What do you think?
Rate this book
Teaching That Changes Lives: 12 Mindset Tools for Igniting the Love of Learning
Igniting the Love of Learning
In response to educators who are already fans of her bestseller Change Your Questions, Change Your Life, Marilee Adams, the originator of Question Thinking, presents a compelling model for creating a classroom environment infused with curiosity, creativity, and caring. Through a moving story of a teacher on the verge of burnout, Adams demonstrates the powerful influence our mindsets have on how we interact with our students, our colleagues, and ourselves. Through vivid examples, she illustrates how cultivating what she calls a Learner Mindset leads to breakthroughs in critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. Complete with Adams’s Choice Map for identifying our own mindsets, a workbook, and access to online resources, this inspiring book will transform teachers and students alike into open-minded, creative, resilient problem solvers and lifelong learners.
In response to educators who are already fans of her bestseller Change Your Questions, Change Your Life, Marilee Adams, the originator of Question Thinking, presents a compelling model for creating a classroom environment infused with curiosity, creativity, and caring. Through a moving story of a teacher on the verge of burnout, Adams demonstrates the powerful influence our mindsets have on how we interact with our students, our colleagues, and ourselves. Through vivid examples, she illustrates how cultivating what she calls a Learner Mindset leads to breakthroughs in critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. Complete with Adams’s Choice Map for identifying our own mindsets, a workbook, and access to online resources, this inspiring book will transform teachers and students alike into open-minded, creative, resilient problem solvers and lifelong learners.
296 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2013
30 people are currently reading
211 people want to read
About the author
Marilee G. Adams
12 books34 followersMarilee Adams, Ph.D., is an author, executive coach, facilitator, and professional speaker. She is president and founder of the Inquiry Institute, a consulting, coaching, and educational organization and the originator of the QUESTION THINKING™ methodologies.
Marilee is the author of Change Your Questions, Change Your Life: 12 Powerful Tools for Leadership, Coaching and Life, 3rd edition, a best-selling business and relationship fable about an executive coach and inquiring leadership. Teaching That Changes Lives: 12 Mindset Tools for Igniting the Love of Learning, is about cultivating the Learner Mindset for breakthroughs in schools. She also authored a textbook, The Art of the Question: A Guide to Short-Term Question-Centered Therapy. She wrote a chapter for Action Learning and Its Applications, Present and Future and coauthored, with Drs. David Cooperrider and Marge Schiller, a chapter for Advances in Appreciative Inquiry. She has a chapter in Positively M.A.D.: Making a Difference in Your Organizations, Communities, & the World and has also written articles on expert questioning in coaching and on organizational inquiry and transformation. She is also a guest blogger for Experience Life Magazine.
Marilee is an adjunct professor at American University’s School of Public Affairs in their Key Executive Leadership Program, a member of the Core Faculty, Certificates in Leadership Coaching, cosponsored by Adler International Learning and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University Toronto. She is also affiliated with Columbia University’s Learning & Leadership Group at Teachers College.
Marilee’s QUESTION THINKING™ work forms the core of her presentations, keynotes, workshops and workdays in organizations (including Fortune 50 companies), government agencies, nonprofits, and for communities.
She and her husband, artist and coach, Ed Adams, live in the arts community and river town of Lambertville, New Jersey.
Marilee is the author of Change Your Questions, Change Your Life: 12 Powerful Tools for Leadership, Coaching and Life, 3rd edition, a best-selling business and relationship fable about an executive coach and inquiring leadership. Teaching That Changes Lives: 12 Mindset Tools for Igniting the Love of Learning, is about cultivating the Learner Mindset for breakthroughs in schools. She also authored a textbook, The Art of the Question: A Guide to Short-Term Question-Centered Therapy. She wrote a chapter for Action Learning and Its Applications, Present and Future and coauthored, with Drs. David Cooperrider and Marge Schiller, a chapter for Advances in Appreciative Inquiry. She has a chapter in Positively M.A.D.: Making a Difference in Your Organizations, Communities, & the World and has also written articles on expert questioning in coaching and on organizational inquiry and transformation. She is also a guest blogger for Experience Life Magazine.
Marilee is an adjunct professor at American University’s School of Public Affairs in their Key Executive Leadership Program, a member of the Core Faculty, Certificates in Leadership Coaching, cosponsored by Adler International Learning and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University Toronto. She is also affiliated with Columbia University’s Learning & Leadership Group at Teachers College.
Marilee’s QUESTION THINKING™ work forms the core of her presentations, keynotes, workshops and workdays in organizations (including Fortune 50 companies), government agencies, nonprofits, and for communities.
She and her husband, artist and coach, Ed Adams, live in the arts community and river town of Lambertville, New Jersey.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
May 29, 2019
I have read Change the question, change your life before and even bough quite a few paperback copies to use as gifts for my friend. And now, I read this book. I would agree that this simple yet powerful Choice map can change lives, not just for students, but also for adults. I myself many time run into Judger mode and if I don't get out soon enough, it creates more troubles for me later on. The same principles can apply for building great corporate culture which I'm very keen on to share with everyone from that perspective. Certainly, I'll ask my 10 year old daughter to read this book and I'm sure she'll grow herself into a better person and can use Choice map as a base for her growth in the future as well.
November 7, 2022
I'm very grateful to my brother-in-law, David for recommending this book. I found the premise of this book compelling. The allegorical style is an effective demonstration of the author's philosophy even if it's not the greatest of narratives. I heartily approve of the implicit connections between teaching and the rest of one's life. The allegory demonstrated some of that.
I think Adams has articulated a simple process for diagnosing and treating a common and even familiar disease. At the same time, she's done it in a way that promotes reader's discovery of a strategy that fits their situations. That's what I hope to find in my classroom this year. Lastly, I was convicted by the challenge to examine my assumptions and behavior in dysfunctional situations. I'm to quick to excuse myself. Adams helped me to see that most of those cards have "Pride" written across the back.
I think Adams has articulated a simple process for diagnosing and treating a common and even familiar disease. At the same time, she's done it in a way that promotes reader's discovery of a strategy that fits their situations. That's what I hope to find in my classroom this year. Lastly, I was convicted by the challenge to examine my assumptions and behavior in dysfunctional situations. I'm to quick to excuse myself. Adams helped me to see that most of those cards have "Pride" written across the back.
May 17, 2015
Abordate interesantă despre 2 tipuri de persoane: cele care judecă și cele care învață. Cei care judecă au reacții automate, dau vina pe ceilalți și preferă relațiile din urma cărora ei au de câștigat. În schimb persoanele care învață fac alegeri conștiente, pun accentul pe soluții și preferă relațiile de tip win-win. De noi depinde ceea ce alegem să fim și tot noi suntem cei care putem face schimbarea necesară.
October 21, 2024
This book helped me in teaching my own kids, thank you for writing it, will be sure to print out the Choice map and use it in my teaching time with my children, hope they also instills the map into their life and also for me as a parent, so that both the teacher parent and the kids mindset it primed for learning.
March 27, 2019
A good professional development read. Learning about mindsets and using that knowledge to my advantage has been a goal for me this school year. This book gave practical advice that I can imagine using in my classroom.
October 19, 2025
Too many words
April 17, 2015
Teaching That Changes Lives is one of the genre of books that attempts to impart ideas, techniques, or skills through the medium of a purpose-built fictional story. In this case, the story was somewhat adequate, is the reader remembers its intent is not to enthrall with the story. The ideas Dr. Adams seeks to share are worth paying attention to, particularly the essence of the Choice map and how it works for teacher and student. This would be helpful not just to teachers (and students), but to parents, coaches, church leaders, and anyone else who, in a manner of speaking, is in a position to help other learn to deal with the world in a better way. Much of it can be skimmed to avoid the unnecessary story artifacts and get to the essential elements.
January 8, 2014
Excellent approach to creating a better classroom culture (and better professional and personal relationships in your life). The author focuses on how mindsets can impact student learning and classroom environment. Much of her approach revolves around what she calls a "Choice Map" where the subject can choose to either take a Learner or Judger path.
One criticism in is the format of the book. The author chooses to make her arguments through a first-person narrative of a fictional teacher. The dialogue and story is a bit corny and unrealistic at times. Despite this, I found the mindset tools themselves to be excellent food for thought in my own practice.
One criticism in is the format of the book. The author chooses to make her arguments through a first-person narrative of a fictional teacher. The dialogue and story is a bit corny and unrealistic at times. Despite this, I found the mindset tools themselves to be excellent food for thought in my own practice.
August 24, 2015
This book is unique among professional development that I've read in that it's a NOVEL. It's actually a work of fiction that presents a set of mindset-shifting/shaping tools for educators and students. Not going to lie: it's cheesy (think Lifetime movie cheesy) but if you can get past that, it's a neat way of presenting differing viewpoints on Dr. Adams approach. There is a practical component as well: about 20 pages of tools and exercises at the end of the book. A light, easy read. Worth a browse, at the very least!
October 13, 2016
Some very great ideas presented...but the presentation as a story was a little off-putting. I don't love non-fiction as a rule, and I thought I would love the storyline format, but it was more "silly" than I expected. That being said, the mindset ideas were great and I learned some good things from this book.
November 3, 2015
Loved this book. It is an effective tool to help remind all of us in education why we got into education in the first place and gave great tools to help us get back on track if we ever happen to veer off course.
April 9, 2014
Excellent book! Great ideas, interesting writing. Highly recommend for anyone that is involved in working as a coach, educator, tutor, facilitator, etc.
January 2, 2014
This is an awesome book
April 14, 2014
Fantastic book! I have passed it onto my principal and I have found it a very valuable book which I know I will return to frequently.
March 3, 2015
Motivating book to improve your teaching and relationships through the mindset tools and the choice map.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews