My Best Teachers Were Saints: What Every Educator Can Learn from the Heroes of the Church - Softcover

Swetnam, Susan H.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 082942329X ISBN 13: 9780829423297

Publisher: Loyola Press, 2007

Synopsis

Discipline problems, self-doubt, tense meetings, classroom stress . . . Couldn’t every teacher use some saintly help?

Every teacher can think of at least one mentor who has served as an inspiration over the years. However, many teachers—even those with a Catholic faith—might not have considered that saints can serve as mentors. Author and teacher Susan H. Swetnam believes that saints aren’t only good teachers—they’re the best teachers.

In My Best Teachers Were Saints, Swetnam focuses on fifty-two saints—many of them teachers—who faced challenges similar to those that nearly all educators face today, from indifferent students and recalcitrant colleagues to their own limitations and feelings of isolation. With the examples of saints such as Augustine, Ignatius of Loyola, and Scholastica, Swetnam eagerly shares how their words and deeds helped immensely in her own career as a teacher and how they can aid and inspire other educators as well.
Anyone involved in education—whether teaching religion or mathematics, kindergartners or graduate students—will discover within these pages a treasure trove of saintly help that is sure to prove that the best teachers are in fact saints!

About this title

Book Description

Dry spells and indifferent students, acrimonious meetings and recalcitrant colleagues, isolation and self-doubt--the stresses of the teaching profession are plentiful.  In times of strain, many teachers draw on the wisdom of their mentors, the seasoned teachers who taught them classroom skills and became trusted models and friends.  For Susan H. Swetnam, some of the best, most inspiring, and most insightful mentors she has are saints of the Catholic Church--and a remarkable number of these men and women were teachers themselves. In fact, many of the church's heroes schieved their saintly stature by facing challenges identical to those that teachers face today.

Some of the fifty-two saints described in My Best Teachers Were Saints give lessons on how to overcome the teaching profession's unique problems; others show today's teachers how to identify successes that are often quite difficult to discern.  All of the saints in this book share one thing in common: they persevered in the educational work that God called them to do. Swetnam brings to life each story of perseverance and makes it easy for today's educatiors to discover mentor-companions wh can help them rekindle and fortify their passion in the classroom.  

About the Author

Susan H. Swetnam is a professor of English at Idaho State University. During her career at ISU, she has been named a Distinguished Teacher (1988), an Outstanding Researcher (1992), and a Distinguished Public Servant (1996). She is also a freelance essayist. Swetnam resides in Pocatello, Idaho.

Edition details

• Publisher: Loyola Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 082942329X
• ISBN 13: 9780829423297
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320