A thoughtful look at addressing students’ emotional needs in a classroom setting.
A manual for empathic and trauma-informed teaching.
In her latest book, Desautels, an assistant professor in Indiana-based Butler University’s College of Education, builds on her work in Connections Over Compliance (2020) to offer a framework to create an effective learning environment for students while also optimizing teachers’ mental health. Drawing on applied educational neuroscience and polyvagal theory (which foregrounds the role of the vagus nerve on emotions and reactions to trauma), Desautels explains how to approach and maintain emotional regulation, help students achieve stability, and create a supportive environment that allows space for learning. The book encourages teachers to coregulate with students, modeling such behaviors as deep breathing, taking breaks, and mindfulness, while also understanding that the methods they find most useful may not be the ones their students prefer. Desautels addresses the specific problems that the Covid-19 pandemic has brought to the learning experience but reminds readers that there’s always been a need for welcoming approaches to teaching. The book responds to common objections to coregulating practices, including claims that they coddle students or reward bad behavior. The book includes several “Guest Reflections” by other teachers, which offer additional perspectives on trauma-informed teaching and provide concrete examples of implementing this book’s highlighted techniques. The writing is generally solid, explaining complex topics in relatively simple language. However, readers may find some of the book’s quirks grating, such as the excessive use of the term shares when introducing quotations, instead of says or writes. At times, the tone of the prose tends a bit toward melodrama: “The highly irrational middle school and high school TikTok challenges might have been driven by the developmental need for attachment to others, at the cost of an adolescent's need for authenticity.” On the whole, however, the book is informative, making a coherent argument for an emotionally intelligent approach to classroom engagement. Desautels acknowledges that her methods may require a fundamental shift in classroom management, but she persuasively presents the work as worthwhile.
A thoughtful look at addressing students’ emotional needs in a classroom setting.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781954332331
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An unflinching self-portrait.
The tumultuous life of a bisexual, autistic comic.
In her debut memoir, Scottish comedian Brady recounts the emotional turmoil of living with undiagnosed autism. “The public perception of autistics is so heavily based on the stereotype of men who love trains or science,” she writes, “that many women miss out on diagnosis and are thought of as studious instead.” She was nothing if not studious, obsessively focused on foreign languages, but she found it difficult to converse in her own language. From novels, she tried to gain “knowledge about people, about how they spoke to each other, learning turns of phrase and metaphor” that others found so familiar. Often frustrated and overwhelmed by sensory overload, she erupted in violent meltdowns. Her parents, dealing with behavior they didn’t understand—including self-cutting—sent her to “a high-security mental hospital” as a day patient. Even there, a diagnosis eluded her; she was not accurately diagnosed until she was 34. Although intimate friendships were difficult, she depicts her uninhibited sexuality and sometimes raucous affairs with both men and women. “I grew up confident about my queerness,” she writes, partly because of “autism’s lack of regard for social norms.” While at the University of Edinburgh, she supported herself as a stripper. “I liked that in a strip club men’s contempt of you was out in the open,” she admits. “In the outside world, misogyny was always hovering in your peripheral vision.” When she worked as a reporter for the university newspaper, she was assigned to try a stint as a stand-up comic and write about it; she found it was work she loved. After “about a thousand gigs in grim little pubs across England,” she landed an agent and embarked on a successful career. Although Brady hopes her memoir will “make things feel better for the next autistic or misfit girl,” her anger is as evident as her compassion.
An unflinching self-portrait.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9780593582503
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
A convincing case for the societal benefits of sports fandom.
A Fox Sports executive and the founder of a consulting firm explore the social value of fandom in this nonfiction book.
Chicago Cubs season ticket holder Nick Camfield’s fandom “runs at least three generations deep,” and every trip to Wrigley Field “transports” him back to his childhood experience of watching games with his father. In conducting interviews with the Cubs enthusiast and others for this well-researched work, Valenta and Sikorjak came across dozens of individuals like Camfield whose emotional well-being and favorite memories revolved around sports—from Little League coaches and fantasy football leaguers to local fan club members and season ticket holders. In addition to anecdotal oral histories, the authors (self-described data geeks) convincingly deploy a host of statistical data to back their argument that not only do sports fans “have more friends,” they also “exhibit stronger measures of wellbeing, happiness, confidence, and optimism than non-fans.” Not only does fandom bring families closer together, the volume argues, but it is also an essential tool—for instance, it is used by immigrants to find a welcome home in new cities or countries. And as much as rivalry is central to the world of sports, fandom, the book contends, can actually “soften the hardened boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ ” Valenta, the senior vice president of strategy and analytics for Fox Sports, and Sikorjak, the founder of an analytics consulting firm and a former executive with Madison Square Garden, combine their career insights into American sports with a firm grasp of data-driven analysis that is accompanied by a network of scholarly endnotes. At times their prose can revel in the sappy nostalgia of sports history, which may alienate more objective sociologists while gripping the average fan. Still, their writing effectively blends keen storytelling with erudite statistical analysis that will appeal to both scholars of human behavior and lifelong sports enthusiasts. The book’s readability is enhanced by an ample use of full-color charts, graphics, diagrams, and other visual aids that support its overall message that the value of sports goes far beyond its mere entertainment value, as its “social power” has the potential to “heal an ailing world.”
A convincing case for the societal benefits of sports fandom.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-9858428-1-4
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Silicon Valley Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
