"My experience at (one) school convinced me that students should face realistic but tough demands in the classroom... we were not pushed hard enough, and thus, we did not learn to expect only the best from ourselves."
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Among Teachers by Peter L. Fenninger Trafford Publishing
book review by Sherokee Ilse
After forty years in teaching, Fenninger writes, "Teachers by profession are storytellers: over time good teachers become great storytellers. We learn through those stories, and we remember them. Our lives become better because of them… So sit back and enjoy my story and meet some of those teachers I have encountered." This book offers an account full of wisdom beginning with the author's small town up-bringing. Educators are presented who display humor and unique teaching styles along with interesting ways of getting material and messages to students. Student success stories are also included and set in context with what was happening in families, society, business and the economy during the decades of his career. Nostalgic flashbacks tell of small schools that began each school day with the Lord's Prayer and Bible reading, showing the long history of Christian principles in America's public schools.
Early teachers positively influenced the author—especially those who held high academic rigor, while showing students abiding respect. If teachers treat each student as the most important person in the classroom and if they accept fault when students fail, the author contends students might be more successful. Fenninger reports too many teachers as average—dependable, competent at their job, but often passionless and uninspiring. "They take the syllabus, texts or programs then develop safe lesson plans and make uninspired presentation to students who get bored… they don't want to expend their own creativity looking at the material…(thus creating) problems when the community realizes that students are not being pushed hard, and the resulting educational achievement is average or worse."
Setting a positive tone for the future, the author's optimistic, practical answers are to not reward mediocrity in schools and to demand excellence. Additionally, teachers should be in close contact with home reporting on "victories as well as defeats." The book offers hopeful strategies that are inexpensive and relatively easy to do.
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