, organizations, hospitals, and other spaces where people of different faiths interact with one another. While it can be challenging to navigate the differences and disagreements that can arise from these interactions, skilled interfaith leaders are vital if we are to have a strong, religiously diverse democracy. This primer presents readers with the philosophical underpinnings of interfaith theory and outlines the skills necessary to practice interfaith leadership today. (From the Publisher)

How can a teacher remain whole and happy, able to teach well for an entire semester, an entire year, and an entire career? Teach from the Heart is about finding, rediscovering, or holding on to the heart of the teaching life, which is, quite literally, the teacher's heart. It is an encouragement to take up teaching as more than a service to provide, a profession to master, or a job to perform. It is an invitation to artisanry, teaching as a craft that we master by working with our hands over long periods of time, producing results that bear the mark of their maker. Whether you're just beginning, or in it for the long haul, sit down with Teach from the Heart and deepen your heart for the teaching life. We need not bring to class the wisdom and knowledge we gained elsewhere; we can take up teaching as a spiritual practice, with the classroom as a sacred space for our own formation as persons. With nearly forty years' experience as both student and teacher, Jenell Paris's perspective is hard-won, but still lighthearted and enthusiastic. Teachers from any context will benefit: stories and examples include preschool, K-12, community education, and college teaching. (From the Publisher)

Click Here for Book Review This book has been written and organized to prepare critically reflective teachers to take their place in society and to do that with the knowledge, personal framework and tools to be successful. The reader will begin with an exploration of the role of higher education—it’s history and development—in influencing society. He will examine how being critically reflective can serve as a fundamental principle to guide our professional journey. She will start drawing the under-painting of a self-portrait of our identities to see what anchors us to our unique qualities that set us apart as individuals and will help inform our professional decisions and life-path. Out of the heightened awareness of our identities and experience we’ll initiate crafting a framework by which we think and are guided in our teaching practice. Readers will engage in exercises to flesh out this framework by unpacking our learning experiences and articulating what was previously implicit: our personal theories of teaching and learning. Readers will experiment with ways in which we become more conscious of how our thinking and feelings inform our actions and how this increased consciousness can guide us in creating powerful and compelling learning experiences for our students. We’ll look at the changing population of diverse higher education students and how we can build community with them by using our sense of identity as a bridge. Readers will learn to revise artifacts from our academic experiences to serve as benchmarks of our professional development and the major skill areas of teaching: preparing to teach, successfully executing our teaching plans in and out of the classroom to encourage deep and lasting learning in our students, effectively assessing their learning as an authentic process and how to document all these efforts throughout our careers for our own development and in preparation for when we are evaluated by others. I look forward to our collaborative journey together. (From the Publisher)