 | The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything in Business by Patrick Lencioni
Reserve through the Heartland AEA Library.
Read it online through your Mackin VIA subscription – Login with your school’s username/password
The
author makes the case that there is no better way to achieve
improvement in an organization than by attacking the root causes of
dysfunction, politics and confusion. He uses stories, tips and anecdotes
to introduce a model for achieving organizational health. This model
involves four principles: building a cohesive leadership team; creating
clarity; over-communicating clarity; and reinforcing clarity. |
 | Why Race and Culture Matter in Schools by Tyrone Howard
Reserve through the Heartland AEA Library.
While
race and culture remain important variables in how young people
experience schools, they are often misunderstood by educators and school
personnel. Building on the work of three studies that investigated
schools successful in closing the achievement gap, Tyrone Howard shows
how adopting greater awareness and comprehensive understanding of race
and culture can improve educational outcomes. |
 | Building Teachers’ Capacity for Success: A Collaborative Approach for Coaches and School Leaders by Pete Hall
Reserve through the Heartland AEA Library.
Educators
know that teachers are a school’s most essential strength. In the book,
the authors offer a straightforward plan to help site-based
administrators and instructional coaches collaborate to bring out the
best in every teacher, build a stronger and more cohesive staff and
achieve greater academic success. Their model of Strength-Based School
Improvement is an alternative to a negative, deficit-approach focused on
fixing what s wrong. Instead, they show school leaders how to achieve
their goals by working together to maximize what’s right. |
 | On Your Mark: Challenging the Conventions of Grading and Reporting by Thomas Guskey
Reserve through the Heartland AEA Library.
On
Your Mark asserts the need to align grading and reporting practices to
truly reflect what students are learning in K-12 classrooms. The changes
this book outlines might be controversial. Adjusting any system that
has been in place for centuries will cause tension, yet we owe it to our
students to make sure grades accurately communicate their progress and
help them improve. Rather than continuing down the wrong path out of
delusion, fear or tradition, we must use research to boldly move forward
and better serve our students. |
 | Inevitable: Mass Customized Learning in the Age of Empowerment (New Edition) by Charles Schwab and Beatrice McGarvey
Reserve through the Heartland AEA Library.
Meeting
the individual learning needs of every learner, every hour, of every
day although espoused by educators, has only been a dream.....an
impossible dream for educators facing student-teacher ratios of 25 to 1.
But, alas, it is now a reality....a reality that is hiding in plain
sight. The book describes a detailed vision of how schools can change
from the present outdated Industrial Age, assembly line structure to a
mass customized learning structure with the capacity to meet the
individual learning needs of every learner.....that's every learner, not
some, not most, but every learner. |
 | What Connected Educators Do Differently by Todd Whitaker, Jeffrey Zoul and Jimmy Casas
Todd
Whitaker, Jeffrey Zoul and Jimmy Casas are widely acclaimed experts on
teaching and leading and are pioneers in the education Twitterverse, and
now they are sharing their best practices! In the book, they show how
being a connected educator—by using social media to connect with peers
across the country and even across the globe—will greatly enhance your
own learning and your success in a school or classroom. You’ll find out
how to create a personal and professional learning network to share
resources and ideas, gain support and make an impact on others. |
 | Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How Create a Culture of Innovation by Adam Bryant
In
the book, author Adam Bryant draws on interviews with more than two
hundred CEOs to offer business leaders the wisdom and guidance to move
an organization faster, to be quick and nimble, and to rekindle the
whatever-it-takes collective spark of a start-up workplace, all with the
goal of innovating and thriving in a relentlessly challenging global
economy. As the world shifts to more of a knowledge economy, the winners
will be companies that can attract and retain the best and brightest
employees by creating an environment where they can grow, contribute and
feel rewarded. |
 | Switch: How to Change Things when Change is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Reserve through the Heartland AEA Library.
Read it online through your Mackin VIA subscription – Login with your school’s username/password
Psychologists
have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems—the
rational mind and the emotional mind—that compete for control. The
rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that
Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the
emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension
can doom a change effort—but if it is overcome, change can come quickly. |
 | Engage, Empower, Energize: Leading Tomorrow’s Schools Today by Robert Dillon
In
an era of high stakes accountability, testing, and standardization in
education, Dr. Robert Dillon attempts to bring the student back into the
center of the learning. This book is ideal for school leaders and
teacher leaders that are searching for a new way to inject fresh energy
and ideas into their learning spaces. |
 | Unmistakable Impact: A Partnership Approach for Dramatically Improving Instruction by Jim Knight
Reserve through the Heartland AEA Library.
Jim
Knight describes how to translate staff members’ joy of learning into
high-leverage practices that impact student achievement. Characteristics
of Impact Schools include a focused, clearly defined improvement plan
that takes into account the complexity of teaching and learning
relationships; a school culture that encourages enrollment in ongoing
professional development; and alignment of purpose and actions among all
staff members. |
