Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know


E.D. Hirsch Jr. - 1987
    are being deprived of the basic knowledge that would enable them to function in contemporary society. Includes 5,000 essential facts to know.

Teaching Children to Care: Classroom Management for Ethical and Academic Growth, K-8


Ruth Sidney Charney - 1992
    She wants children to learn how to care for themselves, their fellow students, their environment, and their work. Her book is loaded with practical wisdom. Using Charney's positive approach to classroom management will make the whole school day go better."- Nel Noddings, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University, and author of CaringThis definitive work about classroom management will show teachers how to turn their vision of respectful, friendly, academically rigorous classrooms into reality.The new edition includes:More information on teaching middle-school studentsAdditional strategies for helping children with challenging behaviorUpdated stories and examples from real classrooms."Teaching Children to Care offers educators a practical guide to one of the most effective social and emotional learning programs I know of. The Responsive Classroom approach creates an ideal environment for learning—a pioneering program every teacher should know about."- Daniel Goleman, Author of Emotional Intelligence"I spent one whole summer reading Teaching Children to Care. It was like a rebirth for me. This book helped direct my professional development. After reading it, I had a path to follow. I now look forward to rereading this book each August to refresh and reinforce my ability to effectively manage a social curriculum in my classroom."- Gail Zimmerman, second-grade teacher, Jackson Mann Elementary School, Boston, MA

Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You'd Had: Ideas and Strategies from Vibrant Classrooms


Tracy Zager - 2017
    Pose the same question to students and many will use words like "boring", "useless", and even "humiliating". In  Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You'd Had , author Tracy Zager helps teachers close this gap by making math class more like mathematics. Tracy has spent years working with highly skilled math teachers in a diverse range of settings and grades. You'll find this book jam-packed with new ideas from these vibrant classrooms.  How to Teach Student-Centered Mathematics: Zager outlines a problem-solving approach to mathematics for elementary and middle school educators looking for new ways to inspire student learningBig Ideas, Practical Application: This math book contains dozens of practical and accessible teaching techniques that focus on fundamental math concepts, including strategies that simulate connection of big ideas; rich tasks that encourage students to wonder, generalize, hypothesize, and persevere; and routines to teach students how to collaborateKey Topics for Elementary and Middle School Teachers:  Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You'd Had  offers fresh perspectives on common challenges, from formative assessment to classroom management for elementary and middle school teachersAll teachers can move towards increasingly authentic and delightful mathematics teaching and learning. This important book helps develop instructional techniques that will make the math classes we teach so much better than the math classes we took.

Rethinking School: How to Take Charge of Your Child's Education


Susan Wise Bauer - 2018
    It isn’t a good fit for all—or even most—students. It prioritizes a single way of understanding the world over all others, pushes children into a rigid set of grades with little regard for individual maturity, and slaps “disability” labels over differences in learning style.Caught in this system, far too many young learners end up discouraged, disconnected, and unhappy. And when they struggle, school pressures parents, with overwhelming force, into “fixing” their children rather than questioning the system.With boldness, experience, and humor, Susan Wise Bauer turns conventional wisdom on its head: When a serious problem arises at school, the fault is more likely to lie with the school, or the educational system itself, than with the child.In five illuminating sections, Bauer teaches parents how to flex the K–12 system, rather than the child. She closely analyzes the traditional school structure, gives trenchant criticisms of its weaknesses, and offers a wealth of advice for parents of children whose difficulties may stem from struggling with learning differences, maturity differences, toxic classroom environments, and even from giftedness (not as much of a “gift” as you might think!).As the author of the classic book on home-schooling, The Well-Trained Mind, Bauer knows how children learn and how schools work. Her advice here is comprehensive and anecdotal, including material drawn from experience with her own four children and more than twenty years of educational consulting and university teaching.Rethinking School is a guide to one aspect of sane, humane parenting: negotiating the twelve-grade school system in a way that nurtures and protects your child’s mind, emotions, and spirit.

Experience and Education


John Dewey - 1938
    Written more than two decades after Democracy and Education (Dewey's most comprehensive statement of his position in educational philosophy), this book demonstrates how Dewey reformulated his ideas as a result of his intervening experience with the progressive schools and in the light of the criticisms his theories had received.Analyzing both "traditional" and "progressive" education, Dr. Dewey here insists that neither the old nor the new education is adequate and that each is miseducative because neither of them applies the principles of a carefully developed philosophy of experience. Many pages of this volume illustrate Dr. Dewey's ideas for a philosophy of experience and its relation to education. He particularly urges that all teachers and educators looking for a new movement in education should think in terms of the deeper and larger issues of education rather than in terms of some divisive "ism" about education, even such an "ism" as "progressivism." His philosophy, here expressed in its most essential, most readable form, predicates an American educational system that respects all sources of experience, one that offers a true learning situation that is both historical and social, both orderly and dynamic.

Growing Readers: Units of Study in the Primary Classroom


Kathy Collins - 2004
    Many teachers find the independent reading workshop to be the component of reading instruction that meets this challenge because it makes it possible to teach the reading skills and strategies children need and guides them toward independence, intention, and joy as readers.In Growing Readers, Kathy Collins helps teachers plan for independent reading workshops in their own classrooms. She describes the structure of the independent reading workshop and other components of a balanced literacy program that work together to ensure young students grow into strong, well-rounded readers. Kathy outlines a sequence of possible units of study for a yearlong curriculum. Chapters are devoted to the individual units of study and include a sample curriculum as well as examples of mini-lessons and reading conferences. There are also four “Getting Ready” sections that suggest some behind-the-scenes work teachers can do to prepare for the units. Topics explored in these units include:print and comprehension strategies;reading in genres such as poetry and nonfiction;connecting in-school reading and out-of-school reading;developing the strategies and habits of lifelong readers.A series of planning sheets and management tips are presented throughout to help ensure smooth implementation.We want our students to learn to read, and we want them to love to read. To do this we need to lay a foundation on which children build rich and purposeful reading lives that extend beyond the school day. The ideas found in Growing Readers create the kind of primary classrooms where that happens.

We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom


Bettina L. Love - 2019
    She argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color. Instead of trying to repair a flawed system, educational reformers offer survival tactics in the forms of test-taking skills, acronyms, grit labs, and character education, which Love calls the educational survival complex.To dismantle the educational survival complex and to achieve educational freedom--not merely reform--teachers, parents, and community leaders must approach education with the imagination, determination, boldness, and urgency of an abolitionist. Following in the tradition of activists like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer, We Want to Do More Than Survive introduces an alternative to traditional modes of educational reform and expands our ideas of civic engagement and intersectional justice.

A Novel Approach: Whole-Class Novels, Student-Centered Teaching, and Choice


Kate Roberts - 2018
    But she's also seen too many kids struggle too much to read them--and consequently, check out of reading altogether. Kate's had better success getting kids to actually read - and enjoy it-when they choose their own books within a workshop model. And yet, she says, I missed my whole-class novels.In A Novel Approach, Kate takes a deep dive into the troubles and triumphs of both whole-class novels and independent reading and arrives at a persuasive conclusion: we can find a student-centered, balanced approach to teaching reading. Kate offers a practical framework for creating units that join both teaching methods together and helps you: - Identify the skills your students need to learn - Choose whole-class texts that will be most relevant to your kids - Map out the timing of a unit and the strategies you'll teach - Meet individual needs while teaching whole novels - Guide students to choice books and book clubs that build on the skills being taught. Above all, Kate's plan emphasizes teaching reading skills and strategies over the books themselves. By making sure that our classes are structured in a way that really sees students and strives to meet their needs, she argues, we can keep reaching for the dream of a class where no student is unmoved, no reader unchanged by the end of the year. Video clips of Kate working with students in diverse classrooms bring the content to life throughout the book.

Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions


Dan Rothstein - 2011
    They also argue that it should be taught in the simplest way possible. Drawing on twenty years of experience, the authors present the Question Formulation Technique, a concise and powerful protocol that enables learners to produce their own questions, improve their questions, and strategize how to use them.Make Just One Change features the voices and experiences of teachers in classrooms across the country to illustrate the use of the Question Formulation Technique across grade levels and subject areas and with different kinds of learners.

Number Talks, Grades K-5: Helping Children Build Mental Math and Computation Strategies


Sherry Parrish - 2010
    The author explains what a classroom number talk is; how to follow students’ thinking and pose the right questions to build understanding; how to prepare for and design purposeful number talks; and how to develop grade-level specific thinking strategies for the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Number Talks includes connections to NCTM’s Principles and Standards for School Mathematics as well as reference tables to help you quickly and easily locate strategies, number talks, and video clips. Includes a Facilitator’s Guide and DVD.

The Innovator's Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity


George Couros - 2015
    How you, as an educator, respond to students’ natural curiosity can help further their own exploration and shape the way they learn today and in the future.The traditional system of education requires students to hold their questions and compliantly stick to the scheduled curriculum. But our job as educators is to provide new and better opportunities for our students. It’s time to recognize that compliance doesn’t foster innovation, encourage critical thinking, or inspire creativity—and those are the skills our students need to succeed.In THE INNOVATOR'S MINDSET, George Couros encourages teachers and administrators to empower their learners to wonder, to explore—and to become forward-thinking leaders. If we want innovative students, we need innovative educators. In other words, innovation begins with you. Ultimately, innovation is not about a skill set but about mindset.THE INNOVATOR'S MINDSET is for you if: •You are a superintendent, district administrator, or principal who wants to empower your staff to create a culture of innovation.•You are a school leader—at any level—and want help students and educators become their personal best.•You are a teacher who wants to create relevant learning experiences and help students develop the skills they need to be successful.THE INNOVATOR'S MINDSET includes practical suggestions for unleashing your students’ and teachers’ talent. You’ll also read encouraging accounts of leaders and learners who are innovating “inside the box.” You'll be inspired to:•Connect with other innovative educators•Support teachers and leaders as learners •Tap into the strengths of your learning community•Create ongoing opportunities for innovation•Seek more effective methods for measuring progress •And, most importantly, embrace change and use it to do something amazing

A Teacher's Guide to Writing Conferences: The Classroom Essentials Series


Carl Anderson - 2018
    With clear and accessible language, Carl guides you through the three main parts of a writing conference, and shows you the teaching moves and intentional language that can be used in each one. He helps you understand: - how to get started with conferring, or improve your existing conferences - how to use conferences to meet the diverse needs of your student writers - how to fit conferences into your busy writing workshop schedule. More than 25 videos bring the content to life, while Teacher Tips, Q&A's, and Recommended Reading lists provide everything you need to help you become a better writing teacher.

The Brave Learner: Finding Everyday Magic in Homeschool, Learning, and Life


Julie Bogart - 2019
    When exhausted parents are living the day-to-day grind, it can seem impossible to muster enough energy to make learning fun or interesting. How do parents nurture a love of learning amid childhood chaos, parental self-doubt, the flu, and state academic standards?In this book, Julie Bogart distills decades of experience--homeschooling her five now grown children, developing curricula, and training homeschooling families around the world--to show parents how to make education an exciting, even enchanting, experience for their kids, whether they're in elementary or high school.Enchantment is about ease, not striving. Bogart shows parents how to make room for surprise, mystery, risk, and adventure in their family's routine, so they can create an environment that naturally moves learning forward. If a child wants to pick up a new hobby or explore a subject area that the parent knows little about, it's easy to simply say "no" to end the discussion and the parental discomfort, while dousing their child's curious spark. Bogart gently invites parents to model brave learning for their kids so they, too, can approach life with curiosity, joy, and the courage to take learning risks.

The 9 Rights of Every Writer: A Guide for Teachers


Vicki Spandel - 2005
    Efforts to define and then assess the key qualities of writing have helped pinpoint what outcomes matter most and how to measure them, yet they threaten to become an end in themselves. Meanwhile, high-quality instruction seeks to create a safe environment that applauds risk taking by supporting students through strategies that are not readily measured. In this landmark book, Vicki Spandel takes on the immeasurable, opening an exciting discussion about the conditions writers need to achieve their full potential and offering practical applications for any writing classroom.In The 9 Rights of Every Writer Spandel invites nine published authors into a discussion of what makes writing work. Well-known novelists, researchers, science writers, and teacher-writers join this dynamic conversation, and together they draw vital conclusions about teaching strategies that both lead to growth in craft and allow good teaching to flourish. Join Spandel and friends in discovering the personal and instructional importance of:reflecting finding personally important topics going off topic personalizing the writing process writing badly to unearth and clarify meaning observing other writers at work assessing constructivelyand well experiencing structural freedom unearthing the power of each writer's voice. As you will discover, The 9 Rights of Every Writer weaves the philosophical into the practical, offering powerful, ready-to-use lessons that jumpstart the progress of the writers in your classroom and help them reach writing standards. Harness your passion for writing instruction, let go of rigid practices, and balance the needs of maturing writers with today's classroom realities. Read The 9 Rights of Every Writer, learn to trust your teaching instincts, and concentrate on what matters most: creating an instructional setting where writers can achieve success that soars beyond what can be measured.

The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession


Dana Goldstein - 2014
    In The Teacher Wars, a rich, lively, and unprecedented history of public school teaching, Dana Goldstein reveals that teachers have been similarly embattled for nearly two centuries. From the genteel founding of the common schools movement in the nineteenth century to the violent inner-city teacher strikes of the 1960s and '70s, from the dispatching of Northeastern women to frontier schoolhouses to the founding of Teach for America on the Princeton University campus in 1989, Goldstein shows that the same issues have continued to bedevil us: Who should teach? What should be taught? Who should be held accountable for how our children learn?    She uncovers the surprising roots of hot button issues, from teacher tenure to charter schools, and finds that recent popular ideas to improve schools—instituting merit pay, evaluating teachers by student test scores, ranking and firing veteran teachers, and recruiting “elite” graduates to teach—are all approaches that have been tried in the past without producing widespread change. And she also discovers an emerging effort that stands a real chance of transforming our schools for the better: drawing on the best practices of the three million public school teachers we already have in order to improve learning throughout our nation’s classrooms.   The Teacher Wars upends the conversation about American education by bringing the lessons of history to bear on the dilemmas we confront today. By asking “How did we get here?” Dana Goldstein brilliantly illuminates the path forward.