Description: In a world where stress is unavoidable--where political turmoil, pandemic fallout, and personal challenges touch everyone--this book offers guidance for cutting through the emotional static that can hold teachers back. A specialist in pedagogical strategies with extensive classroom experience, Elizabeth A. Norell explains how an educator's presence, or authenticity, can be critical to creating transformational spaces for students. And presence, she argues, means uncovering and understanding one's own internal struggles and buried insecurities--stresses often left unconfronted in an academic culture that values knowing over feeling. Presenting the research on how and why such inner work unlocks transformational learning, The Present Professor equips educators with the tools for crafting a more authentic presence in their teaching work. At a time of crisis in higher education, as teachers struggle to find new ways to relate to, think about, and instruct students, this book holds a key. Implementing more inclusive pedagogies, Norell suggests, requires sorting out our own identities. In short, if we want to create spaces where students have the confidence, comfort, and psychological safety to learn and grow, we have to create spaces where we do, too. The Present Professor is dedicated to that proposition, and to helping educators build that transformational space.
Brief description: Amanda Troop is an actor and improvisor, and started out on stage at age eleven. Along with her work in TV and film, Amanda has been in nearly 100 national ad campaigns and commercials. Amanda's love of cartoons and audiobooks led her to the world of voice-over. Her audiobooks include Hard Girls, by J. Robert Lennon, Go the Distance, by Jen Calonita, The Rehearsals, by Annette Christie, Good Hope Road, by Lisa Wingate, Desire Lines, by Christina Baker Kline, and Saving Each Other, by Victoria Jackson and Ali Guthy. Her animation work includes Maggie Sawyer in The Death of Superman, Gladys Windsmere in the Batman Unlimited films Animal Instinct and Monster Mayhem, Jordy Defective on the indie web series Box Peek, the entire witch coven in Gendy Tartakovsky's Primal, and most recently as Eunice the Unicycle on Disney's Firebuds. As the "weird noises gal" Amanda has given voice to the Zombie Queen in Army of the Dead, spoken an invented Atlantean language for Zack Snyder's Justice League, and hacked up a hairball as Spider-Cat in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Amanda has used improvisation as a vital tool throughout most of her career, including on-camera work on Bobcat Goldthwait's Misfits and Monsters, a two-year campaign for Chevrolet, and in creating several fully improvised films with her improv and production team, Ripley Improv. Her video game credits include Sophia in Wylde Flowers, Irene Lew in Dead or Alive Dimensions and in Ninja Garden 3, Loosum Hagar in Rage, Gulo in Rage 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, Lego Dimensions, and Final Fantasy VII Remake. Her recent TV appearances include Hot Date, Bobcat Goldthwait's Misfits & Monsters, a recurring role on the cult hit show Wilfred, Bones, Childrens Hospital, and more. Amanda is also a distance runner, native plant enthusiast, avid reader, HEMA swordfighting novice, excellent home cook, and a warrior mom.