| Troubled Hearts, Troubled Minds: Making sense of the emotional dimension of learning by Peter Nelmes ISBN 9781785834103 I have been going to school to become a FACS teacher over the last year and a half with plans to hopefully graduate next fall. Learning how to best work with troubled children was something I wanted to learn more about because I think it can be very challenging. Peter Nelmes, the author, has worked in classrooms for about 20 years. He specialized in working with children with EBD (emotional and behavioral difficulties or emotional behavioral disorders) in the UK. When children are troubled, there is so much below the surface. It’s almost like an iceberg – you can see the top that is small percentage of the picture and most of it is below the surface. The child might be exhibiting misbehavior and is it due to you, the teacher, something or someone else in the classroom, or manifesting from something the child is dealing with at home or in another environment? In Troubled Hearts, Troubled Minds, Mr. Nelmes shares some of his personal experiences in the classroom. He discusses the importance of not labeling children “mad”, “sad”, or “bad”. “Instead, I have my own definition of what I mean by troubled children: they are people with a greater than average need to communicate and a smaller than average ability to do so. In other words, they come into the classroom needing to create shared meanings more than anyone else because they are lost and lonely, but they find this much more difficult than their peers do.” – Troubled Hearts, Troubled Minds I think this book is great for those going into teaching with little or without classroom experience already under their belt. |
