Book Reviews / Student Driven Learning
by MiddleWeb · Published 07/15/2021 · Last modified 07/16/2021
With authors Susan Brookhart and Alice Oakley as guides, teachers can uncover the clues in student work, offer effective feedback, improve lessons and plan next steps, says reviewer and ELA/ELL teacher Josefine Carrion-Dreyer.
This year the complex and demanding job of a school principal has become even more difficult and challenging. In her book Principal Reboot Jen Schwanke shares ways you can “relax, rediscover, and revive” your success as a principal, writes retired principal Frank Hagen.
Navigating the Principalship offers real insight into a principal’s work, spending equal time on the rewards and challenges of the job. Teacher leader and aspiring principal Michael DiClemente says new and soon-to-be school leaders will benefit from the book’s many profiles.
For those with positive stories, social-emotional learning helps reinforce the skills they need to succeed. For those with stories of trauma, SEL can help balance negative experiences with positive ones. Author-educator Marilee Sprenger shows how brain research can help.
Making the case to move from best practices to design thinking in schools, Alyssa Gallagher and Kami Thordarson provide a clear, concise guide to the steps of the design thinking process. Teacher leader Laura Von Staden recommends their book to all educators.
In Learning That Sticks, author Bryan Goodwin and colleagues break student learning down into a 6-phase mental model based on what researchers are learning about the brain and the ways it manages information. It’s worth the read, writes teacher leader Laura Von Staden.
Judy Willis MD and her daughter, both teachers, offer a well-researched book – supported by their experience as educators and neuroscience experts – that’s filled with strategies to help students make learning leaps. For Laura Von Staden, “This is 200+ pages of pure gold.”
Author Ariel Tichnor-Wagner provides school leaders with tools to reflect on curricular programming and to scale these learning experiences for students and staff. Middle School head Michael McLaughlin finds the book’s ideas timely and actionable.
After explaining how stress affects the brain, Thomas Armstrong shows how mindfulness promotes concentration, compassion and calm in students and teachers. Teacher Nicole Warchol explains the book is just what she needs as she seeks to bring more focus into her classroom.
As a future educator with the dream of having an inclusive classroom for ALL students, Esther Vences found Your Students, My Students, Our Students an essential tool for reimagining schools by implementing the authors’ five recommended disruptions to the status quo.
