Library Pro Tips

December 2024 | The Fred Factor | 2004 | Mark Sanborn | ISBN 9780385513518

This book provides simple and clear truisms about how to act and interact with other people, personally and professionally, as illustrated through the actions of a postal worker named Fred.

pp9-10) “...there are no insignificant or ordinary jobs when they’re performed by significant and extraordinary people.”

p39) “The most important people in our lives deserve our best attention.”

p86) “Every organization in the world today should be teaching employees how to be extraordinary.”

p111) “In the end it isn’t what we want to do or plan to do but what we actually do that makes any difference.”

November 2024 | Making Connections | 1994 | Renate N. Caine & Geoffrey Caine | ISBN 9780201490886

This book is themed around brain-based research (neuropsychology) and was three decades before its time as schools today grapple with student engagement, stress, relevant curriculum, and how to prepare teachers to orchestrate immersive learning experiences for their students. [This classic may be a challenge to find in print but each inevitable ‘Aha!’ will justify the effort.]

p19) “Regrettably, most schools do not engage students in the reflection, inquiry, and critical thinking needed to help them cope with and take charge of the influences of technology and the media.”

p81) “It deals with our sense of logical consistency. From this perspective, we feel threatened or violated whenever we are asked to believe something that logically conflicts with a prior belief.”

p101) “What we have in education today is an extreme emphasis on what we call surface knowledge, which is basically content devoid of significance to the learner. What is needed, we suggest, is the expansion of natural knowledge.”

p125) “When projects and subjects overlap, when teachers discuss subject matter with each other, when respect for learning is reflected in the physical environment of the school, and when we encourage interactions and experiences to focus on class activities or subject matter outside of class, we are truly immersing students in an environment that capitalizes on learning.”

October 2024 | The First 90 Days | 2013 | Michael D. Watkins | ISBN 9781422188613

This book provides and explains a comprehensive roadmap summary for anyone moving from one position of formal authority to a new position with greater levels of formal authority, whether in the same organization or a new one.

p20) “It’s a mistake to believe that you will be successful in your new job by continuing to do what you did in your previous job, only more so.”

p123) “Close personal relationships are rarely compatible with effective supervisory ones.”

p167) “There is nothing to be gained by criticizing the people who led the organization before you arrived.”

p236) “Ultimately, your success or failure will flow from all the small choices you make along the way.”

September 2024 | The Coddling of the American Mind | 2018 | Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt | ISBN 9780735224896

This book – an homage of sorts to Allan Bloom’s 1987 classic of similar title – presents and weights the impending danger of treating adolescents like children and adults like tribal members with reduced personal liberty and responsibility.

p23) “Given that risks and stressors are natural, unavoidable parts of life, parents and teachers should be helping kids develop their innate abilities to grow and learn from such experiences.”

p104) “…in today’s culture of safetyism, intent no longer matters; only perceived impact does, and thanks to concept creep, just about anything can be perceived as having a harmful – even violent – impact...”

p161) “Both depression and anxiety cause changes in cognition, including a tendency to see the world as more dangerous and hostile than it really is.”

p259) “A community in which members hold one another accountable for using evidence to substantiate their assertions is a community that can, collectively, pursue truth in the age of outrage.”

August 2024 | The Power of Positive Leadership | 2017 | Jon Gordon | ISBN 9781119351979

This book – a 10-year sequel to “The Energy Bus” (2007) – presents a framework of common and effective principles used by successful leaders of companies, teams, and schools.

p9) “It takes a lot of work to create a world-class organization. It’s hard to develop a successful team.”

p56) “As a leader you must remember that events are going to happen. Challenges are going to come your way.”

p161) “The most important legacies you will leave as a leader are people and a world that have been impacted by your leadership, life, and presence.”

p175) “Leadership is knowing that the critics will criticize you while still saying what needs to be said and doing what needs to be done.”

July 2024 | The Global Achievement Gap | 2008 | Tony Wagner | ISBN 9780465002290

This book defines two different achievement gaps while detailing numerous challenges that exist in schools across America that the author personally experienced as a teacher and principal and then observed and researched while seeking improvement strategies.

p53) “I have consistently found that the kinds of questions students are asked and the extent to which a teacher challenges students to explain their thinking or expand their answers are reliable indicators of the level of intellectual rigor in a class.”

p66) “They discovered that their principals could usually name their weakest teachers, but they had little to say about what they had done or might do to help their teachers become more effective.”

p145) “Very few teacher preparation programs focus on developing the skills needed to be an effective teacher, and they rarely give student teachers meaningful teaching experiences with knowledgeable and effective supervisors.”

p189) “...in order for young people to respect learning and school, we need to think more carefully about what we’re asking them to learn—to ensure that schoolwork is not busy-work or make-work but real, adult work that requires both analysis and creativity.”

June 2024 | Good to Great | 2001 | Jim Collins | ISBN 9780066620992

This book examines a specialized group of high performing companies to methodically identify causes for their success. The organizational, managerial, and leadership lessons presented are as useful in schools as they are around the corporate square.

p11) “Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice.”

p26) “Level 5 leaders want to see the company even more successful in the next generation, comfortable with the idea that most people won’t even know that the roots of that success trace back to their efforts.”

p174) “The good-to-great companies understood a simple truth: Tremendous power exists in the fact of continued improvement and the delivery of results.”

p195) “The point is not what core values you have, but that you have core values at all, that you know what they are, that you build them explicitly into the organization, and that you preserve them over time.”

May 2024 | Focus | 2018 | Mike Schmoker | ISBN 9781416626343

This book reminds us that effective teaching and the learning which results in student achievement is not overly complicated or necessarily tethered to expensive technology tools. Students need to read and write better and we have the recipe.

p61) “Our general failure to understand and implement the basic structure of an effective lesson accounts for a staggering amount of the failure we observe in schools.”

p106) “How often do administrators and evaluators reward and recognize the successful use of classroom discussion — ‘grounded in text’?”

p111) “...students need to see how good writers organize their arguments, write effective sentences, and choose appropriate language.”

p237) “...we could truly transform science education – by integrating the teaching of content with simple, powerful literacy, lecture, and science activities.”

April 2024 | Leadership On The Line | 2002 | Ronald A. Heifetz & Marty Linsky | ISBN 9781578514373

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the intricate challenges that leaders face from without and from within. For those individuals who want to avoid or minimize the pitfalls that they are likely to encounter, this is classic reading and re-reading.

p95) “Sometimes, modeling the behavior you are asking of others presents itself as an even more powerful way than just words…”

p114) “You’ll need to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

p223) “Exercising leadership is a way of giving meaning to your life by contributing to the lives of others. At its best, leadership is a labor of love.”

p234) “The practice of leadership requires the capacity to keep asking basic questions of yourself and the people in your organization and community.”

March 2024 | Student-Centered Leadership | 2011 | Viviane Robinson | ISBN 9780470874134

This book is an excellent starting place for aspiring leaders and it is an impactful study resource for individuals who have been school leaders long enough to realize we must always operate in a cycle of continuous improvement.

p51) “…people respect leadership that can own problems and take responsibility for solving them.”

pp75-76) “Protecting instructional time means minimizing disruptions to scheduled classes through pull-out programs, special events, test preparation, and general end-of-year or end-of-semester slowdowns. It also means reducing interruptions to classes through announcements and other administrative intrusions.” (Italics added by S4E)

p110) “…leaders confuse provision for individual teacher career development with professional development, and the latter agenda is then dominated by activities that are not linked to student needs.”

p145) “Arguably, direct involvement in teacher professional learning is the most powerful way that leaders can influence the quality of teaching and learning in their school.”