Dive into the brand new Heinemann Fall 2017 catalog! You'll find the latest resources from Thomas Newkirk, Patricia Vitale-Reilly, Amy Ludwig Vanderwater, Ilana Horn, and more. You'll also discover Fountas & Pinnell Classroom and the new Units of Study for Teaching Reading: Middle School Grades. Visit the online catalog here.
Below, you can read the catalog's letter from Heinemann's General Manager Vicki Boyd.
“Nothing without joy.”
I’m forever grateful to Mary Alice Berry, teacher, friend, and Heinemann author, for sharing this adage with me. It is espoused by Italian educators wise in the traditions of Reggio Emilia, who place children’s natural proclivities toward wonder and the ability to construct meaning through experience at the center of teaching and learning.
It’s an expression that resonates with the values and beliefs Heinemann was founded on nearly four decades ago when we began distributing Marie Clay’s work in early literacy and shortly thereafter published Don Graves’ Writing: Teachers and Children at Work. Graves’ book made Heinemann a publishing pioneer. Here were books with voice and warmth, borne out of a view of children as writers, problem solvers, and meaning makers and of teachers as responsive observers of children, co-constructors of learning, and action researchers seeking to bring new understanding to their practice and the profession. These books envisioned classrooms in which teachers and children alike are alive with learning.
Professional books remain the heart of all we do at Heinemann. It is still our privilege to publish author practitioners who inspire teaching informed by a constructivist sensibility. And we’ve retained the pioneering spirit, alongside that of our authors, that has fostered the many pedagogical innovations you’ll find in this catalogue. The new forms our publications take are designed with teacher professional learning at their core. They are professional development tools that help teachers address universal needs or thorny challenges while lifting teachers’ knowledge and skill.
But none of this matters if it doesn’t help you see the children in front of you.
In Joy Write: Cultivating High-Impact, Low-Stakes Writing, Heinemann author Ralph Fletcher laments visiting classrooms in which “it’s harder and harder to find the essential wildness—the unique intelligence found whenever children freely express themselves—that once infused the workshop,” the approach to teaching writing Don Graves’ research gave rise to.
I know what he means. In too many schools, there’s a heaviness in the air. The pressure to instantly improve data and test scores results in a kind of amnesia: we’ve forgotten the children. They’ve been crowded out by programmed approaches that attempt to reduce instruction to a formula. There’s no joy in this for teachers, or for kids. And I suspect no real learning.
It is our deepest wish that your encounters with Heinemann—our authors, publications, professional development experiences—help return your attention to the children in your midst and restore your sense of self as a co-constructor of meaning and significance in their lives. Our goal is to help you find the means and the courage to embrace that Italian touchstone against which I believe the vitality of our teaching can be measured absolutely. We wish you a year of nothing without joy!
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Vicki Boyd is the General Manager of Heinemann. Follow her on Twitter @VickiBoyd.
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