The Teachers’ Summer Reading List 2018

Summer break is the best time to grow and learn as a teacher. If you pick the right books, you can work on your professional development at the pool!

Every year, we look at the hot topics in education and society and then highlight some books that can help you grasp the concepts so that you can return to school a more enlightened teacher. Here are our top five picks for summer 2018:

Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators by Elena Aguilar

We’re going to start with one of the most anticipated professional development releases of the year. Every teacher comes across a time (or several) where he or she struggles to find the passion for teaching they once had. In today’s complicated social and political ecosystem, more teachers feel like this than ever. Instead of platitudes and heartwarming stories, Aguilar’s book takes a systematic approach to helping educators analyze their standing in the profession and chart a course for improving their mental outlook in a lasting way. Onward may be the answer if you’re feeling burnt out and need to reinvigorate that spark for teaching that you felt at the beginning of the year.

The Wild Card: 7 Steps to an Educator’s Creative Breakthrough by Hope and Wade King

One cause of teacher burnout can be the feeling that the creativity has been sucked out of the profession. You find yourself running out of ideas for making learning engaging for both you and your students. The Wild Card is meant for teachers at every level and every subject, and it contains a framework for mining your own experiences, personality, background, and strengths as a teacher to reinvigorate your practice and make sure that 2018–19 is a different, more exciting school year. Teachers everywhere will enjoy the creative and clever strategies that this read has to offer.

The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox: Hundreds of Practical Ideas to Support Your Students by Larry Ferlazzo and Katie Hull Sypnieski

Due to the shifting demographics of the country, every teacher should concern himself or herself with ELL education. These two authors are some of the leaders in the field (and, yes, they are actually in the field), and they are sharing their best strategies to help you reach and support these vital students, no matter the subject area or grade level. Even if you may never serve an ELL student, these strategies will also work with struggling readers and writers, as well as some students with learning disabilities.

Learning Transported: Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality for All Classrooms by Jaime Donally

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies are no longer tied to bulky, expensive headsets, and because of that, they are the next frontier in education technology. All of the major device and software companies are building tools for AR and VR and specifically mention the classroom as one of the most useful spaces for the technology. This book lets you get in on the ground floor of the movement with examples and strategies that can be applied to any subject and use nearly every device. Your classroom engagement is guaranteed to skyrocket.

#OwnVoices Fiction

You may be familiar with the #OwnVoices movement (which started on Twitter) that is currently taking over the young adult fiction arena. If you find yourself wanting to gain insight into a culture that is not your own (but may be your students’), you won’t find more authentic voices. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas is based around the shooting of a young, black teenager by a police officer. The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon is based around an undocumented Jamaican girl about to be deported. Finally, The Lines We Cross by Randa Abdel-Fattah tells the story of a boy raised in an anti-immigrant environment getting involved with a recent Muslim refugee from Afghanistan. These books are sure to give you an insider’s perspective into groups that some of your students may fall into.

Interested in more resources centered around PD? Take a look at posts with the professional development tag on our blog!