Joyful Resilience as Educational Practice

Michelle C. Hughes has served as a junior high teacher, high school administrator, and Education Department faculty member at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. Michelle embraces promoting the teaching profession with Westmont students and the larger educational community. She is passionate about equipping teachers for long-term career success with dispositions such as resilience, compassion, empathy, and gratitude. Ken Badley lives in Calgary, Alberta, and teaches foundations of education at Tyndale University in Toronto, Ontario. He has taught in secondary, undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs in Canada and the United States and has worked extensively with teachers in Kenya. He is the author of many books and articles related to curriculum, instruction, and the teaching vocation.

Teachers know the difficulties inherent in their profession, we live them daily. Hughes and Badley describe this book as a love letter for the difficulties and the joyful moments of teaching. Indeed, this is a letter of love to our labor of love as teachers. This volume brings together a wide assembly of educators whose stories will inspire and challenge teachers while revealing the joy of teaching. Each chapter describes the work of teaching as immensely challenging and rewarding. Teachers do find hope in the struggle. This book affirms that reality and invites the reader into a community of hope, not in avoiding the struggle, but in recognizing the challenges and accepting the realities while flourishing in the midst of it all.Scot HeadleyProfessor of Educational LeadershipGeorge Fox UniversityNewberg, OregonThis is an inspiring collection, full of the joy that its title promises. Hughes and Badley have assembled these essays as a "love letter" to teachers at a time when so many pressures can drain educators’ energies or ideals. Quite admirably, the writers face the current challenges squarely, but they avoid overworn platitudes and offer a valuable blend of seasoned wisdom and recent research to help teachers renew their spirits and their strategies. There are some rousing words here, yet the writers also respect that teachers are at their core learners themselves and will welcome new ideas to revitalize their craft. They will find all that in this thoughtful panorama.Mark SargentFormer Provost, Westmont and Gordon CollegesSanta Barbara, California For teachers who have become dismayed by the myriad of challenges encountered in education, Joyful Resilience in Educational Practice will lift their souls. The authors have thoughtfully reframed the deficit model of teaching to reveal how the great rewards of the profession are most often hidden within the challenges. This insightful compilation is the perfect gift to inspire and encourage your favorite teachers!Stella ErbesDivisional Dean, Humanities & Teacher EducationAssociate Professor, Teacher EducationPepperdine UniversityMalibu, California Not since Parker Palmer’s The Courage to Teach has there been such an inspirational book on teaching as a calling. Authors in this book describe the positive energy they experience when they resolve challenges with attention to the animating forces that first drew them to the profession.Jodi NickelPast-President, Canadian Association for Teacher Education Professor, Mount Royal UniversityCalgary, AlbertaI very much appreciate the heart and the expertise of the editors and chapter authors of Joyful Resilience. Many of us who have been involved in education for more than just a few years are very concerned about its direction, especially as it relates to the life (or lack of it) of the teacher. This book includes many personal accounts from those who are obviously passionate about the education enterprise and the future of education. The result is a hopeful volume that not so much prescribes as encourages, providing timely inspiration and refreshment for its readers. Paul ShotsbergerProfessor of Graduate Faculty at Southern Wesleyan UniversityCentral, South CarolinaIn the midst of a global pandemic, Joyful Resilience as Educational Practice, challenges teachers, who operate in one of the most difficult professions even in the best of times, that joy and resilience are matters of choice. This collection of essays from a wide range of experienced professionals at all levels of the teaching profession, explores the rich treasure of resources for self-renewing flourishing that surrounds them in their daily work if they only have eyes to see, and the courageous discipline to receive them as gifts.Shirley A. MullenPresident and Professor of HistoryHoughton College Houghton, New York

• 1. The Teaching Vocation and the Interior Lives of Teachers; 2. Reciprocities with Students; 3. When Students Become Our Teachers; 4. Is there a Class in this Text?; 5. Sustainable Teaching: Reflective & Responsive Practices; 6. Minding the Gap: Seeing, Valuing, and Using the Theory-Practice Tension in the Classroom; 7. Colleagues; 8. The Power of Gifts From Supervisors Who Share; 9. A Long and Rewarding Apprenticeship: The Sustaining Inspiration of Our Mentors; 10. Families; 11. Joyful Resilience through Dissonance, Doubt, and Disillusionment; 12. Navigating Political, Economic, and Curriculum Constraints with Joyful Defiance; 13. Teacher-Student Reciprocities in Three Educational Models; 14. Uncovering Joyful Resilience