“I Still Love Teaching Despite All the Reasons in the World to Quit” by Renes Lophanor offers a personal and global perspective of the education system while expressing a deep-seated love for teaching.
Lophanor, an accomplished international secondary teacher, shares first-hand experiences and observations, highlighting the numerous challenges educators throughout the world are facing on a daily basis.
In this 318-page book, Lophanor covers a wide variety of educational topics, highlighting the challenges of teaching, relishing the joys, sharing personal anecdotes, and providing interesting statistics.
While the book is largely a critique of a system that badly needs an overhaul, Lophanor balances these critiques with reflections on the joy of teaching, the connections formed with students and suggestions and tools for those still in the trenches.
I wholeheartedly agree with Lophanor’s many suggestions and strategies for creating more exciting and productive learning environments: Fostering creativity, encouraging guided discovery, using games in the classroom, coaching students versus spoon-feeding them, thoughtful use of praise, promoting a growth mindset, building parental trust, providing experiential learning, reducing the emphasis on homework and mandated tests, and much much more.
One of my favourite quotes from the book is in the concluding chapter:
Common sense suggests that if public schools were truly outstanding, or at least as commendable as governments claim, then wouldn’t members of the government and affluent families enrol their children in them? In my view, it should be mandatory for all government officials, ranging from local members of Parliament to the Prime Minister or President, to send their offspring exclusively to public schools, thus leading by example. Were this the case, I’m convinced public schools would be allocated adequate funding and would adopt a curriculum more attuned to real-word challenges.
I couldn’t agree more. I think most, if not all, of the current problems with our education system would vastly improve were this the case.
If you’re interested in learning more about school systems I think you’ll find “I Still Love Teaching Despite All the Reasons in the World to Quit” a compelling read!
Happy reading!