Teacher Edition Textbooks

Wow, those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer have flown by faster than the Thunderbirds at the July 4^th air show, haven’t they? The start of school is imminent, for you teachers I know many of you are already back. What’s new at your school’s this year? I’d love to hear the latest from any of you. As you pulled out your teacher edition textbooks or logged onto your online science curriculum, what new ideas have struck you? It seems like we’re always trying to find the next, latest, greatest, whizz-bang way to engage and motivate students.

How much do you use an online math curriculum? Maybe your district doesn’t have one yet, or maybe all your curricula are online. I’m doing a little research right now about whether online curricula work better for some students than for others, and I’ll let you know what I learn. But in the meantime I’d love to hear what you think, how you use your online elementary curriculum, and how your students do with them.

As a follow-up to the fun and learning Kendall Hunt Publishing employees were a part of on the inaugural National Lab Day, there’s something I really want to get off my chest. Yes, Kendall Hunt is an educational publishing company, we sell educational materials and solutions. Books for gifted students, high school chemistry textbooks, teacher edition textbooks, online learning solutions, and more…we make it, and yep, we want to sell it.

But as I saw my fellow employees participate in and react to their National Lab Day experiences, it made me feel really good. Because for us, it really is about the kids. It’s about them learning, and growing, and, eventually, making the world a better place. And we know we can influence that, we can help them along the way, we can make a difference for them. We’ll never be a giant monolithic publisher who sells more high school biology books that everyone else combined. But we don’t want to be that. We want to help teachers, real classroom teachers, from kindergarten through college, find the best solution for their students.

I think it’s just that we care about the kids, we believe in what we do, and we hope to make a difference. It’s what keeps each of us going every day. As loyal readers, I just thought you might like to know what drives us.

Getting Ready -- Prepares individuals for the teacher job search by making the most of the student teaching experience.  It includes insider advise on multiple topics, 100 things employers will ask about you, and maintaining a professional web presence.

Getting There -- Teaches the essential tools of the teacher job search including résumés, cover letters, interview portfolios, and tips on where to find jobs.

Getting Hired -- Provides strategic interview responses, knowledge of various interview settings, common interview questions and sure-fire tips to make you stand out above the rest with a knock'em dead interview.

Each book comes with individual access to the Getting Hired Companion Website, which contains a plethora of resources, including: ePlanner Activities: Templates for résumé/letter writing, philosophy statements, common interview questions and topics, and success planning.

Interview Portfolio: Build an Interview Portfolio that can easily become an ePortfolio showcasing standards-based teaching abilities, as well as a tremendous interview preparation tool. The 10 Interview Portfolio templates comprise a powerful self-promotion and interview success tool.

Videos: Watch sample interviews for all levels of instruction, listen in as employers give job seeking advice, and key interview questions and topics.

This book can be used for student teaching courses through college or universities, or to support a job search for an individual in the education field. So if you can't decide what to get your son or daughter who is beginning their student teaching, the student who has helped you create lesson plans for your gifted and talented students for the past three months, or the friend who will be student teaching in the Fall, check out Getting Hired on the Kendall Hunt Publishing website: http://www.kendallhunt.com/gettinghired. 

I guess it’s not THAT big a sale, but we do have some special pricing on classroom combo packs for our BSCS Science Track and Insights, our elementary school science textbooks and programs. Most classroom packs include a teacher’s guide, some student books, sometimes a lab kit; it varies by program and module. You can find them here: http://www.kendallhunt.com/insights and here: http://www.kendallhunt.com/tracks. Check them out and save some money!

NSTA’s NCSE (National Science Teachers Association’s National Conference on Science Education is getting closer! NSTA events always offer great opportunities for those of us in science text book publishing to share our outstanding inquiry based science programs. The NCSE is no exception. Whether it’s a high school biology textbook, a high school physics textbook, teacher edition textbooks, or any other science resource, we’ll be there ready to share our best work. See you there!
 

This weekend I was speaking with a friend of mine who is a high school science teacher and we were talking about high school science textbooks. She was bemoaning the lack of teacher resources in the high school biology textbook her school uses. Sure, she has the teacher edition textbooks that go with the program, but she’s looking for something more. At the private school where she teaches, they’ve been using the program for a number of years and are hoping to change soon. 

She had no idea the inquiry based science resources that are available online now. When I told her about the virtual autopsies that are available with our Forensic Science for High School program, she was so excited. That got me thinking, are you happy with the resources that school textbook publishers are providing for you as teachers? Does your high school physics textbook give you online resources for experiments & interactive learning exercises? Is your high school chemistry textbook robust enough to keep your students engaged? I’d love to have a conversation about this!
 

How can we keep up with all the new and ever-changing technologies that have kids mesmerized? Teachers often feel overwhelmed with the challenges and options this digital culture presents to students. We want students to take advantage of all technology has to offer; however, how familiar are teachers with technology?  Teachers often throw up their hands and say, “My students know how to work this stuff and I don’t” or “How can I utilize and implement something that I don’t understand?”

The digital world is growing and changing very fast. Technology companies release products so rapidly that there is little time for anyone to stop and think of the many issues that may arise with their use. Too often when schools and districts purchase new digital technology for their elementary school textbooks they look at all the bells and whistles and don’t think of how will this fit into an inquiry based science classroom or a teacher's daily lesson plan.

Technology offers exciting opportunities in the science textbook publishing arena, but for some teachers this strange new world can be intimidating.  Thankfully, there is help available…

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has developed the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for students, teachers, and administrators. With these standards, ISTE provides structure for utilizing technology in an effective and responsible way.  This site offers a plethora of information, tips, direction, and support.  You can even visit a school that has embraced the digital world: http://www.istevision.org/watch.php?vid=fc10dbd9251623e4379652fd1cb0ac54e5ad04a5

As an educational publisher we are committed to assisting teachers to best educate students.  Inspiring teachers to transform their classrooms away from traditional teaching toward a new vision of student-centered learning is our mission. 

We aim to offer technology that is relevant and to provide implementation support in our teacher edition textbooks.  And if you are still struggling with turning on the laptop or downloading the Nano Legends game that came with your KH high school biology textbook, just ask your students for help...they love to show off their expertise.
 

I was just updating the elementary school, middle school and high school pages on the Kendall Hunt website to include cover images for each of our programs when it occurred to me how great our primary school textbooks, middle school textbooks, and secondary school textbooks look. (Check out the Global Science cover to the right.) For this, I must give a shout out to my talented designer friends here at KH.  They’ve won many Addy awards for their outstanding work, and if you look around our website, you can see why. They have the ability to take a high school physics textbook, or a teacher edition textbook (books not normally oohed and aahed over for their visual appeal) and create a cover that jumps right off the shelf and grabs you. Certainly you can’t always judge a book by its cover, but seeing the quality, care and effort that go into the outside is usually a pretty good indicator of what went into the inside.