Today’s post continues a series in which educators recommend books and online resources that have impacted their work.
Equity in Schools
Keisha Rembert is a lifelong learner, equity advocate, and award-winning educator:
Street Data Cult of Pedagogy Series (2023)
Safir and Dugan’s book Street Data: A Next Generation Model of Equity, Pedagogy and School Transformation turns our approach to data on its head by emphasizing it as a human endeavor. The video series by Cult of Pedagogy brings the concept to life, showcasing real educators implementing the Street Data model in schools. It is like taking a master class on how to collect, use, and take action based on data equitability.
Beyond February: Teaching Black History Any Day, Every Day, and All Year Long, K–3 by Dawnavyn James (2023)
James’ book is a game-changer for elementary educators committed to integrating Black history throughout the curriculum. Its visual appeal, extensive book recommendations, and innovative lesson ideas make it an indispensable resource. I use the book with future educators every chance I get. Dawnavyn shows us what it means to be intentional in our text selections, to respect history and our student’s ability to examine and engage with books critically. Get it and thank me later.
‘Learning Intentions and Success Criteria’
After teaching English for over 20 years, Donna L. Shrum is now teaching ancient history to freshmen in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia:
I’m excited when I encounter methods or philosophies that make a sudden deep positive impact on my teaching. This happened when John Almarode of James Madison University shared his work on clarity in my teacher mentor-training program. One of his recent workshops is available on YouTube
We all think we are clearly communicating. No teacher purposely tries to confuse students, yet they often don’t know why they’re being asked to do something, what it’s all about, or what the end result will be. Almarode reminds us that we teachers have also been in that situation, and we didn’t like it. “Clarity defines the learning for my students and me,” Almarode states. He also promises it will lower student anxiety and misbehavior, two areas of concern that have grown since the COVID years.
After teaching English for over 20 years, I switched to teaching freshman ancient history to the Renaissance. My goal was now successfully embedding an assigned set of facts into my students’ brains for recall on the semester-end exam to earn a verified graduation credit. Not all of the strategies I used when teaching reading and writing transferred into social studies instruction. I struggled at the beginning to figure out why.
The three questions that Almarode says we ask ourselves when planning a lesson helps us choose how we will teach it and also the strategies we won’t use: What do I want my students to learn? Why do I want them to learn it? How will I know when they have learned it? If we are successful, students should be able to answer the questions as well.
“The learning moves from chance to design because clarity improves my decisions,” Almarode says. He talked about all the cool activities we find that don’t lead to learning, such as during a sudden snowstorm taking students outside and telling them to build forts and snowballs, then fighting it out as the Axis and Allies. If the activity can’t be restructured to meet the learning goal, it’s only recess. In fact, Almarode debunks the belief that tying student interests into the curriculum increases learning. He quotes Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, who found learning decreases as the student focuses on the interest and not the material.
An example of What do I want my students to learn? is that I will teach my students to evaluate the causes and consequences of the Persian and the Peloponnesian wars. More difficult is: Why do I want them to learn it? “Because the state says so” is never the answer. Why do students need to know the causes of war? Did the wars in which America has been involved have similar causes to these Greek wars? One of the consequences of Greece’s defeat of Persia was it allowed the Golden Age of democracy and culture to occur, influencing the rest of the world. The Peloponnesian War weakened Greece so Phillip, father of Alexander the Great, could conquer it. Pretty big consequences.
Then I need to choose the best strategy to teach my students to evaluate, the verb supplied from the framework. When I dig through my toolbox for teaching evaluation, I automatically eliminate strategies for teaching other skills. I now have a grasp of what and how I’m teaching, but I finally have to decide How will I know when they have learned it? Only from summative assessment? Will they first complete a worksheet, have a discussion, write something?
We’ve all probably had administrators who required a fresh SWBAT posted every day. Almarode instead shows how to post learning intentions and success criteria in student-friendly language. My learning intention might be “to explain the connection between Greece’s decline during the Peloponnesian Wars and Phillip II of Macedon’s conquest of Greece.” The success criteria could be “I can complete a cause and effect graphic organizer and an exit ticket.”
My best success criteria is that students consistently say, “This class is easy!” They understand what to do and why and then they experience success—as was the intention—consistently.
‘Discovering What Is Already Within Ourselves’
Mary Beth Nicklaus is a teacher, reading specialist, writer, and consultant. She lives in Minnesota:
The most difficult part for me as a beginning teacher was “finding myself.” Going through phases where I would try to emulate those who I thought were master teachers, I soon learned that trying to be someone else was not sustainable and was a recipe for disaster.
If Regie Routman’s latest book, The Heart Centered Teacher: Restoring Hope, Joy, and Possibility in Uncertain Times had been introduced to me during my teacher-preparation semesters, it would have spared me considerable stress and heartache during those earlier years. This book is a gift to all teachers in that the author shares wisdom she gleaned from rich life experiences and expertise throughout an extraordinary career as teacher and teacher educator.
Part of The Heart-Centered Teacher’s strength stems from Routman’s emphasis on life stories. She encourages the reader to focus on what’s important in teaching and in our lives. We are encouraged to fuel our teaching from a reservoir of joy, love, and compassion.
We learn that the key to successful teaching and right relationships with our students doesn’t need to be pulled from expensive programs but lies in discovering what is already within ourselves and our finely honed teacher toolbox. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “keeping it real.” Routman has kept it real by including poignant and compelling stories from both her personal and teacher life.
One chapter touches on her experience during the pandemic with Ted, an adult beginning reader. She speaks of the challenge of having to conduct sessions with Ted over the phone. Routman prepared diligently for the phone sessions. Her goals within her lesson plans were to consider Ted’s interests to keep him engaged and motivated and to “keep expectations high.” She writes:
That meant I often had to change our lesson plan mid-session. Using everything I knew as a teacher and caring person, I adapted to where Ted was and what I believed he most needed in the moment. Uppermost of mind was ensuring our time together would increase his stamina, will and desire to put forth efforts and keep on reading.
Through Routman’s example, we learn the importance of trusting ourselves to know how to teach our students and to be able to adapt what students need to learn.
‘Making Math Visual’
Kathleen Palmieri is a national-board-certified teacher, education writer, and 5th grade teacher:
Over the past several years, I have followed the practice of Jo Boaler, Ph.D. Most recently, I found her book Math-ish to be helpful to my math practice. Boaler’s work, and this book, are based on the foundation that math should be made up of creative thinking and relatable to our daily lives.
Textbooks tend to offer a “narrow mathematics” approach, devastating students’ confidence in their math abilities. Math-ish has helped me to build a creative, student-driven, problem-solving math environment.
Peer-to-peer collaborations and math conversations are truly the pillars to understanding. Students learn so much from each other. When they are given the opportunity to discuss, share, debate, rethink, they are truly opening pathways to new learning. Struggle in math is good, allowing students to think through problems in any way that they can.
One example I’ve used in my classroom is in teaching fractions. Rather than teaching with the “must-do rules,” I took Boaler’s idea of making clear the relationship between the numerator and denominator in a fraction, more specifically how big they are in relation to each other. My students became more engaged when I made the switch to the visual teaching of fractions.
Allowing students to use a constructive approach to solving with fractions is powerful. Don’t get me wrong, learning steps and the order of operations is important, However, making math visual and creative and teaching data literacy before introducing strategies or methods is powerful and has made a huge impact on my practice and students’ learning.
Finally, another nugget I’ve incorporated from Math-ish is the idea of having my students journal or use Sketchnotes to jot down ideas, make connections, or create visual notes that will help them in their understanding or problem-solving. I believe in the theme of Math-ish that it is important to create a mistake-free environment where all ideas are valued and mistakes help us learn. This is the key to students’ building confidence and stamina in math. For more ideas and my full review of this book, please check out Math-ish.
‘Encourage Thinking Differently’
Meredith Harbord, Ed.D., and Sara Riaz Khan are the authors of several books on critical thinking and creativity, including 21 Visual Thinking Tools for the Classroom: Developing Real-World Problem Solvers in Grade 5-10:
The resources we found very helpful and inspiring were the Biomimicry Institute website and the book by Roman Krznaric called The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World. These resources both encourage thinking differently and draw attention to being responsible for our planet and life around us.
The Biomimicry Institute explores how understanding nature and its systems can inspire new ideas and promote “thinking outside the box.” The environmental challenges the world faces offer a myriad of ethical dilemmas that need solutions, and biomimicry can support the way forward using investigation and innovation through nature.
The Biomimicry Institute has developed their own educational resources, e.g., Ask Nature as well as a tool kit and pathways for students, educators, entrepreneurs, or concerned individuals to promote problem-solving and find solutions to real-world problems.
Tip: Educators can explore the Youth Design Challenge (YDC) where students find a solution to a local or global challenge using a biomimicry lens. The YDC must link to one of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, e.g., developing the Proego, a self-charging device to clear water of microplastics. This was inspired by combining aspects of the Christmas Tree worm, swordfish shape, blue tilapia fish’s cross–flow filtration, and the remora fish’s suction pad.
Culturally Responsive Teaching
Patriann Smith, Ph.D., is a professor at the University of South Florida with a research agenda focused on race, language, and migration in literacy:
I would highly recommend the books, Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Asking a Different Question by Gloria Ladson-Billings and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World by Django Paris and H. Samy Alim. I recommend these because my coming to the academy and beginning a trajectory that would come to be known as Black Immigrant Literacies was informed, in large part by my constant engagement with the tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy and, later, those of culturally sustaining pedagogy as well.
Over a decade of working with these constructs led me to identify how I could respond to and sustain the practices of transnational students crossing boundaries by attending to their race, language, and immigration in literacy.
The value then, of the constructs advanced in these books, is far-reaching, cutting across content areas, populations, nations, and locales. Much like I have found these two books to be crucial to my pathway as a teacher-scholar-educator, I have found the books, Vernaculars in the Classroom: Paradoxes, Pedagogy, Possibilities by Shondel Nero and Looking Like a Language: Sounding Like a Race by Jonathan Rosa along with the concept of raciolinguistics as proposed by H. Samy Alim, John Rickford, and Arnetha Ball in the book, Raciolinguistics: How Language Shapes Our Ideas About Race to be most applicable to my study of race, language, and migration of Caribbean students, teachers, and educators racialized as Black.
Thanks to Keisha, Donna, Mary Beth, Kathleen, Meredith, Sara, and Patriann for contributing their thoughts!
Today’s post answered this question:
What books, articles, videos, or blog posts that have been published within the past four years have you found most helpful to your teaching? Please also explain specifically how they have helped you.
In Part One, Mary Beth Hertz, Altagracia Delgado, Bobson Wong, and Larisa Bukalov shared their recommendations.
In Part Two, Sarah Cooper, Kwame Sarfo-Mensah , Erica Silva, and Luisana González contributed their suggestions.
Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.
You can also contact me on X at @Larryferlazzo or on Bluesky at @larryferlazzo.bsky.social .
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