I often see conversations online at this time of year about PD books worth reading over the summer. Maybe your PLC is looking for a good read, or you want to take something awesome with you on a plane ride or road trip, along with a stack of Emily Henry novels and A Man Called Ove (which, by the way, I’m giving my own personal read-of-the-year award to, wow).
Or maybe not, which I totally get too. If you’d like to take the next couple months totally away and renew your energy and creativity and health and not even think about the classroom, that’s great too! That’s another way to help yourself be a good teacher next year. It’s all valid.
But just in case you are looking for a book, it just so happens that I have some recommendations. Because I read 17 books about teaching this year, watched myriad Youtube videos on creativity and design, and listened to a LOT of ed podcasts. So let me break down my favorites for you.
The Big Picture: PD and Multimodal Texts
This year I’ve been working on a second masters degree, to my great joy, and I’ve been trying to dive as deep as I possibly can and take advantage of the opportunity. So five of these books I read for classes, and the other twelve I read because they were related to the classes or my other work throughout the year.
Similarly, I found a lot of new multimedia to interest me, again related to things we were discussing in classes or projects I was doing. I rounded up my favorites below, including The Stanford Masters of Creativity Channel, the work of Dr. Punya Mishra on creative education design, the Curriculum Encounters Podcast from the Digital Futures Institute at Columbia Teachers College and the Nice White Parents 5-part podcast series from Serial and The New York Times.
Books Focused on Creativity
Of all the books I explored, three stood out as focused on creativity in the classroom – one through a deep dive into the science of creativity (The Creativity Choice), one through a wide-ranging exploration of creativity in action in classroom settings around the world (Creative Schools), and one about how to approach designing spaces to empower creativity (make space). Each is really different, but if I had to pick a favorite, it would be The Creativity Choice. This was one of my favorites from the year overall, for its incredibly clear, readable breakdown of the research on how creativity works. I’d compare Dr. Pringle to Dr. Brene Brown in the way she translates research to make it accessible and interesting to read and discuss.
The Book Focused on Reading
Yeah, only in rounding up all these titles did I realize I only had one book focused on reading. But it was a winner!
I love Jarred Amato’s perspective on the power of choice reading, and the way he blends it together with whole class work. He has galvanized an incredible community around choice reading with his Project Lit (the Instagram feed is a great place to connect with the project). This book provides strong supporting language for the power of choice, and tons of specific, actionable plans for incorporating it in your classroom. A big part of his unique angle is in the “Read and Wrap” format he uses, always including a short post-reading activity to get kids talking and processing their reading before moving in.
This book follows in the trajectory of Donalyn Miller, Pernille Ripp, Nancie Atwell, Penny Kittle ,and more reading pioneers who want to see kids reading books they want to read, voluminously and with delight.
Highly recommend the book AND the Instagram account.
Books that Challenge Norms
A lot of the books I read called out problems in the system, sometimes providing solutions and sometimes not. Of these books, my favorite and the one that affected me most was Felicia Rose Chavez’s book, The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop.
I pulled together a visual walkthrough of some of my key takeaways for you below.
The Writing Books
Last but not least come the writing books. John Warner’s Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five Paragraph Essay and other Necessities turned out to be my favorite favorite, and it was the first one I read. But there were really a lot of gems. I tried to give you the flavor of each one below, so you can pick something that fits your needs right now.
Happy Picking!
OK, my friend, I hope you found some helpful directions here. Happy (almost) summer!
