September 1, 2009

Educating Esme- A book Review

Dominique Book Review Classroom management, Educators, Teacher

Educating Esme-Diary of A Teacher’s First Year by Esme Raji Codell

I was very privileged to be invited to be on Esme’s Blog Tour which starts in September.I received a copy of her book last month and it was a really refreshing read. It is very seldom that I pick up a book relating to being a teacher and can get through reading it at one siting.

Educating Esme is an open diary about Esme’s encounter in the classroom as a Beginning teacher. It brought back memories of myself being a Beginning teacher nearly 10 years ago. The experiences and challenges I experienced were not that similar but I could strongly relate to the strong oppression by the management a.k.a Head Chief .

I loved reading about her quirky responses and how she challenges authority. In one of the entries that she wrote in her Diary it mentioned that her class was busy doing group work on the floor. The principal came in and announced to her that she was doing a bad job of classroom management as it look like chaos. She answered that “No” and that her class was perfectly under control and put up her hand to call the kids to attend. Almost immediately all the pupils stood up and put up their hands too and the classroom fell to an eerie silence.

Esme bares it all and tells how teaching is it through her eye. Her diary if filled with her genuine feelings how how she handles all the different challenges hurled at her during classroom teaching. She strives very hard to make educating and learning a fun and meaningful experience for all the students in her class. Her rich knowledge of literature can be seen the class library, classroom decoration and school activities which is vividly described in her book.

She has lots of practical and interesting tips which I can adapt into my own classroom to enrich the learning experience of my kids.

I strongly recommend that you pick up a copy of Educating Esme I really enjoyed reading it and I am sure that you will too 🙂

Weekend Reflections- Marriage Renewal Weekend

Last weekend was a real emotionally packed weekend at the marriage retreat which I attended. I got to learn more about how to communicate actively with my other half and use dialogue to get to know each other better.

Many times problems arise in couples as we are unsure on how to use the correct word to communicate with each other. We start pointing the finger and start picking faults at one another.

At this retreat I learned how to dialogue using only your feelings. You express your feelings to each other about specific issues in different ways. There is no judgement and no harsh words used.

You describe your feeling using – Pictures, colours, smells etc.

Eg: Question- How do you feel about having to feed the boys dinner every night.

I answered the following.

I feel simply exhausted having to spend every afternoon seeing to the boys meal. My feeling is like having a ton of bricks falling down upon you. If being exhausted is a colour it would be a dull grey. On an scale of 1 t0 10 the intensity is a 8/10. If my feeling of exhaustion is based on a shared moment it would be when the both of us were stuck in the railway station waiting for the next train back to Geelong after we missed the previous train.

The weekend was only a start to building up a more solid marriage. I will be going for the 6 week follow up sessions and also taking part in the challenge over at Simple Marriage.

What are you doing to better your marriage?