Provides powerful accounts of the psychological, physical, and social changes brought on by menopause, and details the ways in which the aging process affects these women's lives as teachers, feminists, leaders, mentors and writers.

PrefaceIntroductionPart I Body Time1. Teaching Where I Was Taught: Coming Home - Mary Gordon2. Game Plans - Mimi Schwartz3. "Pregnant With [Myself], At Last":Images of Midlife/A Journal Entry - Jan ZlotnikSchmidt4. :Saturating LAnguage With Love": Variations on a Dream - Marlene A. Schiwy5. The Time of Our Lives: The Public Life of Teaching - Patricia E.PhillipsPart II Ripening Rootedness6. Reverie - Jane Tompkins7. Goodbye, Ms. Chips - JuliaAlvarez8. But Tell Me, Do You Like Teaching? - Patricia Hampl9. Me, Myself,Menopause, and I - DonnaLee Davis10. Reflections on Teaching (And Life in General) Once You've Become a Grandmother - Jean BethkeElshtain11. Mud Ponies - Diane Glancy12. Unsettled Weather - Gail B. GriffinPart III FeistyGirls13. Academic Witchery: Snakes and Snails and Scholarly Tales - Dean Falk14. Choice Points and Courage - Diane F. Halpern15. I Can't Hear...I Can't See...I Can't Remember Anything - Lynne Taetzsch16. Memories of a "First Woman" - Tikva Simone Frymer17. Rant for Old Teachers - Paula Gunn AllenPart IVTeaching in Time18. A Teaching Life - Christa L.Walck19. Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart - GaylePemberton20. Ecstacy: Teaching and Learning Without Limits - bell hooks21. Re-viewing our Professional Lives: Talking (And Listening) For a Living - MargaretMatlin22. On Statutes and Dogs, Poems and "Regs," and Life Inside the Classroom - Judy Scales-Trent23. Exploring Critical Feminist Pedagogy:Revelations and Confessions About Teaching at Midlife - Esther Ngan-lingChowPart V Community and Generativity24. Themes that Link Through Time - Sue V. Rosser25. Naming, Sharing, Speaking: Teaching in Midlife - Jean F.O'Barr26. "Thinking Back Through [My] Mother": Reclaiming Anger, Advocacy, and Pleasure in Teaching - Judith A. Dorney27. Charis=Light=Grace - Phyllis R.Freeman

"This collection of essays or stories, written by female teachers and professors, captures the mood and thoughts of women entering their fifties. It is so honest, thoughtful, funny and engaging that even just skimming the chapters will bring enjoyment." -- --Vancouver Public Library Online"Rarely has an anthology chronicled the joys and miseries of the professorate with such clarity and transparency as this book on female professors at midlife. Freeman and Schmidt have assembled a widely varied group of professors from many regions of the country in order to reach a large group of college professors. What makes this book so successful is its editorial bluntness combined with a wonderful flow of stories and characters. It reads like personal diaries of professionals who cannot (and will not) separate their professional and personal lives. And-- the other success of this book-- the writers seamlessly weave their stories so that readers have a complete understanding of the writers "dual" lives. Recommended for every college professor and aspiring future professors." -- L.B. Gallien, Spelman College, Choice"I loved this book...I had this book on my bedside table. I read it, reread it, underlined it, listed my favorite essays inside the front cover and so far have bought five copies for friends...[T]his book will make you a richer person and put you in touch with the complexities of academic life...Teaching captures our attention with details; there is no time to think, to reflect, to wonder, and to put things in a larger context. Let this book bring that gift to you this summer." -- Maryellen Weimer, The Teaching Professor"Wise Women will appeal to anyone, male or female, who has an interest in the educational experience from the instructors perspective and should be in any educator's professional development library.After reading this book the reader will take away a very clear message about education: that teaching and learning, for all of the parties involved, is an ongoing process in which understandings of strategies, techniques, students and "selves" is continuously evolving and that it is not a process confined to classrooms or "hallowed halls." The impact of educational experiences overflows into all aspects of the lives of those involved." -- Canada's National Social Studies Journal, Volume 36, No. 2, Winter 2002"bWise Women will appeal to anyone, male or female, who has an interest in the educational experience from the instructor's perspective and should be in any educator's professional development library.Human interactions; increasing understanding of self and others; adapting teaching techniques to changing students and changing times; learning to balance personal and professional needs; these are the things which this book deals with so effectively, and it is an essential read for anyone who is, has been, or desires to become that much maligned, but very essential professional - a teacher." -- Canadian Social Studies, Winter 2002, Volume 36, Number 2.