As the school year wraps up and summer nears, I relish the opportunity to spend some quieter time investing in my own professional growth and learning and seek inspiration for the coming year. I often get asked by others doing the same about books or resources have helped inform Unconditional Education or continue to inspire our team. Here are a five of my current favorites that focus on relationship, connection and supporting the well-being of educators. These are important topics essential to building strong and healthy communities of practice. Enjoy!
Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators by Elana Aguilar
Onward tackles the problem of educator stress and provides a practical framework for taking the burnout out of teaching. Stress is part of the job, but when 70 percent of teachers quit within their first five years because the stress is making them physically and mentally ill, things have gone too far. Unsurprisingly, these effects are highest in difficult-to-fill positions such as math, science, and foreign languages, and in urban areas and secondary classrooms—places where we need our teachers to be especially motivated and engaged. By cultivating resilience in schools, we help ensure that we are working in, teaching in, and leading organizations where every child thrives, and where the potential of every child is recognized and nurtured. Onward provides a step-by-step plan for reigniting that spark.
Onward tackles the problem of educator stress and provides a practical framework for taking the burnout out of teaching. Stress is part of the job, but when 70 percent of teachers quit within their first five years because the stress is making them physically and mentally ill, things have gone too far. Unsurprisingly, these effects are highest in difficult-to-fill positions such as math, science, and foreign languages, and in urban areas and secondary classrooms—places where we need our teachers to be especially motivated and engaged. By cultivating resilience in schools, we help ensure that we are working in, teaching in, and leading organizations where every child thrives, and where the potential of every child is recognized and nurtured. Onward provides a step-by-step plan for reigniting that spark.
Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond
To close the achievement gap, diverse classrooms need a proven framework for optimizing student engagement. Hammond draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to offer an innovative approach for designing and implementing brain-compatible culturally responsive instruction, including:
To close the achievement gap, diverse classrooms need a proven framework for optimizing student engagement. Hammond draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to offer an innovative approach for designing and implementing brain-compatible culturally responsive instruction, including:
- Information on how one’s culture programs the brain to process data and affects learning relationships
- Ten "key moves" to build students’ learner operating systems and prepare them to become independent learners
- Prompts for action and valuable self-reflection
Teaching in Context: The Social Side of Education Reform Edited by Esther Quintero
Teaching in Context provides new evidence from a range of leading scholars showing that teachers become more effective when they work in organizations that support them in comprehensive and coordinated ways. The studies featured in the book suggest an alternative approach to enhancing teacher quality: creating conditions and school structures that facilitate the transmission and sharing of knowledge among teachers, allowing teachers to work together effectively, and capitalizing on what we know about how educators learn and improve. The studies also show how social dynamics influence the speed, depth, and success with which any new idea is implemented, and how policies enacted without adequate consideration of their impact on the social fabric of schools can produce unintended negative consequences. Policies aimed at improving teaching should focus on strengthening the organization as a whole so that all teachers are likely to improve.
Teaching in Context provides new evidence from a range of leading scholars showing that teachers become more effective when they work in organizations that support them in comprehensive and coordinated ways. The studies featured in the book suggest an alternative approach to enhancing teacher quality: creating conditions and school structures that facilitate the transmission and sharing of knowledge among teachers, allowing teachers to work together effectively, and capitalizing on what we know about how educators learn and improve. The studies also show how social dynamics influence the speed, depth, and success with which any new idea is implemented, and how policies enacted without adequate consideration of their impact on the social fabric of schools can produce unintended negative consequences. Policies aimed at improving teaching should focus on strengthening the organization as a whole so that all teachers are likely to improve.
In Schools We Trust: Creating Communities of Learning in an Era of Testing and Standardization by Deborah Meier
We are in an era of radical distrust of public education. Increasingly, we turn to standardized tests and standardized curricula-now adopted by all fifty states-as our national surrogates for trust. In this multilayered exploration of trust and schools, Meier critiques the ideology of testing and puts forward a different vision, forged in the success stories of small public schools she and her colleagues have created in Boston and New York. These nationally acclaimed schools are built, famously, around trusting teachers-and students and parents-to use their own judgment. Meier traces the enormous educational value of trust; the crucial and complicated trust between parents and teachers; how teachers need to become better judges of each others' work; how race and class complicate trust at all levels; and how we can begin to 'scale up' from the kinds of successes she has created.
We are in an era of radical distrust of public education. Increasingly, we turn to standardized tests and standardized curricula-now adopted by all fifty states-as our national surrogates for trust. In this multilayered exploration of trust and schools, Meier critiques the ideology of testing and puts forward a different vision, forged in the success stories of small public schools she and her colleagues have created in Boston and New York. These nationally acclaimed schools are built, famously, around trusting teachers-and students and parents-to use their own judgment. Meier traces the enormous educational value of trust; the crucial and complicated trust between parents and teachers; how teachers need to become better judges of each others' work; how race and class complicate trust at all levels; and how we can begin to 'scale up' from the kinds of successes she has created.
Teaching with Vitality: Pathways to Health and Wellness for Teachers & Schools by Peggy Bennett
Perhaps more than any other experience, conflict in schools and workplaces can zap our energy and steal our vigor as teachers. If we knew ways to minimize conflict and maximize vitality, would we use them? Teaching with Vitality offers specific behaviors and attitudes to reframe conflict by diluting and dissolving it.
Organized into brief topics for busy readers, Teaching with Vitality combines common experiences and practical options for lessening the turmoil that is inevitable in schools. As beneficent stewards of our children, educators are priceless contributors to the quality of our lives. The main goal of Teaching with Vitality is to elevate teachers in their day-to-day lives by deconstructing the major and minor conflicts that sap their peace and dampen their power. School wellness is contagious. And, this book aims to offer daily pathways to health, wellness, and vigor.
Teaching with Vitality: Pathways to Health and Wellness for Teachers & Schools by Peggy Bennett
Perhaps more than any other experience, conflict in schools and workplaces can zap our energy and steal our vigor as teachers. If we knew ways to minimize conflict and maximize vitality, would we use them? Teaching with Vitality offers specific behaviors and attitudes to reframe conflict by diluting and dissolving it.
Organized into brief topics for busy readers, Teaching with Vitality combines common experiences and practical options for lessening the turmoil that is inevitable in schools. As beneficent stewards of our children, educators are priceless contributors to the quality of our lives. The main goal of Teaching with Vitality is to elevate teachers in their day-to-day lives by deconstructing the major and minor conflicts that sap their peace and dampen their power. School wellness is contagious. And, this book aims to offer daily pathways to health, wellness, and vigor.
What are some of your favorites and what’s next on your work-related reading list? Share in the comments below!
Blog Post Written By: Robin Detterman, Executive Director of School Partnerships
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