Learn why today’s best teachers are leaving—from the teachers themselves. Low pay, increased responsibilities, and high-stakes standardized testing—these are just some of the reasons why more talented teachers are leaving the profession than ever before. Drawing on in-depth interviews with teachers all over the country, Katy Farber presents an in-the-trenches view of the classroom exodus and uncovers ways that schools can turn the tide. Farber's findings, which have been featured on Education Talk Radio, Vermont Public Radio, and in the Huffington Post, paint a sometimes shocking picture of life in today's schools, taking a frank look at • Challenges to teacher endurance, including tight budgets, difficult parents, standardized testing, unsafe schools, inadequate pay, and lack of respect • Strategies veteran teachers use to make sure the joys of teaching outweigh the frustrations • Success stories from individual schools and districts that have found solutions to these challenges • Recommendations for creating a school environment that fosters teacher retention Featuring clear analysis and concrete suggestions for administrators and policy makers, Why Great Teachers Quit takes you to the front lines of the fight to keep great teachers where they belong: in the classroom.

Jaeyoung Jeon examines and assesses recently suggested models for the formation of the Pentateuch through a redactional-critical analysis of the Call of Moses (Exod. 3-4) and the Exodus story (Exod. 5-13). He observes that Exod. 3-4 was formed through a series of stages of Deuteronomistic composition and redaction, to which some post-Priestly additions were made. Comparative analysis suggests that the elements of Deuteronomistic formation precede P and that the direction of influence is from the non-P narrative (Exod. 3-4) to the P call narrative (Exod. 6). Jeon also shows that although some of the literary layers in Exod. 3-4 extend through the Exodus story (Exod. 5-13), the present form of the latter has been shaped by a post-Deuteronomistic but pre-Priestly composition based on an earlier proto-Exodus story. He therefore concludes that the Pentateuch or Hexateuch might be the product of a more complicated process of development than the current models describe.

The biblical narrative of the Exodus and of Moses, the reluctant prophet who was chosen to lead it, deals with the critical formative event in the history of ancient Israel. However, the narrative also contains a number of enigmatic passages as well as some seemingly unrelated episodes. In this book, the author undertakes to unravel the enigmas and show how the various disparate elements contribute to the narrative. The focus in The Exodus and the Reluctant Prophet is on what the biblical text is telling us, explicitly as well as implicitly, about the world in which the ancient Israelites became transformed from a mass of ethnically related people into a nation bound by a divine covenant, and the extraordinary role that the Exodus played in the process. In the effort to comprehend and explain the highly complex biblical text, the author has consulted a wide range of commentaries and studies written over a period of some two millennia that have sought to understand the biblical texts from a wide variety of perspectives, many of which are presented for the reader's consideration, including many sources inaccessible to those without a working knowledge of Hebrew.

The book of Exodus is a key to understanding the Bible. Without it, the Bible would lack three early scenes: deliverance, covenant and worship. Exodus provides the events and narrative, the themes and imagery foundational for understanding the story of Israel and of Jesus. You can read Exodus on your own, and its main themes will be clear enough. But an expert can sharpen your understanding and appreciation of its drama. Tremper Longman provides a box-seat guide to Exodus, discussing its historical backdrop, sketching out its literary context, and developing its principal themes, from Israel's deliverance from servitude to Pharaoh to its dedication to service to God. And, for Christians, he helps us view the book from the perspective of its fulfillment in Christ.