Teacher's Journal

Teachers begin the professional journey with a treasure chest full of experiences, hopes, and expectations gathered from early childhood. Yet the everyday stresses and challenges of 21st century classrooms often leave teachers with neither time nor energy to recall their initiating dreams and desires. In this innovative workbook you’ll be expertly guided through a journey of self-discovery, back to the roots of your story, your evolution as a teacher, and the rituals and routines that help or hurt. You’ll take time out to remember the ways that teaching blesses you. You’ll learn to confront the inner critic and push back against the voice that tells you to do more, more, more. You’ll discover the legacy you leave with your students. You’ll fall in love with teaching all over again.Illustrated with 115 actual journal entries by 17 teachers in response to 65 well-crafted writing prompts, you’ll be held in a supportive international community as you rediscover yourself and your innate strengths. A facilitator’s guide featuring step-by-step lesson plans prepares you to offer this work as a writing group with peers.

Themes, blessings, praise, ritual, wander, flame, magic. Who wouldn’t love a guide that embraces so many positive ways to rediscovering our authentic teaching selves? The authors, along with the teachers who let us peek into their journals, give us permission to set the papers aside, put down the red pen, and turn off the voices. Then come the moments—the ones that brought us here, and the ones that keep us coming back. Through insightful prompts and snippets from teachers’ journals, we remember why we started this journey, recall where we have been along the way, and rethink the paths we imagine for ourselves and our students. When life becomes so hectic and routine that we forget who we are and how we’ve come to be, The Teacher’s Journal reels us back in, allows us to swim in our pasts, presents, and futures, and emerge anew. It’s an immediate sabbatical, and a gift of profound beauty., My teaching career was interrupted for 20 years while I became a lawyer. In the 'law years' my night dreams found me back in the classroom over and over and over again, working out the issues that consistently came up for me during my stints as a classroom teacher. The Teachers' Journal has already helped me sort out some of the conflicted feelings I had about being a teacher during all the times I was, and during all the times I wasn't, in the classroom. This workbook is a gift all teachers deserve to present to themselves and to their colleagues, to help all become truer to and happier in their magnificent profession., Kathleen Adams’ most recent offering, The Teacher’s Journal: A Workbook for Self-Discovery with co-author Marisé Barreriro, guides a critically undervalued and overtaxed population of readers along an artful, oftentimes whimsical, always compassionate, and ultimately profound journey into personal clarity and replenishment. The authors have carefully tailored their approach for teachers and educators seeking reconnection with themselves, with their work, and with their communities. They have created a highly accessible way to speak to the stresses, the burnout, the disconnection, and the sense of isolation that teachers can face in their demanding roles in an increasingly hostile and challenged environment....Ms. Adams has always had a remarkable skill for the clear presentation of how to most effectively employ the immensely powerful yet remarkably accessible tools of pen and page. In this case, the intended audience now has a handy guidebook back to the sources of their passion. Replete with self-care action plans, tools for addressing difficult staff or students, ways to build community with other teachers (through writing groups!), and many other aspects too numerous to list here, this offering should prove a valuable resource to not only to our educators but, subsequently, to our communities generally, as we need our teachers to be awake, aware, refreshed, and alive with their passion to shape our children., This book is for all of us whose life passion and purpose is teaching. Kathleen Adams and Marisé Barreiro expertly lead us through a series of short writing prompts which range from exploring our earliest learning and teaching experiences, to creating a self-care action plan, to confronting our inner critic and discovering how it impacts us as teachers. The focus throughout the book is on reflection and uncovering our base of strength by following a clearly outlined expressive writing process. This is an essential tool for teachers at all career stages to stay connected to core beliefs and rekindle the energy needed to teach. I only wish this book had been available 35 years ago when I stepped into my first classroom!, The United States education system is in the process of yet another shift in paradigms, causing more frustration for teachers already burned out or disillusioned with a career entered into with passion, only to discover long days filled with politics, teaching to the tests, and heartbreaking stories that fill the lives of their students....Kathleen Adams LPC, PTR, Director of the Center for Journal Therapy and Marisé Barreiro, Gestalt therapist and former English teacher, recognized the void often felt in the teaching profession and joined forces in an international collaboration to write The Teacher’s Journal, A Workbook for Self-Discovery. The expressive writing series is designed for individuals or for a workshop setting....I highly recommend that school districts adopt The Teacher’s Journal as curriculum for professional development and in-service days for their educators. I sincerely believe that they will see a renewed spirit in their staff. Each year, my school has professional development days on which staff members offer courses in their fields of expertise to their peers. I am excited at the prospect of sharing The Teacher’s Journal with my colleagues next year.

Kathleen Adams, MA, LPC is one of the leading voices in the field of expressive and therapeutic writing. A psychotherapist and registered poetry/journal therapist, she founded the Center for Journal Therapy in 1988. She is the author/editor of nine books on expressive writing and the series editor for the It’s Easy to W.R.I.T.E. Expressive Writing series for Rowman & Littlefield.Marisé Barreiro is from the province of Pontevedra in Spain, is a Gestalt therapist specializing in creativity with 20 years’ experience as a middle school and high school English teacher. She leads workshops on self-discovery through writing in Galicia and Madrid. This is her first book.