This is the first in a two part series on mental health of teachers. In this post I am sharing a brief review of the book The Happy Teacher Habits.
Table of Contents
Reference
The Happy Teacher Habits: 11 Habits of the Happiest, Most Effective Teachers on Earth
Michael Linsin
2016
JME Publishing
Pp. 144
Buy here
Summary
This short book is an amazing read for all teachers at whatever stage in their career. I strongly recommend this to teachers who are struggling with administrative work and implementing the ideas that they had learnt during teacher education programmes.
There are lessons in it for administrators to build happier schools. No classroom can be a happy place if the teacher is looking at it as a challenge and trying to hard to meet curriculum deadlines, while thinking about the work coming their way in the last and/or next staff meeting.
Administrators need to understand learning needs of students better before creating stress of complying with standards and protocols. Yet, till the time the administrators and policy makers wake up, teachers cannot and should not walk around feeling grumpy and frustrated. This book will help you find lessons that are innovative in some places, and reminders of the obvious in other. Linsin draws heavily from his experience as a teacher and as a mentor/coach.
For me, this book opens up a world of possibilities of change and gives me hope. There are times when I felt that these habits are not only difficult to develop, but also probably more suited to non-Indian, non-higher education contexts. Yet, I don’t want this to be an excuse to dismiss the book and I am surely looking forward to putting some of it in practice if not all of it.
Conclusion
You will find a summary of the book at the end of it, as also on the internet. These come nowhere close to the learnings you will gather if you read the whole book.