Summer Reading (It's not just for students!)

Last summer, I decided to start listening to books on cd.  At the time, we did not have a dishwasher in our apartment, and since washing dishes by hand was far from one of my favorite tasks, I thought that some audiobooks might make the chore less awful.  Being an avid reader, one of the hardest things for me to do was to pick out a book that I didn't mind not reading.  To me, listening to a book read to me is not nearly as wonderful as reading it myself.

However, I stumbled upon a book about teaching by a man named Rafe Esquith.  I'm a sucker for tales of teachers who go into underprivileged areas and prove that being poor is not a lid on a child's ability to succeed.  This book was a story of just that kind of teacher.  The book is called Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire, and it contains numerous excellent ideas for a classroom. 

This past year, I implemented the monetary system he described, complete with desk rent, supply costs, and an auction at the end of each quarter.  I made it a little simpler than his to keep me sane, but my students loved it!  I enjoyed watching them manage their meager salaries, some using it up on candy every Friday, others saving it to outbid the entire class on that one auction item everyone wanted.  We even voted on taxes and collected them in April.  This was far more effective than the mini-economies I had tried to do in the past.  I put more ownership on the students, only loosely tied it to behavior, and taught some practical economic lessons along the way.

I highly recommend this book if you are looking for something to get you excited about the next school year.  I would have found it overwhelming if I had read it during the year, simply because I find it difficult to start too many new things once the year is already started.  It made for great summer reading (er... listening), though, because I was able to take away from it some good ideas to try out the next year, and I had plenty of time to figure out how to use those ideas and make them my own for my own classroom. 

If you still aren't sure, check out the website for his class, The Hobart Shakespeareans.  It's quite amazing what he has accomplished!