So You Want to Be a Teacher!: Trading a Business Career for the Joys of Teaching!

Harlan Hansen

Mar 2017 · Xlibris Corporation

About this ebook

This book is a memoir of a young man making a major occupational change after first embarking on a business career after college and army service. Flashbacks to his early family life, academic struggles at school, the stint in the army, an unsuccessful marriage, dissatisfaction with the business culture, and dealing with limited financial resources are challenges that had to be met. But a single encounter with a graduate school faculty member opened the door to a field for which he eventually realizes he is most suitedearly childhood teacher education. Along the way, another angel joins in the adventure to foster personal success and promote creative ways of dealing with educational issues, bringing new life into the classroom. He received two outstanding teaching awards at the University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development. He also received the National Horace T. Morse-Amoco Outstanding Teaching Award, as well as the Governor of Minnesotas Outstanding Service Award. He served as president of the National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators, and he originated the Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Educators.

About the author

Harlan S. Hansen is an Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. His areas of expertise were Early Childhood Education and Classroom Management and Discipline in the Elementary School. He continues in retirement sharing his ideas with college students preparing for careers in teaching, parent groups seeking insights on raising children, and schoolteachers and administrators dealing with the variety of student behaviors. Professor Hansen has written or co-written a number of books on these topics, including 16 Ways To Fix or We’ll Never Fix Public Education, Amazon, 2012; Lessons in Literacy, Promoting Preschool Success (with Ruth Hansen), St Paul, MN, Redleaf Press, 2010; Classroom Management and Discipline in the Elementary School – Helping Children Insert Reason Between Impulse and Action: (TeachersPayTeachers website) 2005; and Playway-Education for Reality (with Ruth Hansen, Dave and Madeline Davis) Winston Press (TeachersPayTeachers website) 1973.