We hope your summer is as sunny and joyous as it has been here at the ISM headquarters, where we’re in the middle of hosting our Summer Institute workshop series in Wilmington, Delaware. Even if you haven’t been able to join in the professional development opportunities with your peers, we don’t want you to let this relatively calm period of the school year slip past without investing in yourself. So, we asked our Consultants to assemble this list of go-to books, and here’s what they recommend.
Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood and It’s a Boy! Your Son’s Development from Birth to Age 18
by Lisa Damour and Dr. Michael Thompson with Teresa Barker, respectively
Sometimes it can be difficult to remember the crazy changes our students are unconsciously experiencing when we see them every day in the classroom. Teachers and administrators, however, are key in helping young people grow into adults in both body and mind.
These two books act as a quick-reference encyclopedia of the physical, mental, and emotional upset students undergo from kindergarten through their senior year of high school. Other texts may be more detailed on specific points or approach the same issues from other angles, but these two books are the ones most recommended by our Consultants for baseline understanding of the biology of growing children from an educational (and parenting) perspective.
Grading Smarter, Not Harder: Assessment Strategies That Motivate Kids and Help Them Learn
by Myron Dueck
“Student evaluation is the new battleground in education.”
Dueck discusses how traditional student grading with letters and percentages may actually hinder future student learning in addition to “judging” how well a student learned in the past. He passionately argues for a system in which student grades leverage intrinsic motivation strategies to encourage students’ natural curiosity and desire to learn.
On Your Mark: Challenging the Conventions of Grading and Reporting
by Thomas Guskey
And on the topic of student evaluation, we have another book for you: Guskey’s On Your Mark. When so much has changed in the last hundred years when it comes to best teaching practices for students, Guskey asks, why have grading practices remained essentially static?
Guskey’s premise echoes ISM’s call for mission-driven learning, complete with grading systems synced with your school’s academic mission. He demonstrates that the ways in which those grades are determined, reported, and disseminated can honestly and helpfully promote student learning within the school community.
Additional ISM resources:
The Source for Private School News Vol. 12 No. 9 Must-Reads for Aspiring Leaders in 2014
The Source for Division Heads Vol. 11 No. 10 Summer Reading for Division Heads: Recommended Books & Webinars
The Source for Private School News Vol. 13 No. 6 2014 Summer Reading List for Private School Administrators
