Bücher veröffentlicht von Wheatmark

Is your public school too large and distant (both physically and socially) for you and your children, too impersonal (take a number, please), and too bureaucratic (with layers and layers of officials)?Though one-room and small schools are sometimes seen through rose-colored glasses, they made parents and students feel more welcomed, more interactive, more intimate with each other and the school''s programs, and-even today where they still exist in the United States (the mid- and far-West)-more academically superior.Today, with electronic advancements available-computers, videos, distance libraries and learning for research-there is no reason to crowd students like a herd of cattle into schools and classrooms. Research has proven that a smaller economy of scale is not more expensive. Some have recently started talking about scaling down the size of schools (not those, of course, with a vested interest in the large school "plant"), but it has been mostly talk. When will the real community school return?This volume has three focuses: 1) The nostalgic remembrances of an early Maryland one-room school by those who attended and taught there (with interesting data and old-timey pictures), 2) a brief, succinct, and eye-opening history of small schools in America, and 3) easy-to-read research briefs that support returning to smaller, local-community schools today.

As educators, we are truly "saving lives" every day. Teaching is an awesome task that requires a missionary zeal that can drain the best of educators. Teaching: Excellence or Survival? celebrates the impact teachers have on children and encourages teachers to not just survive their journey, but to strive for excellence. Using real-world examples, educational research, humor, and a dash of common sense, this easy-to-read reflective guide examines the challenges and rewards of the greatest profession in the world.

It isn''t easy to let go of those we love so deeply. Sometimes we feel as if we will explode with grief. For many years, Maria A. Behm allowed her estranged relationship with her son to weigh her down, crying to alleviate the pain. Many times she thought she would not survive because all she knew was her children and what they brought into her life. She didn''t realize that her struggles were putting a strain on her marriage.Mothering is forever, and forever we are mothering, says Maria. The uncertainty that comes with motherhood, however, can be replaced with love and purpose—if we decide to let go. Maria found that by writing about her anger and resentment, she found peace, serenity, and the fulfillment that only comes from within. In writing to find solace, Maria found herself.

A refreshingly simple and entertaining story, The Legend of Destiny is a must read.

The i Tetralogy-i, I Am Gunther, Gunther's Lament, Gunther Redux-is the gut-wrenching epic depiction of the dehumanization of man through an incisive observation of three pivotal characters. Each of them, victim, perpetrator, and murderer's son, is inextricably linked by the varying dimensions of their moral nature. Assaying the monumental impact of the Holocaust, this species-shattering event, the tetralogy elucidates a truth about humanity: the Holocaust has forever defined the species as indelibly damaged, capable on a molecular level of killing and consuming its own. The reader experiences this unvarnished-perhaps axiomatic-truth about humanity, which no revisionist can deny. The reader also ponders the risk in forgetting, in sanitizing, in "sweetening" the Holocaust.

The United States is on the brink of total collapse. The military has been reduced to near extinction, economic turmoil saps hope, and anarchy threatens as world powers hover like vultures, eager to devour the remains. In a desperate move, a few powerful men call a secret meeting to plot the overthrow of the government. Fifty-five men came to Philadelphia in May of 1787 with a congressional charter to revise the Articles of Confederation. Instead they founded the longest lasting republic in world history. Tempest at Dawn tells their story.

Heidi Siefkas lost her health, her career, and her marriage after she was struck by a one-thousand-pound tree branch. While she made great strides in her physical and emotional recovery in the months that followed -- an arduous process that she chronicled in When All Balls Drop -- Heidi wasn't content to merely survive her setbacks. The time was right to build a new life. One she could live on her own terms.But what would a redesigned life look like? In her quest for answers, Heidi returned to her childhood home in Wisconsin, dove into the South Florida dating scene, revisited old flames in New England, sold her first home, jumped out of a plane, and traveled alone to South America. Every leg of her journey provided a healthy dose of perspective.With New Eyes is full of mishaps and bold decisions, all seasoned with sassy humor. Through her signature down-to-earth vignettes, Heidi inspires you to conquer your fears, head for adventure, and become the captain of your own ship.

My earlier book, The Wrights of Vermont (Wheatmark, 2013), reported the search I began about ten years ago for my father's Vermont forebears. I had learned a lot, especially about my grandmother's heroic efforts to save her shaky marriage. Eventually she left Vermont to begin a new life on Staten Island for herself and her two sons, Dad and Uncle Ray.This book shows Dad and Mother starting their family on Staten Island and describes our home, our neighborhood, the boarding house where we sometimes dined, the schools we attended, the songs we sang, how we learned to think about money, work, fun, guilt, and politics, and our experience, especially mine, of illness, solitude, and books.Later chapters show our horizons expanding. They tell where we went on outings and how we spent our summers (ours at a riverside cottage near the New Jersey coast, and mine at an unusual summer camp in upstate New York), and they sketch the different world we found when we moved to Manhattan in 1941. I entered Columbia then and began to discover new realms of literature, philosophy, and music. Then at eighteen, with other young men of that time, I was swept up into military service in the U.S. Army and war in France and Germany.