Reach Before You Teach
Reach Before You Teach shows educators how to form the nurturing, individualized connections that make students feel worthy, fulfilled, and ready to flourish as learners.
- Grade Level: PreK-12
- ISBN: 9781452261386
- Published By: Corwin
- Year: 2013
- Page Count: 216
- Publication date: October 22, 2013
Review Copies
Description
Facilitating students’ unique paths towards identity development is the key to teaching young teens.
Students face pressures that undermine the development of a solid sense of self, jeopardizing success in school and in life: Family issues, economic concerns, media influences, social pressures, physical changes, and more influence how students feel about themselves.
When these go unnoticed, even the best teaching methods fall short. Reach Before You Teach shows educators how to form the nurturing, individualized connections that make students feel worthy, fulfilled, and ready to flourish as learners.
The book details:
- Practical, empowering information about how a sense of self comes to be, and what threatens it.
- Interventions that soften the myriad defenses students develop to protect themselves.
- How to address the often-overlooked connections between physical, social, and emotional health and classroom performance.
Packed with real-life examples and results-delivering exercises, Reach Before You Teach supplies educators with the all-important skills to connect with students so academic and life success feels more attainable.
“In our present education system that seems to be caught up with numbers and standardization, this book is a welcomed read. Education will never improve if we don’t make the social-emotional skills of children our first priority.”
—Peter DeWitt, Principal
Poestenkill Elementary School, NY
“This book is a must-read for all who want to encourage self-awareness and self-reflection during classroom instruction and help students feel more connected, curious, and confident! Students no doubt will achieve emotionally and academically with help from the strategies in this book.”
—Dr. Ann Marie Dargon, Assistant Superintendent of Schools
Westport Community Schools, MA
Key features
The benefits and features of this book include:
- Details seven straightforward, easy to implement steps to ignite passion and purpose in your classroom.
- Demonstrates the ethical necessity to reach the whole child and foster his potentials socially, emotionally, physically and, yes, cognitively.
- Includes a plethora of real life teacher illustrations showing the power and impact of the tools and strategies given.
- Provides over 50 interventions to reach and connect with each student in your classroom, particularly those students that seem to defy your previous attempts at connection and instruction.
- Offers techniques and strategies to form authentic connections with students and explains why these connections you create can mean the difference between thriving students and those who drop out.
- Incorporates opportunities to check in with yourself to develop awareness as to how your habits and views impact your teaching style.
- Details the functions and structure of the brain and offers ideas on how to share this information with your students.
- Explains how social emotional skills and focusing on the self will foster 21st century skills.
Author(s)
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Paula Prentis
In addition, with Chris Parrott, Prentis is the coauthor of the Your Self Series of books and website. Your Self Series is a curriculum that facilitates teen identity development and is taught as part of an advisory class, a health class, or an after-school program.
Prentis and Parrott lecture nationwide on issues pertaining to teens and mental health in schools. They continually update and populate the Your Self Series website with relevant teen information and lesson plans for educators. They have three other products that all aim to influence children to be the best they can be while combating obesity and improving overall health and well-being: YourChatMat.com; YourStacs; and HealthyStacs.
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Chris Parrott
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Amy Smith
Table of Contents
Preface
A Child’s Sense of Self Is of Paramount Concern
The Focus and Purpose of This Book
This Book Applies to Educators of Teens
The Bottom Line
About the Authors
1. The Self
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
What Do We Mean by the Self?
The Self in School
Social Emotional Learning: Its Importance and How the Self Enables SEL Potential
How Does a Sense of Self Contribute to Personal Success and to Society?
Steps to Success – For Teaching and for You
Chapter Summary
2. The Development of the Self: Understand and Connect With the Self Behind the Desk
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
Early Attachment and Self Development
True Self Versus False Self: The Battle Begins
Making Connections
Chapter Summary
3. The Unaware Emotional Self: Soften Defenses to Foster Academic and Personal Growth
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
The Purpose of Defenses
The Development of Defenses and How They Inhibit Optimal Learning
Common Defense Mechanisms and How They May Manifest in the Classroom
How to Manage Defenses Through Interventions That Build the Self
Chapter Summary
4. The Aware Emotional Self: Provide Tools for Emotional Management
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
Emotional Awareness - Knowing Your Temperature
Emotional Management – Shutting the Window
The Emotional Self in the Classroom
The Benefits
Chapter Summary
5. The Cognitive Self: Use Cognitive Understanding to Awaken Potentials
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
Brain Structure and Related Functions
Stress on the Brain
Neuroplasticity: The Role of Experiences
Improving Motivation
Chapter Summary
6. The Social Self: Consolidate the Self in the Social World
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
Set a Positive Social Tone in Your Classroom
Top Social Skills
Teamwork
Chapter Summary
7. The Physical Self: Support the Physical Self for Optimal Overall Health
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
The Importance of Physical Health
Exercise and Health
Nutrition and Health
Sleep and Health
The Mind/Body Connection
The Physical Self in the Classroom
Chapter Summary
8. The Self in the School Climate: How to Put the Environment to Work for You
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
What Is School Climate?
Personal Principles of Behavior
School Wide Policies
Parents and the Off-Campus Community
Chapter Summary
9. The Self: Decision-Making, Motivation, and Giving Back
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
Where Are We?
Where Can We Go From Here?
Decision-Making – The Sine Qua Non of Self Skills
Motivation
Final Interventions
Chapter Summary
References
Index
Reviews
"This book is filled with useful material that will help educators better relate to their students and empower them to reach their full potential."Steve Reifman, National Board Certified Teacher
Roosevelt Elementary School
"This book is a must for all educators wanting to help students understand their emotional 'Self' and its impact on their academic and future success."Diane P. Smith, School Counselor Grades 7-12
Smethport Area School District
"With the growing focus on mental health issues in our communities today this book is a much needed publication and very timely. Thanks to the mental health professionals who worked to make this easily applicable to the school environment and to give school professionals guidance in how to structure our schools so that students develop a strong sense of self."Dr. Janice Wyatt-Ross, Assistant Principal
Cardinal Valley Elementary
"This book is a must-read for all who want to encourage self-awareness and self-reflection during classroom instruction and help students feel more connected, curious and confident! Students no doubt will achieve emotionally and academically with help from some strategies in this book."Dr. Ann Marie Dargon, Assistant Superintendent of Schools
Westport Community Schools
"In our present education system that seems to be caught up with numbers and standardization, Prentis’ book is a welcomed read. Education will never improve if we don’t make the social-emotional skills of children our first priority."Peter DeWitt, Ed.D., Principal and Corwin Author
Poestenkill Elementary School