Take Time For You : Self-Care Action plans for Educators by Tina Boogren

 

The key to thriving, as both a human and an educator, rests in mindfulness, reflection, and daily self-care activities. With Take Time for You, you will discover a clear path to well-being by working through Maslow's hierarchy of needs: (1) physiological, (2) safety, (3) belonging, (4) esteem, (5) self-actualization, and (6) transcendence. The author offers a range of manageable research-based strategies, self-care surveys, and reflective teaching questions that will guide you in developing an individualized self-care plan.

Embrace imperfection as you develop your own self-care plan:

• Understand the challenges to mindfulness for teachers and how Maslow's hierarchy of needs comes into play in your personal and professional life.
• Design action plans so you can meet your own physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization needs and, finally, transcend and connect with something greater than yourself.
• Take surveys and perform a daily time audit to determine how well you are meeting each of your needs.
• Use the journaling space and self-reflection questions provided throughout the book to reflect on your implementation efforts.

Digital version available in OverDrive/Sora.

 

Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain : Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students by Zaretta Hammond

 

 A bold, brain-based teaching approach to culturally responsive instruction.

 The achievement gap remains a stubborn problem for educators of culturally and linguistically diverse students. Diverse classrooms need a proven framework for optimizing student engagement and facilitating deeper learning.

Culturally responsive pedagogy has shown great promise in meeting this need, but many educators still struggle with its implementation. In this book, Zaretta Hammond draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to offer an innovative approach for designing and implementing brain-compatible culturally responsive instruction.

 The book includes:

Information on how one's culture programs the brain to process data and affects learning relationships

Ten "key moves" to build students' learner operating systems and prepare them to become independent learners

                                                                    Prompts for action and valuable self-reflection

 With a firm understanding of these techniques and principles, teachers and instructional leaders will confidently reap the benefits of culturally responsive instruction.

Digital version available in OverDrive/Sora

You Win in the Locker Room First: 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Sports, Business, and Life by Jon Gordon

 NFL head coach Mike Smith lead one of the most remarkable turnarounds in NFL history. In the season prior to his arrival in 2008, the Atlanta Falcons had a 4-12 record and the franchise had never before achieved back-to-back winning seasons. Under Smith's leadership, the Falcons earned an 11-5 record in his first season and would go on to become perennial playoff and Super Bowl contenders earning Smith AP Coach of year in 2008 and voted Coach of Year by his peers in 2008, 2010 and 2012.

You Win in the Locker Room First draws on the extraordinary experiences of Coach Mike Smith and Jon Gordon--consultant to numerous college and professional teams--to explore the seven powerful principles that any business, school, organization, or sports team can adopt to revitalize their organization.

Step by step, the authors outline a strategy for building a thriving organization and provide a practical framework that give leaders the tools they need to create a great culture, lead with the right mindset, create strong relationships, improve teamwork, execute at a higher level, and avoid the pitfalls that sabotage far too many leaders and organizations.

In addition to sharing what went right with the Falcons, Smith also transparently shares what went wrong his last two seasons and provides invaluable lessons leaders can take away from his victories, success, failures and mistakes.

Whether it's an executive leadership team of a Fortune 500 company, a sports team, an emergency room team, military team, or a school team successful leaders coach their team and develop, mentor, encourage, and guide them. This not only improves the team, it improves the leaders and their relationships, connections, and organization.

You Win in the Locker Room First offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at one of the most pressure packed leadership jobs on the planet and what leaders can learn from these experiences in order to build their own winning team.

Recommended by Maygan Adams at MWJH. Audiobook available in OverDrive/Sora.
 

Teach Like a Pirate: Increase Student Engagement, Boost Your Creativity and Transform Your Life As An Educator by Dave Burgess

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Based on Dave Burgess's popular "Outrageous Teaching" and "Teach Like a PIRATE" seminars, this book offers inspiration, practical techniques, and innovative ideas that will help you to increase student engagement, boost your creativity, and transform your life as an educator. You'll learn how to tap into and dramatically increase your passion as an teacher. Also, learn how to develop outrageously engaging lessons that will draw students in like a magnet and how to transform your class into a life-changing experience for your students. This groundbreaking inspirational manifesto contains over 30 hooks specially designed to captivate your class and 170 brainstorming questions that will skyrocket your creativity. Once you learn the Teach Like a PIRATE system, you'll never look at your role as an educator the same again.

Recommended by Maygan Adams at MWJH. This title can be found in the campus libraries at Lamar, Travis, MWJH, and HS.

Don't Ditch That Tech: Differentiated Instruction in a Digital World by Matt Miller, Angelia Ridgway, Nate Ridgway

Don’t Ditch That Tech provides practical ideas to help you find the sweet spot where classroom devices meet students’ needs. In this teacher-tailored guide, you’ll find tips on how to handle cart/lab scenarios, develop attention-grabbing strategies, build metacognitive practices, and more—all with differentiation in mind. Whether you're a tech newbie or the school’s device guru, you’ll walk away with new understandings and strategies for transforming and diversifying your approach to teaching in a twenty-first-century world.

Recommended by Danielle Harper, ELA teacher at MWJH. Found in Danielle's personal library. Digital version available in OverDrive/Sora.

Additional resources can be found at ditchthattextbook.com

Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners by Ron Ritchhart , Mark Church

 

A proven program for enhancing students' thinking and comprehension abilities

Visible Thinking is a research-based approach to teaching thinking, begun at Harvard's Project Zero, that develops students' thinking dispositions, while at the same time deepening their understanding of the topics they study.  Rather than a set of fixed lessons, Visible Thinking is a varied collection of practices, including thinking routines, small sets of questions, or a short sequence of steps, as well as the documentation of student thinking. Using this process thinking becomes visible as the students' different viewpoints are expressed, documented, discussed, and reflected upon.

• Helps direct student thinking and structure classroom discussion
• Can be applied with students at all grade levels and in all content areas
• Includes easy-to-implement classroom strategies

Recommended by Kendra Fowler. Found in her personal library.

Your First Year: How to Survive and Thrive as a New Teacher by Todd Whitaker

 

Learn all the essentials for making your first year of teaching a success! In this exciting new book, internationally renowned educator Todd Whitaker teams up with his daughters--Madeline, an elementary teacher, and Katherine, a secondary teacher--to share advice and inspiration. They offer step-by-step guidance to thriving in your new role and overcoming the challenges that many new teachers face. Topics include:

• Learning classroom management skills such as building relationships and maintaining high expectations and consistency
• Setting up your classroom and establishing procedures and rules
• Planning effective lessons and making your instructional time an engaging experience
• Managing your own emotions in the classroom and dealing effectively with misbehavior
• Working with peers, administrators, and parents to build support and foster collaboration

The book is filled with specific examples and vignettes from elementary, middle, and high school classes, so you'll gain helpful strategies no matter what grade level and subject area you teach. You'll also find out how to make tweaks or hit the "reset" button when something isn't going as planned. Things may not always go perfectly your first year, but the practical advice in this book will help you stay motivated on the path to success!

This title is available at the Lamar and HS libraries.