Miscelaneous Topics for Teachers and Teacher Librarians

• The Trouble with Boys: A Surprising Report Card on our Sons, Their Problems at School, and What Parents and Educators Must Do by Peg Tyre (Crown, 2008, 311p., $24.95, ISBN: 9780307381286)

  Glass ceilings get discussed a great deal these days and progress over the years for women have been improving. But there is another group that needs attention. It’s a group that doesn’t read up to snuff. They don’t go to college in large enough numbers or graduate. These are the males of the species who, as a group, are not competing as successfully as their female counterparts. Some might say, it’s about time since girls have been put down and subservient for so many generations. However, Tyre surveys the research, the major ideas connected with boys and learning, and makes us think that there are different and unique ways of dealing with gender issues. When we recognize the interesting facets of the problem and how as parents and teachers there are some sound conclusions, we can change our tactics rather than just complain that boys are just not performing up to their potential. This is an important read for a professional learning community and for teacher librarians. Highly recommended. P.S. This does not mean that girls should receive any less attention or a push toward excellence.

• Schooling by design : mission, action, and achievement by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. (ASCD, 2007 297p. $_____, ISBN: 9781416605805)

  The classic book and its supplements: Understanding by Design makes this title a must read in and of itself. What would an entire school look like if its entire organization were focused on deep understanding and backwards planning? Recently, we encountered a principal of a high school who had been hired, not for anything related to excellence in education but to keep the football program alive to please the activist parents.  This principal hired a gung ho asst. principal to take care of all the educational concerns so that relationships with the community could be the main focus at the top. Outrageous. Shocking. Sad. Wiggins and McTighe in true form, explore and flesh out the school organization that makes learning the center of focus, attention, and channel of resources. We would expect no less from these great minds. This proposal along with Tomlinson’s The Differentiated School, require study, attention, wide discussion and implementation. In our own work to place a Learning Commons at the hub of the school (Loertscher, Koechlin, and Zwaan: The New Learning Commons Where Learners Win!), we can’t imagine that such efforts could be remotely successful unless the entire school is focused on excellence in teaching and learning. So, we name this book as an essential read; a big think; and even a golf course conversation with our notable principal above.

• The differentiated school : making revolutionary changes in teaching and learning by Carol Ann Tomlinson, Brimijoin, and Lane Narvaez (ASCD, 2008, 240 p., $_____, ISBN: 9781416606789)

  This is an important book. One of the major titles of the year in which Tomlinson and team look at differentiation beyond the classroom and into the school as a whole. Previously, most of Tomlinson’s writing has centered on the classroom teacher, introducing and coaching the NCLB crowd into a different mentality where many paths are given to individual students to achieve learning objectives. Direct teaching advocates mark one path toward Rome. Tomlinson defines many roads and in this book tries to explain how the school as a school adopts such a teaching philosophy.  The chapters lay out the plan as one would expect: Setting the Stage for Change Toward Differentiation; Leadership for Change Toward Differentiation; The Nature of Professional Development for Change Toward Differentiation; Monitoring and Evaluating Change Toward Differentiation; Snapshots of Change in several schools; Change in actual classrooms. I would guess that Tomlinson will have a spotlighted keynote address at the next ASCD conference, so get a leg up on that presentation by reading this book cover to cover before attending, or just use it as a volume to study with the professional learning community. Excellent. P.S. Identify the major areas that the learning commons can have as differentiation happens in your school.

•  Fierce teaching : purpose, passion, and what matters most by Eric Jensen. (Corwin Press, 2008, 101 p. $_____, ISBN: 9781412963299)

  New teachers losing their way? Getting bored? Thinking that their time-tested strategies no longer work with the groups of learners they have? Eric Jensen is a prominent speaker about the research-based practices all great teachers possess in reaching their students. He lists six characteristics of what he terms fierce teaching used as the acronymn: BE Fierce:

  •    BE –Body and emotional connections

  •    F – Feedback and error correction

  •    I – Input to output ratio

  •    E – Elaboration for depth

  •    R – Recall and memory management

  •    C – Content Coherence

  •    E – Environmental management

  This is a book that a professional learningcommunitycould read in bits and pieces – everyone reading one of the chapters since they are fairly short and then spending 10-15 min. discussing the ideas presented and applying them to everyday teaching strategies. It would be a chance for the successful teachers to provide tips in a non-threatening atmosphere, and who knows, some troubled faculty just might hear and apply some of the tips It is worth a try and while the list seems a bit clouded by the terms used here, the common sense backed up by research will be a good review for anyone. Recommended as a chapter, thing, next chapter, think…

• Detracking for excellence and equity by  Carol Corbett Burris and Delia T. Garrity. (ASCD, 2008, 181p. $_____, ISBN: 9781416607083)

  This book continues the march from more and more voices in education that the NCLB idea of raising everyone to minimal levels must be replaced with the concept of excellence.  We just wonder if the current generation of kids and teens can experience what excellence looks like before we turn them out into the global society unprepared to compete. Burris and Garrity attack the idea of tracking or grouping students by ability level so that we lower expectations for those who we perceive cant cut the mustard. Every teacher should see the film Freedom Writers to understand the worst practices of tracking  high school learners. Yes, the idea of pushing every teen is certainly not new. Perhaps this book is a reminder or wakeup call to the messages so common today from Howard Gardner, Wiggins and McTighe, and Tomlinson. Convinced that every learner needs a challenge to succeed far beyond what each thinks they can do themselves or what adults think they can do? We all just have to keep remembering that Mark Phelps’ teacher told him that he would never amount to anything! Whether you like Burris and Garrity’s recommendations for detracking a school, perhaps this is a good read for background as discussions in the professional learning community broach the subject or even decide to pursue it. Bottom line: Worth considering.

• Using the national gifted education standards for university teacher preparation programs by Susan K Hohnsen, Joyce Vantassel-Baska, and Ann Robinson (Corwin Press, 2008, 235 p., $_____, ISBN: 9781412965248); and, Using the national gifted education standards for preK-12 professional development by Margie Kitano, Diane Montgomery, and Joyce Vantasel-Bask, and SusanK. Johnsen (Corwin Press, 2008, 147 p., $_____, ISBN: 9781412965224)

  Does anyone pay attention to the gifted and talented? Or, are we so motivated to get everyone to a minimal level that this group recedes into perpetual boredom?These two volumes, jointly published by the National association for Gifted Children, the Council for Exceptional Children, and the Association for the Gifted provide guidance for both pre-service education and for professional development in schools. Included in the volumes are regular references to the exceptional child who has special needs. The volumes include the national standards, of course, and then provide information, examples, and strategies to prepare teachers to coach these two groups. We looked with our library media center eyes at the standards and did find reference to the use of technology; available materials, and encouragement to allow these groups choice in what they explore, but, overall, one could think that the essential information-rich and technology-rich environment so conducive to the development of these learners is underrepresented. The emphasis for success is placed again on the classroom teacher with no mention of other specialists in the school. Sample rubrics tend to just add more prescribed work for the gifted child in terms of quantity – a sure-fire way for the leaner to hide. We prefer the rubrics Robert Marzano recently created that point to the exceeding of the standard expectations. It would seem that quality, high-level thinking, and big picture analysis and synthesis would be the foundation of excellence for these leaner’s. These two volumes are probably basic to any school paying attention to the exceptional child and the gifted and talented. However, we’d hope that programs for this group would be developed far beyond this set of standards.

• Teambuilding with teens : activities for leadership, decision making & group success by Marian G MacGreagor (Free Spirit Publishing, 2008, 185pp. $_____, ISBN: 9781575422657)

  So you have set up a task for teens, put them in groups, and say “go.” If nothing happens or the groups become suddenly dysfunctional, there is work to do. Because so much of the world of work is now done by groups, exemplary group skills are in order. MacGreagor provides a number of 35-45 minute strategies complete with individual/group worksheets to “study” the process of working in groups successfully. Activities include: icebreakers, self-awareness, working with others, communication, qualities of leadership, social issues, decision making and problem solving, and closure. Every teacher and teacher librarian needs a bag of tricks to stimulate group performance and even if you don’t care for the particular ideas here, you are sure to be stimulated to create better ones that will work with your brand of teens. That is the kind of professional book we appreciate – one that is either on target or one that stimulates the reader to be creative. Recommended.