12 Education Books Worth A Look
Education is awash with CPD titles aimed at helping teachers improve their lot. But what’s worth making a space for on your shelves?
Many resources we see on Twitter tend to be those pushed by edu-celebs and even though these are new titles they already have that same old, same old feel to them.
But what about the thousands of others out there?
There’s plenty worth taking a look at and here’s a selection:
1. Successful Difficult Conversations In School by Sonia Gill
We all know that difficult conversations are a barrier to school improvement but in this book, @SoniaG_HeadsUp, educational leadership coach, author and the Founder and Director of Heads Up Ltd, tells us that conflict is crucial for great schools.
If you feel like you are struggling to get your message across, or that your words are not having the desired effect then this book will help you have more effective conversations when talking about the ‘tricky stuff’ in school.
2. Personalized Professional Learning by Allison Rodman
It’s time to say goodbye to “sit-and-get, one-size-fits-all” PD sessions and embrace professional learning that meets the needs of all teachers. Allison Rodman’s Personalized Professional Learning provides us with a roadmap for transforming existing professional development programmes into more effective and innovative learning experiences. This book is a step-by-step guide for diagnosing, planning, executing, evaluating, and refining teachers’ professional learning.
3. Professional Learning Redefined by Isabel Sawyer and Marisa Ramirez Stukey
Full of protocols, vignettes, and case studies, this book dissects elements of professional learning, like coherence, connections, and content, and examines each through an evidence-based lens. This book analyses research from the past 25 years on what makes professional learning work. In addition to focusing on the often-neglected role of the facilitator itself, other features include a multi-year implementation framework to improve instructional practice and techniques and strategies to embed content-based learning for all educators.
4. I wish my teacher knew by Kyle Schwartz
Teacher @kylemschwartz once asked her pupils to complete the sentence: “I wish my teacher knew _____.”
Some gave funny responses but others revealed so much more by writing heartbreaking, profoundly moving and enlightening responses. If you are looking to create an open, safe and supportive place in the classroom, then I wish my teacher knew is a simple but powerful strategy for creating better relationships.
5. Building Powerful Learning Environments by Arina Bokas
At the heart of this book by @arinabokas are the concepts of a learning environment and a culture of partnerships. A learning environment has traditionally been viewed as something that educators created and sustained inside their schools. Building Powerful Learning Environments expands this understanding to embrace families, communities, other learning institutions, and businesses not as helpers, but as co-builders of a powerful learning environment.
6. Embarrassment by Thomas Newkirk
Tom Newkirk argues that failure and embarrassment are the true enemies of learning and keep too many students and teachers silent, hesitant, and afraid.
In this groundbreaking exploration, Newkirk offers practices and strategies that help kids and teachers alike develop a more resilient approach to embarrassment. “I contend that if we can take on a topic like embarrassment and shame, we can come to a richer, more honest, more enabling sense of who we are and what we can do,” he explains. “So let’s do battle. Let’s name and identify the enemy that can haunt our days, disturb our sleep, put barriers up to learning, and drain joy from our lives-and maybe we can also learn how to rearrange some things in our own head so that we can be more generous toward ourselves.”
7. What School Could Be by Ted Dintersmith
An inspiring account of teachers in ordinary circumstances doing extraordinary things, showing us how to transform education What School Could Be offers an inspiring vision of what our teachers and students can accomplish if trusted with the challenge of developing the skills and ways of thinking needed to thrive in a world of dizzying technological change.
Innovation expert @dintersmith took an unprecedented trip across America, visiting all fifty states in a single school year. He originally set out to raise awareness about the urgent need to reimagine education to prepare students for a world marked by innovation–but America’s teachers one-upped him. All across the country, he met teachers in ordinary settings doing extraordinary things, creating innovative classrooms where children learn deeply and joyously as they gain purpose, agency, essential skillsets and mindsets, and real knowledge
8. Troublemakers by Carla Shalaby
Despite decades of research on classroom management and school discipline, so-called bad behaviour nevertheless persists in every kind of classroom in every kind of school. Even as the harsh disciplining of adolescent behaviour has been called out as part of the school-to-prison pipeline, the diverse ‘problem children’ in Troublemakers by @CarlaShalaby reveal how a child’s path to excessive punishment and exclusion in fact begins at a much younger age.
9. Under Pressure by Lisa Damour
@LDamour examines the science of stress and anxiety, then turns to the many facets of girls’ lives where stress hits them hard: the parental expectations they face at home, pressures at school, social anxiety among their peers, and on social media. Exploring the multiple layers of girls’ lives, Damour shows us the critical steps we can take to shield them from the toxic stress to which both our culture and also we, as their caregivers, subject them.
10. Fact vs Fiction by Jennifer Lagarde and Darren Hudgins
The advent of the 24-hour news cycle, citizen journalism and an increased reliance on social media as a trusted news source have had a profound effect not only on how we get our news, but also on how we evaluate sources of information, share that information and interact with others in online communities. When these issues are coupled with the “fake news” industry that intentionally spreads false stories designed to go viral, educators are left facing a new and challenging landscape. This book will help them address these new realities. Fact vs. Fiction provides educators with tools and resources to help students discern fact from fiction in the information they access not only at school, but on the devices they carry in their pockets and backpacks.
11. Lessons Learned from the Special Education Classroom by Peg Grafwallner
Lessons Learned from the Special Education Classroom offers practical techniques and research-based suggestions where all students, regardless of their abilities, are actively engaged in a vigorous, scaffolded, differentiated classroom taught by a compassionate, equitable teacher. With 25 years of classroom expertise, the author shares her down-to-earth suggestions for building classroom community and embracing all learners while offering concrete suggestions for creating respectful parent and student partnerships. At the end of each chapter, Peg outlines how to use the chapter in a professional book club, as a PLC resource, and as a Professional Development supplement.
12. Shake Up Learning by Kasey Bell
Shake Up Learning is a powerful guide and planning tool to help teachers make the most of technology. Educator and blogger Kasey Bell guides you through the process of using technology and proven techniques to make learning dynamic. You’ll discover . . . Practical strategies to help move from static teaching to dynamic learning, straightforward and easy-to-use templates for crafting engaging learning opportunities, tips and tricks for fearless implementation of powerful lesson plans, advice for moving from one-and-done activities to learning that evolves and inspires throughout the school year and beyond!