Teaching, Professional Development, Testing, Evaluating, Planning, Communication, and Leadership - Marsha Diane Akau Wellein (nee Hawaii) discusses these issues using civilian and military educational practices and theories from her view point. She uses her real-life adventures, her personal experiences - she has been there and done it! If you want only DO THIS or DO THAT advice, please do not read this book. It may be too much out-of-the-box thinking by taking you out of your comfort zone! Dr. Wellein has been a professional educator since 1969 - teaching many grades & ability levels, various subjects, special education and regular K - 12 students, undergraduate, graduate, served as a test administrator, principal, curriculum specialist, grants writer, children’s book author - you name it, and she has done it. From Chapter 1, when Dr. Wellein as a young 25-year-old teacher escapes sexual assault, to Chapter 72, dealing with a mentally challenged supervisor and all chapters in between, this book offers you much to ponder. She shows how practice follows sound theory, but one size never fits all! Dr. Wellein also cites the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic as a monumentally significant event, affecting direct, face-to-face instruction for years to come (even with vaccine), and increasing distance/online learning one hundred-fold. There is no central thread in this book, no cord to bind chapters together chronologically or geographically. Each chapter deliberately stands alone; each is merely a snippet, a pearl, for the reader. When Marsha Wellein decided in the mid - 1980s to accept an offer to work overseas in her capacity as a US DOD Civilian in Army Education Services at Larson Barracks, itself located within a very small US Army garrison in the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) in the West German town of Wurzburg, she had absolutely no realization at the time that this innocuous one-time assignment was to be the first step in what would eventually form a substantial block of time for 2 decades comprising multiple back-to-back permanent change of station (PCS) assignments across a broad swath of the world. After the posting in Germany, Dr. Wellein accepted a tour to the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt with the Multinational Peacekeeping Force under the US State Dept. (headquartered in Rome), and three years later, returned to Hawaii. Then it was off to Panama and Honduras for a couple of years during the crazy narco-guerrilla cocaine wars, back to Hawaii, then onward to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia following the end of the Iraq war (and quasi safe, inside the US compounds.) Japan (Camp Zama) was really a crowded land of Toyotas & sushi, and South Korea was next, an assignment on the doorstep between the South Korean De-Militarized Zone and North Korea (i.e., Democratic People’s Republic of Korea). She next served as the Army Director of Education & Library Services for US Southern Command in Puerto Rico, responsible for 24 military groups in South & Central America and part of Florida. In 2001, as the Army Reserve Regional Director of Education for Pacific & Asia, Dr. Wellein cared for Army Reservists throughout Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, Saipan, American Samoa & Asia. Education is in her blood, so she earned a doctorate in 2010. When she retired from DOD in late 2012, she returned to her first love, teaching. But read this book and see for yourself. You will love reading about solutions to problems, challenging yourself, exploring ideas and new methods, practices, as you continue your academic education journey. Why do almost 1,000 teachers leave their jobs yearly in many major cities? What can education recruiters do to hire more credentialed educators? Will civilian and military educational agencies join forces for some professional development activities in 2021? She offers compelling ideas, Pearls of Wisdom to teachers, administrators, anyone interested in improving education in America.
