We teachers need all the inspiration and support we can get, and books can be a source of both.
Today’s post begins a series in which teachers share recent books and other articles that they have found helpful to their teaching.
Working ‘Hard to Do Right’
Mary Beth Hertz teaches high school students art and technology in the Philadelphia school district, has been at the forefront of integrating technology into the classroom for over a decade, and is a published author.
One of the ways that I push my thinking and engage with ideas is through reading. While my go-to are sci-fi and fantasy audiobooks to engage my brain and escape while I clean or hang around the house, I do read at least one nonfiction book each year. Two of those books have really pushed my thinking: Design for Belonging by Susie Wise at the Stanford d.school, and Not Paved for Us by Camika Royal, a researcher and professor at Morgan State University. While these books are, on the surface, very different from each other, they share a common thread of how schools and schooling approach the unmistakable human element of their work.
Not Paved for Us chronicles public school reform in Philadelphia during the tenure of most of my career here. As a young educator, I experienced the impact of the state takeover of Philly public schools and the reforms that followed.
The book starts right before the state takeover and the installing of the School Reform Commission (SRC) that replaced the local school board in 2002. Philly would not have a locally controlled school board until 2018. The context that Royal provides for my own lived experience as an educator is greatly enhanced by the perspective of the Black educators she includes.
Early on in my career, I was not as in tune with the ways in which my Black colleagues and educator friends—many of whom were halfway or more through their careers—were experiencing these same events.
Even if you are not an urban educator or have never taught in Philadelphia, this ongoing experiment in public education that Royal documents is still happening all over the U.S., and there is much we can learn from both the events here in Philadelphia and the people who worked hard to do right by young people in the face of external reforms.
Royal highlights the experiences of Black educators during this time and weaves the events and their repercussions expertly into an easy to follow a storyline that ends with a call to action. “Being an anti-racist, anti-oppression educator supersedes interrogating identity. It requires interrogating the systems and structures that organize schools and school systems and that oppress those who are not white and wealthy and looking for ways to resist, disrupt, and dismantle those oppressive systems and structures. The charge is clear: Don’t become what you first aimed to disrupt.”
Wise’s Design for Belonging is a quick read, and it is a powerful one. She walks the reader through an intentionally designed framework to use when considering how organizations approach not just inclusion but true belonging. As Wise states at the beginning of the book, “Belonging is being accepted and invited to participate; being part of something and having the opportunity to show up as yourself.”
While not a book directly about education, there is a lot within the book that can guide schools and districts in not just their thinking about DEI but in the specific structures they put in place for belonging.
Wise explores what it means to invite, enter, contribute, dissent, and even exit communities and experiences. She makes the point that simply creating an inclusive environment is not enough. Each chapter asks the reader to reflect through a series of questions. At the end of one chapter, she asks: “Do people of particular backgrounds feel invited in, but then stumble upon entry?” This is an important question for schools and districts to ask in the recruitment and retention conversations around teachers of color, specifically Black teachers.
It also is an important question to ask about our student populations. Do we seem inviting on the outside but then our actions or school culture not follow through on that promise?
Another poignant part of the book discusses dissenting in a culture of belonging. “Communicating dissent can be real evidence that you trust in your community. You are likely to raise issues, challenge authority, or push beyond the status quo only if you have a sense of belonging.”
I wonder, in our schools, what our relationship with dissent is and has been? Have you felt the willingness to dissent not just with administration but also with your peers, grow or fade, and what does that mean for your organization’s culture of belonging? What about students in your classroom?
Both of these books have given me the historical context and a framework to inform my practices in my own classroom but also to see how my own classroom and my own school play a part in the larger picture of school reform, of public education, and the future of our country and our democracy. History is bound to repeat itself. The best thing we can do is understand how we got where we are and how we can move forward with that knowledge.
‘Culturally Responsive Practices’
Altagracia H. Delgado, also known as Grace, has been in the education field for 30 years. She is currently the executive director of multilingual services for the Aldine Independent school district, in the Houston area. She is also an elected bard member of the Texas Association for Bilingual Education:
As a multilingual educator, it is important to keep up with the most current publications in the field that helps us in supporting our students and the environment that we create for inclusive instructional practices. In the past year, I have delved into two specific books that support culturally responsive practices by creating a strong sense of belonging for all students.
The first book is Mindframes for Belonging, Identities, and Equity, Fortifying Cultural Bridges by Nicole Law, Sonja Hollins-Alexander, Dominique Smith, and John Hattie. This book examines the topic of students’ identities, encouraging us to survey our current practices while also sharing questions to guide future responsiveness. The book helped me better understand the concept of culturally responsive practices looking at the intersectionality of students’ identities.
As an educator of multilingual students, we usually focus on understanding how to support students’ language acquisition, integrating native languages while embracing and honoring students’ cultures.
The book defines identities in a broader manner inclusive of areas like health status, family dynamics, cognitive ability, education, and socioeconomic class, to name a few.
In planning for the this year, this resource was used in my district as part of a book study with campus administrators. Since the book has surveys and questions, it will help school administrators gauge where their school has strong areas of student support, while determining opportunities to support students’ personal and academic growth.
The second book that I am currently exploring is Leading Change Through the Lens of Cultural Proficiency: An Equitable Approach to Race and Social Class in Our Schools, by Jaime E. Welborn, Tamika Casey, Keith Myatt, and Randall B. Lindsey. Once again, this book helps develop and support education leaders in their quest for social justice and educational equity.
By utilizing the story of a Midwestern school environment, the book explores the shared experiences of this community and shows us the use of a cultural proficiency framework. This book helps me as a district administrator in supporting campus leaders and school communities by developing policies and practices that respond to the needs of all students. Once again, the book offers reflection activities that guide leaders in the process, making it practical in the study process.
‘How the Brain Learns’
Bobson Wong and Larisa Bukalov teach math at Bayside High School in New York City. They are co-authors of The Math Teacher’s Toolbox: Hundreds of Practical Ideas to Support Your Students and Practical Algebra: A Self-Teaching Guide (3rd edition) and winners of the Math for America Muller Award for Professional Influence in Education:
One book that we’ve used often in our teaching is David A. Sousa’s How the Brain Learns, now in its sixth edition (2022). We find this book especially useful because it details how the latest neuroscience research should shape instruction.
Sousa doesn’t just summarize how human brains process, transfer, and retain information. In How the Brain Learns and other subject-specific books (like How the Brain Learns Mathematics), Sousa provides concrete strategies that teachers can implement. How the Brain Learns has confirmed and explained many trends that we’ve seen in our classrooms over the years. This book contains two important ideas that have made us better teachers.
First, Sousa provides evidence that supports our practice of making students feel safe in our classroom. When the brain perceives a threat, it instinctively releases adrenaline, which inhibits cognitive functions and other activity viewed as unnecessary. Students need to feel safe before they are willing to learn.
This book reinforces our belief that making students feel positively about learning improves student motivation. As a result, we try to create a classroom environment in which they feel welcome. This includes greeting each student individually by name at the beginning of class every day and encouraging students to analyze their thinking instead of just getting the correct answer.
Paying attention to students’ feelings is especially important for us as math teachers since many students feel anxious about math. Feeling good or safe doesn’t guarantee that students will absorb new information, but it is a necessary condition for learning.
Second, we always try to connect new information presented in our lessons with who and what students already know. Sousa’s book provides evidence that supports our approach. When students make these connections, their brains can process and retain the information more easily.
These connections include:
Connecting with other people: Positive social relationships help suppress the brain’s defense mechanisms and release endorphins, which make the learning experience more successful and improve memory. As a result, we try to give students opportunities to collaborate with each other as often as possible, even if they just turn to their neighbor to quickly discuss a question. Group-work activities shift the focus away from us and give students an opportunity to share ideas. Simple strategies like having brief informal conversations with students about their lives outside of our class also help us to build better relationships with them.
Connecting with students’ cultures and values: Connecting what we teach with students’ past experiences helps students attach more meaning to it and store it in their long-term memory. For example, we discuss the history of the math we teach so students see that math comes from diverse cultures. Asking students to rewrite word problems into more familiar or understandable contexts helps students to take more ownership of their learning. The neuroscience research that Sousa cites also supports efforts to make education more culturally responsive and equitable. Inspired by Sousa’s book and the work of scholars like Zaretta Hammond and Gloria Ladson-Billings, we developed what we call equity tasks (short lesson activities that incorporate components of equity).
Connecting with other mathematical ideas: Linking what we teach to math that students have already learned is critical for student growth. Mathematical connections are especially important when we teach abstract topics that often can’t be related to students’ lives. In these situations, we try to relate it to math that students have already learned. For example, when we discuss dividing polynomials, we reverse the procedure that we teach for multiplying polynomials to highlight the relationship between the two operations, using an area model that relates them to geometry.
Making these mathematical connections has several benefits. When students see math as a logical and consistent system of ideas, they become better at solving problems since they can use multiple viewpoints.
In addition, when they relate new material to previously learned ideas, they can see the “big picture” and reduce their math anxiety.
In short, How the Brain Learns provides research-based evidence and specific strategies that we have used to make our math instruction more personal and meaningful to our students.
Thanks to Mary Beth, Altagracia, Bobson, and Larisa for contributing their thoughts!
Today’s post answered this question:
What books, articles, videos, or blog posts that have been published within the past four years have you found most helpful to your teaching? Please also explain specifically how they have helped you.
Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected]. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.
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