Must-Read Professional Development Books for Teachers

Below are 10 must reads for TEACHER professional development.

 1 . The Third Teacher: 79 Ways You Can Use Design to Transform Teaching and Learning  

 Several contributors helped create this book in order to encourage educators to think outside the traditional-teaching box. There are 79 different tips and tricks that are all centered around practically redesigning your current methods of teaching and learning. It’ll make for a great book this summer to develop your creative side for next school year!

 2. Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It

If you have been an educator for quite some time, you may notice what author, Kelly Gallagher, is talking about in her book Readicide. There has been a great decline in students’ love of reading, and though there are many factors that contribute to this terrible fact, Gallagher explains American public schools have a great amount of responsibility in the decline. Use this summer as a way to get your students back to loving books.

 

3. The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child

To follow up with Readicide, this book will excite you with one teacher’s experience. Donalyn Miller approaches her classroom with a new and exciting method to get her students to love reading. She explains in The Book Whisperer that it’s all about finding what each student loves most and helping them find books that gear toward their interests.

 4. Super Core! Turbocharging Your Basal Reading Program with More Reading, Writing, and Word Work

Tired of your school’s required core reading program? Super Core! will give you tips to work around the basal program and modify your instruction methods. Your teaching will become more purposeful and efficient with Mark Weakland’s commentary on your school’s basic requirements.

5. Feel-Bad Education: And Other Contrarian Essays on Children and Schooling

This book consists of nineteen essays that explore the notion that harder equates with better in regards to education in the United States. Alfie Kohn explains that the education system must change.  Be inspired by Kohn in order to change how you and your co-workers educate.

6. Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education

2006 Ted Talk presenter, Ken Robinson, recognizes that there is a problem in the educational system in the United States. In Creative Schools he explains that we no longer need to educate in the industrial fashion that we have been. Explore his observations on how to better the system.

 

7. Engage Every Family: 5 Simple Principles

You can only push your students’ success so much; their families will help them with the rest. Sometimes, families simply won’t engage in the education of their child. This book will make it much easier to get any family to be more involved in their child’s learning.

 

8. The First Days of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher

Get the latest edition of this book in order to get the latest how-to-be a more organized, structured teacher. Harry K. Wong says this book can be used whether you’re new to the game or a veteran.

 

9. You Can’t Just Say It Louder!

Pre-K through the twelfth grade, you may be confronted with a diverse group of students that you just were not prepared for. You Can’t Just Say It Louder! is a must-read if you’d like to become more suited to educate any and all students that you are faced with!

10. The Way of Mindful Education: Cultivating Well-Being in Teachers and Students

Broken into four parts, Daniel Rechtshaffen’s The Way of Mindful Education explains the way in which you may become a more mindful person, while also developing students that are equally as mindful through education that is attentive. This professional development book will have positive results if you closely follow the teachings of mindfulness.

 

Really Good Teachers

What are some of your favorite professional development books?