January 2018 Bookshelf
Books 11 January 2018
Revealing Minds: Assessing to Understand and Support Struggling Learners
Craig Pohlman
Putting a label on a problem allows us to efficiently navigate the myriad issues we have to deal with on a daily basis. However, labels also lead to generalizations and misunderstandings. And, when it comes to human beings, particularly our children, labels can be downright destructive. Dr. Craig Pohlman, author of Revealing Minds, believes there’s a better way. Pohlman, through his own experience as a licensed psychologist and primary school educator, believes in the power of demystifying the struggles every child goes through. By utilizing detailed descriptions, rather than one or two word labels, we can better assess and support the needs of every young person who walks through our doors.
The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
Eric Weiner
The World Database of Happiness (WDH) is a massive collection of international research that attempts to determine where in the world the happiest people live. Eric Weiner, author of The Geography of Bliss, took these rankings and made it his mission to uncover the secret ingredients found in this “happiness” sauce. From Switzerland to Bhutan, the reader is taken on an adventure that reveals entirely expected conclusions but in fascinatingly unexpected ways. Take a trip around the world, and ask yourself, “Where does my happiness come from?”
Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living
Shauna Niequist
Social-emotional learning isn’t a topic reserved for our blossoming youth. Given that most of us had a traditional learning experience growing up, we have blind spots in how we manage our personal well-being. With the fast-paced work of transforming our learning systems, we are naturally inclined to put our personal development on hold. Shauna Niequist, author of Present Over Perfect, had a similar experience until it made her crack. Discover how she freed herself from the pursuit of perfection and a utopian future and “settled” for being present in the moment.
A School of Our Own: The Story of the First Student-Run High School and a New Vision for American Education
Samuel Levin and Susan Engel
Can we really expect young learners to take ownership of their learning—of their future—if given the opportunity? Won’t they take advantage of the freedom they’re afforded and make unwise decisions? This line of questioning is all too familiar to anyone pioneering their way to a learner-centered future. Although we’ve all developed our own answers to these questions, A School of Our Own might be the skeptic-halting antidote we’ve been looking for. In Samuel Levin and Susan Engel’s book, discover how learners weren’t just given the freedom to follow their interests and passions but were actually put in charge of designing and operating the learning environment themselves.
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
David Allen
When you consciously decide to jump away from the familiar in hopes of landing on solid ground in a transformative future, you have a 100% chance of experiencing one thing—stress. You’ll find stress contemplating the leap itself, hanging in mid-air once you’ve taken action, and just before you look up after landing. Transformative work can put incredible strain on our primal nature. What’s familiar is safe. What’s unfamiliar is not. Getting Things Done by David Allen can serve as a stress-reducing guide along the way, so you can spend less time worrying and more time doing.
The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds
Michael Lewis
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky gave rise to the groundbreaking field of behavioral economics some four decades ago. Their Nobel-worthy work fused their discoveries of the irrational mind with a new age of economic theory. The Undoing Project, Michael Lewis’ tale of the evolving relationship between these two historic figures, provides two entirely unique insights we can keep top of mind in our daily lives. The most obvious is the litany of cognitive biases Kahneman and Tversky unveiled over the course of their careers (from confirmation bias to negativity bias). The less obvious, yet just as instructive, is watching these biases play out in the relationship between these two pioneers themselves.
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