In the spirit of Studs Terkel's Working, Bill Smoot interviews master teachers in fields ranging from K--12 and higher education to the arts, trades and professions, sports, and politics. The result suggests a dinner party where the most fascinating teachers in America discuss their various styles as well as what makes their work meaningful to them. What is it that passes between the best teachers and their students to make learning happen? What are the keys to teaching the joys of literature, shooting a basketball, alligator wrestling, or how to survive one's first year in the U.S. Congress? Smoot's insightful questions elicit thought-provoking reflections about teaching as a calling and its aims, frustrations, and satisfactions.

In this well-seasoned book, charismatic educator Anita Moultrie Turner shows new teachers, veteran teachers, and staff developers how to blend 11 essential ingredients into effective and productive classrooms where all students can succeed. Easy to read and hard to put down, this Recipe for Great Teaching features: - Classroom stories, quotations, and tasty servings of educational wit and wisdom - Strategies for building effective learning environments - Techniques for successful curriculum planning - Methods for engaging all students in learning - Ways of working with colleagues and the community This inspiring resource offers enticing and delicious ways to spice up your teaching and your students' learning.

Kentucky and Kentuckians are full of stories, which may be why so many present-day writers have Kentucky roots. Whether they left and returned, like Wendell Berry and Bobbie Ann Mason, or adopted Kentucky as home, like James Still and Jim Wayne Miller, or grew up and left for good, like Michael Dorris and Barbara Kingsolver, they have one connection: Kentucky has influenced their writing and their lives. L. Elisabeth Beattie explores this influence in twenty intimate interviews. Conversations with Kentucky Writers was more than three years in the making, as Beattie traveled across the state and beyond to capture oral histories on tape. Her exhaustive knowledge of these authors helped her draw out personal revelations about their work, their lives, and the nature of writing. When Still concludes his interview with "I believe I've told you more than anybody," he could be speaking for any of Beattie's subjects. Aspiring writers will learn that Mason submitted twenty stories to the New Yorker before one was accepted, and that Still wrote articles for Sunday school magazines. There's plenty of advice: Dorris tells budding authors to get real jobs, keep journals, and read everything, even cereal boxes, and Marsha Norman reminds playwrights that "it is not the business of the theater to provide writers with a living." Kingsolver advises, "Read good stuff and write bad stuff until eventually what you're writing begins to approximate what you're reading." Beattie's collection includes striking self-portraits of such writers as Sue Grafton, Leon Driskell, James Baker Hall, Fenton Johnson, George Ella Lyon, Taylor McCafferty, Ed McClanahan, Sena Naslund, Chris Offutt, Lee Pennington, and Betty Layman Receveur. What most distinguishes these moving conversations from other author interviews is their focus on creativity, on the teaching of writing, and on the authors' strong sense of place. As Wade Hall writes in his foreword, all twenty writers recognize that their works have been significantly influenced by their "Kentucky experience." This collection offers insights into Kentucky's rich and flowering literary heritage.

Conversations About Social Psychology include the following five carefully-edited Ideas Roadshow Conversations featuring four leading social psychologist and a former professional tennis player with a detailed preface highlighting the connections between the different books: I. Being Social - A conversation with Roy Baumeister, Professor of Psychology at the University of Queensland. This book is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Roy Baumeister and explores his unique combination of biological and psychological thinking from recognizing essential energetic factors involved with willpower and decision-making, to framing free will in evolutionary biological terms to measuring the numbness associated with social rejection as a form of analgesic response, and more. II. Mindsets: Growing Your Brain - A conversation with Carol Dweck, the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. This book is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and renowned psychologist Carol Dweck and provides behind-the-scenes, detailed insights into the development of Carol’s important work on growth mindsets and fixed mindsets: how different ways of thinking influence learning ability and success. III. The Mind-Body Problem - A conversation with Janko Tipsarevic, founder and CEO of Tipsarevic Tennis Academy in Belgrade, Serbia. He is former professional tennis player, with a career-high singles ranking of world No. 8. This book is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Janko Tipsarevic and gives behind-the-scenes insights on what it takes to achieve excellence in professional sports, what mindset is needed to reach one’s true potential and a penetrating and inspirational window into the social psychology of professional tennis. IV. The Science of Emotions - A conversation with Barbara Fredrickson, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This book is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Barbara Fredrickson who is also Director Positive Emotions & Psychology Laboratory at UNC Chapel Hill. Topics covered by this extensive conversation include Barbara’s work on the science of positive emotions, including her broaden-and-build theory, the undoing effect and upward spirals, while highlighting relevant evolutionary-driven hypotheses together with measurement details of empirical studies. V. Critical Situations - A conversation with Philip Zimbardo, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University. This book is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Philip Zimbardo. During this extensive conversation Philip Zimbardo relates his intriguing life history and the survival techniques that he developed from the particular dynamics of his upbringing in the Bronx to his quarantine experiences, his experiences with South Bronx gangs, and more. Further topics include his relationship with his former classmate Stanley Ingram and the impact the different experiences in his youth had on the development of his personal situational awareness and how that influenced his psychological research, and more. Howard Burton is the creator and host of Ideas Roadshow and was the Founding Executive Director of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. All the above books are also available for individual purchase. For other books in this series visit Howard Burton's author page or our website (https://ideas-on-film.com/ideasroadshow/).

As David Brooks says: “Children learn from people they love.” If you have all the competence and training in best methods, and have not love, you will fail. If you persist in love, you will learn to master your foibles and failings, and even transcend them and be a great educator. Perhaps, love isn’t all that really matters, but it is the sine qua non of the work of an educator. Not only are relationships essential in education, but they are, also, the key to a long, happy and productive life. When we build relationships, we build community. The culture of that group of people is where happiness lies.

One of today’s greatest preacher-theologians engages one of the twentieth century's greatest teacher-theologians on the meaning of preaching.Readers of William H. Willimon’s many books have long found there the influence of Karl Barth, probably the most significant theologian of the twentieth century. In this new book Willimon explores that relationship explicitly by engaging Barth’s work on the pitfalls and problems, glories and grandeur of preaching the Word of God. The Swiss theologian, says the author, expressed one of the highest theologies of preaching of any of the great theologians of the church. Yet too much of Barth’s understanding of preaching lies buried in the Church Dogmatics and other, sometimes obscure, sources. Willimon brings this material to light, introducing the reader to Barth’s thought, not just on the meaning, but the practice of preaching as well.

Highly readable and engaging, this unique resource helps all educators fine-tune their expectations for the teaching profession.