While at a meeting today I mentioned that I already had a reading list lined up for the upcoming Winter (AKA Christmas) break. I probably won’t get all of them read, but I will take a pretty good run at one or two. Me and a few colleagues occasionally trade books and recommendations for books or articles to read. We are all the better for it. I offered to send my reading list to someone, but then thought “hey, a blog post!” Some of these I have recently read, and others are on my list. So, teacher/learner, if you are in need of some professional reading over the holidays, you might want to consider one or two of these.

Cover of Mob Rule Learning

Mob Rule Learning by Michelle Boule

I picked this one up from the Kraemer Family Library over at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS). I always look at the new education-related books, and I have to admit, most of them look about as interesting or useful as a bag of rocks would look to, well… anyone who had absolutely no need for a bag of rocks. This is one of two that amazingly caught my eye this week.

Mob Rule Learning is a short book (220 pp) about the unconference movement. Boule provides a bit of history of unconferences and edcamps, along with practical advice on how to organize and participate in one. Unconferences are all about collaboration, cooperative learning,  and taking the focus away from an invited knowledge and wisdom dispensing bigwig who stands in front of a podium with a series of gargantuan Power Point slides looming in the background. I thought this sounded a lot like the direction that myself and a lot of other people are headed in education these days. And check out these chapter titles:

• Traditional Classrooms: What’s Missing?
• Creating Your Own Mob Ecosystem: Harnessing the Power of Mob Labor
• The Future of the Self-Educated Mob

I especially like that last one. With a subtitle like Camps, Unconferences, and Trashing the Talking Head, I think it holds great promise.

Cover of That Used to Be Us

That Used to Be Us by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum

I finished this one a week or so ago and cannot recommend it highly enough. Following up on his previous work in The World is Flat, and Hot, Flat and Crowded, Friedman and his new co-author make a convincing case for a rather unpleasant reality. The good ole’ US of A has lost its mojo and all the wringing of hands and indignant saying “it ain’t so” in the world, will do nothing to make it it not so. China and many other parts of the world ascend, while America continues its decades long slide into mediocrity.

Oh, it’s so alright. But all is not lost. Far from it.  After their masterful analysis of how we got into this sorry state, Friedman and Mandelbaum have some ideas for how to reverse the trend. It won’t be easy, but as they point out, America didn’t become great by doing easy things. Let’s do it!

Cover of Better by Mistake

Better by Mistake by Alina Tugend

I read this one last Summer and loved it. Are you into educating kids? Do you want to convert mere students into successful learners? Then get them to understand the power of mistakes and learning from them. Through the use of case studies, interviews, and personal experience, Tugend explains how, that if viewed in the right way, mistakes and struggle are the key to doing great things.

The research is clear: kids who are praised for “working hard” even when they do not succeed, develop a much healthier attitude toward learning and trying hard things, than do kids who are praised for “being smart” and “doing a good job.” Read this book and understand why, then apply it to your daily life and work.

Push Has Come to Shove by Steve Perry

It is a rare event when I crank out a book in one day, but that is exactly what I did yesterday with Push Has Come to Shove. Not because it is the most stellar treatise on what is wrong with education today (but it is pretty good), but because Dr. Perry challenged my thinking on what is needed to improve education. We all need that. He tells it like it is (or at least how he sees it) and he is not all that sympathetic to the plights of teachers, administrators, school boards and school districts that are struggling to “do their best.” I wrote a more complete review of it at The Teacher Reads.

Cover of Building Powerful Numeracy for Middle and High School Students

Building Powerful Numeracy for Middle and High School Students by Pamela Weber Harris

I mentioned previously that I had recently found two education books that I found worth taking home ,with Mob Rule Learning being the first. The second is Building Powerful Numeracy for Middle and High School Students. Okay, it is probably only of interest to mathematics teachers, but then again, maybe not. Most math education “theory” and pedagogy books are terrible. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it. But this one is actually written for human beings who are not trying to get in the mood to kill themselves.

Are you frustrated with kids who can’t tell if their answer is remotely close to being correct? Me too. Are you pulling your hair out over kids who can’t figure out which direction on a number line is “bigger” and which is “smaller” no matter how many times and in how many different ways it is presented? Oh yeah, I’m there. I have always thought there was a little chance of instilling number sense in a young person by the time they got to seventh grade, at least in conjunction with all the other stuff we are trying to do. But, the fact is, all the other stuff we are trying to do is a giant wheel spin if there isn’t some kind of numerical reasoning skill at hand.

Enter this book. In leafing through it, I was struck by the simple beauty of the suggestions it contained. Most math “teaching” books present methods and theories that I find totally counterintuative. This one is golden. Every example I saw made perfect sense, and I think they will make sense to kids too. Check out these example problems:

• True or false? Why? 6.2 – 3.8 = 6 – 4; 500 – 312 = 512 – 300
• Are the following equivalent to 21 x 79? 22 x 80; 20 x 78; 20 x 80

I can really see how thinking hard about these questions, along with a little guidance, could possibly turn the light on in a mind at some point. But I do not do the book justice with these two examples. Covering topics from integer addition to calculus, there is something in here that every secondary math teacher can use. In fact, now that I think about it, this book could be used to construct an entire help course for struggling math learners. It could really work.

Got any awesome reading suggestions for me? I’d love to hear about them.