Reading and Resources

  

BOOKS ON EDUCATION & TEACHING

Below is a list of books that have inspired me to want to work with students, served as part of my teacher education, or guided my goals and hopes for the kind of teacher I want to become.

Consensus in the classroom: fostering a lively learning communityz by Linda Sartor & Molly Young Brown

Fist, stick, knife, gun: a personal history of violence in America by Geoffrey Canada, 1995

Why we teach by Sonia Nieto, 2005

Managing conflict through communication by Ruth Anna Abigail and Dudley D. Cahn, 2010

How to differentiate instruction in mixed-ability classrooms by Carol Ann Tomlinson, 2001

Understanding by design, 2nd edition by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, 2005

This we believe: keys to educating young adolescents by the National Middle School Association, 2010

Teachers, schools and society: a brief introduction to education by David M. Sadker and Karen Zittleman, 2007

Contemporary readings in curriculum by B.S. Stern and M. Kysilka, 2008

Doing school: how we are creating a generation of stressed out, materialistic, and miseducated students by D.C. Pope, 2001



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BOOKS ON SCIENCE & OUR GLOBAL WORLD 

This list includes books and articles that have shown me how truly fascinating, relevant, and interconnected to other fields many topics in biology are. I have also included science trade books appropriate for 6-12 students. I think it is important for students to read at least one book in the field of science that is not a traditional textbook. I would like for all of my students to have the opportunity to read a novel, a series of essays or interviews, or even a comic book that reveals the human side of scientists we study, the unusual applications of theories, the humbling "science gone bad" experiments, the creativity required for research and experimentation, and other aspects that help to create a fuller picture of "the nature of science".


Silent spring by Rachel Carson, 1962

A brief history of nearly everything and A walk in the woods by Bill Bryson, 1998 and 2003

A brief history of time by Stephen Hawkins, 1996

The botany of desire by Michael Pollan, 2001

Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed by Jared M. Diamond, 2006

Fossil Fish Found Alive: Discovering the Coelacanth by Sally M. Walker, 2002 (9-12th grade)

Student atlas of the world by National Geographic, 2009 (9-12th grade)




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BOOKS FOR STUDENTS

Independent reading empowers students and helps support life-long learning. I think as a teacher it is important to make an effort to learn what students like to read. I hope to support students in reading books which spark their interest even when they are not directly related to the content of the course I am teaching. I think students and teachers both benefit from reading materials beyond the textbook or scope of the class. Below are just a few books, fiction and nonfiction, that I have really enjoyed reading along with middle and high school age students I know or have met through my  teaching experiences, or which I enjoyed when I was younger. Beside each title, where possible, is an estimate for the reading level of the work. 



The boy who harnessed the wind 

by William Kamkwamba

A long way gone: memoirs of a boy soldier (7.0) by Ishmael Beah 

Out of war: true stories from the front lines by Sara J. Cameron

Into the wild (9.0) by Jon Krakauer

Ender's game (9.0) by Orson Scott Card

To kill a mockingbird (8.1) by Harper Lee

Speak (7.1) by Laurie Halse Anderson

The Alchemist (6.8) by Paulo Coelho

Watership Down (7.4) by Richard Adams

Th1rteen R3asons Why (7.0) by Jay Asher


The golden compasses trilogy (6.7-7.6) 

by Philip Pullman 

Anne Frank: diary of a young girl (6.5) by Anne Frank

The chronicles of Narnia (6.0) by C. S. Lewis 

My side of the mountain (6.7) by Jean Craighead George

A separate peace (8.9) by John Knowles

Hatchet (6.3) by Gary Paulsen

The giver (5.9) by Lois Lowry

Siddhartha (8.9) by Hermann Hesse

The secret life of bees (7.2) by Sue Monk Kidd

Life of Pi: a novel (7.2)

 by Yann Martel

The kite runner (6.8) by Khaled Hosseini

Everything is illuminated (7.5) by Jonathan Safran Foer

Don Quixote (12.0) by Miguel de Cervantes Saaverdra

Ishmael: an adventure of the mind & spirit by Daniel Quinn

Children of the river (5.6) by Linda Crew




 


 
 

Thought flows in terms of stories - stories about events, stories about people, and stories about intentions and achievements. The best teachers are the best story tellers. We learn in the form of stories.
— Frank Smith

 

Scientists are happy, of course, when they find answers to questions. But scientists are also happy when they become stuck, when they discover interesting questions that they cannot answer. Because that is when their imaginations and creativity are set on fire. That is when the greatest progress occurs.
— Alan Lightman


“If we try to resolve terrorism with military might and nothing else, then we will be no safer than we were before 9/11. If we truly want a legacy of peace for our children, we need to understand that this is a war that will ultimately be won with books, not with bombs.
— Greg Mortenson

 

One of the single most important things we can do with our students is talk with them–talk with them, not to or at them. 
— Linda Sartor & Molly Young Brown


The unexamined life is not worth living. 
— Socrates

 

To construct cooperatively is to lay the foundations of a peacful community.
— Sylvia Ashton-Warner



Children already come to us differentiated. It just makes sense that we would differentiate our instruction in response to them. 
— Carol Ann Tomlinson

Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.
— John Dewey

 

Man is not alone on this planet. He is part of a community, upon which he depends absolutely.
— Daniel Quinn

 

Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
— John Dewey

 
The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think -- rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.

— John Dewey

 

It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.
— Albert Einstein

 

You have to get to the root of causes by promoting environmental rehabilitation and empowering people to do things for themselves. What is done for the people without involving them cannot be sustained.
— Wangari Maathai


The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. 
— Albert Einstein 


It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them - the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky 


I believe my own good fortune brings with it a responsibility to give back to the world...And I believe that through our natural inventiveness, creativity and willingness to solve tough problems, we're going to make some amazing achievements.
- Bill Gates 

If you want the future generations to live in peace, we must invest in the protection of the environment and we must train especially our young people.
— Wangari Maathai 


Man's mind stretched to a new idea never does back to its original dimensions. 
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.    

 

I know of no other safe depository of the ultimate power of society but the people themselves and if we think [the people] not enlightened enough to exercise that control with a wholesome discretion the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. 
— Thomas Jefferson 


A thousand candles can be lit by a single candle. 
— Buddha 

 

Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength of the nation. 
— John F. Kennedy
 

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