The summer months, with more daylight hours and the promise of rejuvenation for weary teachers, provide a perfect opportunity to read deeply. UVEI faculty members share their summer reading lists, pulling from the worlds of math, feminism, creativity, leadership, and national trends to inform their work with novice teachers, experienced educators, teacher leaders, and principals.

Page Tompkins:

Place-Based Education: Connecting Classrooms and Communities by David Sobel

I am chairing the Upper Valley Teaching Place Collaborative committee on research and evaluation next year, so I’m boning up on the theoretical underpinnings. I started my career as an outdoor educator (working for Outward Bound), and I’m now working to connect up my thinking about outdoor education, experiential education, and deeper learning.

Preparing Teachers for Deeper Learning, Linda Darling-Hammond and Jennie Oakes

Over the course of the 2018-2019 academic year, I have been engaged in a collaborative research project related to deeper learning (knowledge briefs, designs, and research articles coming soon!). This included reading the book In Search of Deeper Learning by Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine, a book I cannot recommend enough, which got me thinking about how well UVEI is preparing educators to teach and lead for deeper learning. This book, hot off the presses, arrived just in time to give me a good lens for evaluating our programs.

Nuance: Why Some Leaders Succeed and Others Fail, Michael Fullan

For years I’ve been frustrated by our schools tendency to go for quick fixes and magic bullets. Real improvement is iterative, multi-faceted, and… well… nuanced. While Fullan is more of a public intellectual than an empirical researcher, I’ve found his work on leadership, change, and coherence compelling and influential. I look forward to seeing how he thinks about the complexity of leading.

Leading Well: Building Schoolwide Excellence in Reading and Writing, Lucy Calkins

UVEI is launching a Literacy Specialist licensure program in 2019-2020. Unlike most programs in this area, our program will emphasize the instructional leadership aspects of being a literacy specialist (coaching, leading professional development, facilitating teacher collaboration, data-based inquiry, program evaluation, etc.). While these are all areas in which UVEI has a long and successful track record, I’m interested to see how Calkins thinks about the literacy specific dimensions.

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, Patrick Radden Keefe

I heard on a podcast that this was a compelling and informative read.

Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens

By wife says I’ll love it, and she is usually right about such things.

Nan Parsons:

Coherence: The Right Drivers in Action for Schools, Districts, and Systems by Michael Fullan and Joanne Quinne

This is a second time around read for me. As I grow as a leader and teacher of leaders, I want to revisit Fullan and Quinn’s work to deepen my understanding and application of The Coherence Framework. I appreciate its focus on bringing people and ideas together to prevent fragmentation of the systems that support student learning.

Voices of Women Aspiring to the Superintendency by Margaret Grogan

Each year a few of our interns face explicit and implicit gender bias as they move into leadership roles in schools. I am interested in the framework that Grogan presents focused on power, gender, and leadership to better understand and support leaders to better understand the contextual factors that play a role in gender bias in our schools.

From Survive to Thrive: A director’s guide for leading an early childhood program by Leekeenan and Pointe

UVEI is seeking to partner with Upper Valley and Sullivan County early childhood program directors to create build their capacity to support teachers in their programs. I am interested in exploring the challenges facing directors to increase my own knowledge and skills as we embark on this important work.

Women Rowing North by Mary Pipher

Each stage of life brings challenges and joys. Ms. Pipher examines the cultural and developmental issues women face as they age and explores ways women cultivate resilient responses to the challenges they face.

Kristen Downey:

Reclaiming Accountability in Teacher Education by Marilyn Cochran-Smith

The New Hampshire Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) Network will be reading Cochran-Smith’s book this summer as a prompt for planning how educator preparation programs can reclaim accountability measures (from accreditation entities, as one example) and focus on an internal commitment to equality and democracy in teacher preparation. I’m looking forward to this discussion.

What Does This Look Like in the Classroom?: Bridging the Gap Between Research and Practice by Carl Hendrick, Robin Macpherson, Oliver Caviglioli

Although it makes me want to tear out my hair, I hear leaders and teachers frequently say that they don’t have time to read research. I suspect that teachers and leaders are actually just not sure which research to spend the time reading. I’m curious what will be highlighted in this book.

The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World by Anthony Brandt and David Eagleman

My creative teacher friend recommended this book.

Chris Ward:

Mathematical Mindsets by Jo Boaler

I know a number of elementary math teachers who are supplementing their curriculum with complex tasks and assessments from this book, and I’d like to explore it as a tool to support our teacher candidates in teaching math for understanding.

Reclaiming Accountability in Teacher Education by Marilyn Cochran-Smith.

Same reason as Kristen!

Motivated: Designing Math Classrooms Where Students Want to Join In by Lani Horn. We know that students’ engagement in school depends on their sense of belongingness, competence, and relevance, and this book discusses those dimensions of engagement in mathematical environments in school. Plus, I will read anything Lani publishes!

Kristin Hubert: (who will, sadly, be leaving UVEI to be the new Director of Curriculum instruction and assessment at Rutland North East Supervisory Union)

Meeting Wise by Kathryn Parker Boudett and Elizabeth A. City

This book establishes an attempt to bring about a fundamental shift in how educators think about the meetings we attend. Next year, I really need to make sure my meeting are purposeful.

How Successful Leaders Develop Teaching and Learning Expertise by Stephen Fink and Anneke Markholt

Vermont central offices are working toward transformation, guided by the direction of these authors and CEL.

Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts by Brene Brown

I’m obsessed with her!!!