Academy of One: The Power and Promise of Open-Source Learning
by David Preston, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Md., 2021, 173 pp. with index, $60 hardcover, $30 softcover
The history of schools and teaching is littered with movements and philosophies about how to be successful. Author David Preston says never before has there been a time when teaching can enlighten and inspire as it can today. With the power of digital technology, he visualizes a movement in schooling that is here to stay and increase over time. He has many years working as a teacher, administrator, college professor and consultant. He is a keen observer of what is happening in schooling today.
The author, an organizational consultant, has a simple, interesting writing style that captures the reader’s interest.
Preston believes teachers and students today can connect in ways that empower learning beyond anything possible in times past. Teachers may question their efforts. They may wonder, “Am I really making a difference?” Preston’s answer is simple: “Yes, you are.”
Academy of One paves the way for students to be completely autonomous in their thinking. When students collaborate, they achieve goals that would otherwise be impossible.
The question is, “Are there tools, more importantly, are there ideas that can help teachers engage students and improve learning?” The author says “yes” and offers a revolutionary concept he calls “Open-Source Learning.”
Educators at all levels will find viewpoints and information in this book that will inspire and challenge their thinking about how to approach teaching. Students as Open-Source Learners teach themselves and other students.
Reviewed by Darroll Hargraves, management consultant, School and Community Resources, Wasilla, Alaska
Digital For Good: Raising Kids to Thrive in an Online World
by Richard Culatta, Harvard Business Review Press, Brighton, Mass., 2021, 224 pp., $28 hardcover
In
Digital for Good: Raising Kids to Thrive in an Online World, author Richard Culatta has written a book that outlines how parents and teachers can raise kids who know how to take advantage of the good technology can bring to their lives while avoiding the bad. Culatta offers a framework for preparing kids to be successful in the digital world — one that shifts the focus away from what kid’s shouldn’t do and instead encourages them to use technology proactively and productively.
Culatta is an internationally recognized leader in technology and learning. He currently serves as the CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education, a non-profit serving educational leaders in 127 countries. Prior to joining ISTE, he was appointed by President Barack Obama to lead the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology.
The author points out that using technology proactively, productively and as a tool for good has been largely overlooked, to the detriment of kids. Culatta takes the time as a parent and educator to outline a framework for parents and educators to use with their children/students to help them properly harness technology for the good while avoiding the bad.
As a father of four, Culatta approaches this hot button subject as a hands-on parent who is willing to hand a child a device with parental oversight and positive influence.
Culatta outlines five qualities parents or teachers need to consider for kids to become thriving and contributing members of the digital world. The qualities include a balanced use of technology, monitoring use, being open minded, being engaged in technology and being vigilant. Each of these qualities takes time by the parent or teacher but the payoff will be a better-balanced user of technology.
I would recommend
Digital for Good to school administrators who are looking for ways to help the community, parents and children navigate the digital world. Given the issues encountered by schools during COVID, some concepts the authors provide could lead to better conversations with parents about student use of technology not only in the school but also at home.
Review by William A. Clark, visiting assistant professor, University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, Bradford, Pa.
Districts that Succeed: Breaking the Correlation Between Race, Poverty, and Achievement
by Karin Chenoweth, Harvard Education Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2021. 186 pp. with index, $32 softcover
Information on district improvement is hard to come by. In
Districts that Succeed, Karin Chenoweth uses her journalistic skills to show how five districts, large and small, have out-performed peers in improving student achievement success.
Chenoweth uses research by Sean Reardon, a sociologist at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, that identifies districts where students made the most academic growth in grades 3 through 8. After extensive interviews with six of those districts — large and small — Chenoweth reports on the enormous wellspring of knowledge, expertise and passion that she found.
While each district is unique, Chenoweth found three common threads: (1) Leadership: Strong committed leaders that believe in the “capacity of schools to make kids smarter”; (2) Scientific Method: Rigorous data driven decision making that allows them to do more of what works; (3) Systems Support: Collaboration and the creation of a culture of “figuring it out” together.
In
Districts that Succeed, Chenoweth gives readers an inside seat on the ups — and downs — of improving an entire district. Each chapter provides insights into how six districts learned to improve. The most powerful question, she says, is “Your kids are doing better than mine. What are you doing?” She cites examples of how teachers, principals and superintendents do this consistently over time to keep improving student learning.
Chenoweth ends by noting, “Kids can get smarter. We can all get smarter. We just have to muster the will to do so.” Districts that Succeed is a great book for anyone wanting to rise to that challenge of making districts better. There are many positive lessons here for school board, district leaders and building leaders.
Reviewed by Larry L. Nyland, retired superintendent, Seattle, Wash.
Building Learning Capacity in an Age of Uncertainty: Leading an Agile and Adaptive School
by James A. Bailey, Routledge, New York, N.Y., 2021, 194 pp., $125 hardcover, $35.95 softcover
Building Learning Capacity in an Age of Uncertainty, written by consultant and former superintendent James Bailey, is comprehensive and ambitious.
Bailey speaks to the complexities and rapidly changing contexts of school leadership and makes a compelling case for “updating our current operating system” toward more speed, adaptability and memory.
Throughout the book, Bailey builds a coherent model for exploring this new operating system, which requires learning agility, adaptability, generative learning and a new vision for capacity. This new vision includes capacity as both a noun and a verb. As a noun, “capacity” refers to the set of defined processes and conditions that help a school organize for learning at the individual, team and organizational level around a central purpose. Capacity as a verb is defined as using processes to promote interaction for learning at the individual, team and organizational level to build more dynamic agility and adaptability.
Building on his model, each chapter begins with a vignette of a newly hired principal whose questions and experiences relate to a specific dimension of capacity. The dimensions include capacity as: organizational learning processes; organizational conditions; individual skills and beliefs, and effective teaming.
The book is both scholarly and practical. The author cites research from a wide array of disciplines and sectors and thoughtfully integrates it into the development and discussion of his model. As a practical guide, the book includes extensive diagnostic tools to be used individually or collectively to assess each dimension of capacity. In addition, at the end of each chapter there are team considerations for further reflection.
Most importantly,
Building Learning Capacity in an Age of Uncertainty reminds all of us that learning is our most essential work.
Reviewed by Mary B. Herrmann, teaching associate professor in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Bannockburn, Ill.
Getting the Message: The Wisdom of Listening and Thinking
by George A. Goens, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Md., 2021, 125 pp. with index, $37 hardcover
The title of George A. Goens’ book,
Getting the Message: The Wisdom of Listening and Thinking, communicates both its goal to deconstruct the skill of active listening and the idiomatic admonition to understand what is being said. It illustrates the point that listening requires both an openness to discourse and an interpretation of its purpose.
Goens, an experienced teacher and former superintendent, illustrates how we come to conversations with perspectives and expectations that can hinder or prevent understanding. Previous negative experiences with an audience or a topic often close our minds. Personal values can block our openness to those of others. Rather than listen, our posture may want to argue and challenge.
The book explicates how discourse is situational and takes various forms, asking participants to alter their role accordingly. For example, a verbal order doesn’t invite a debate. A monologue doesn’t expect a dialogue.
Getting the Message goes to great lengths to describe every element of discourse and reads like a compendium of definitions, spending little time on each aspect or example. Its goal is to provide an understanding of what it means to truly listen, not to school the reader in how to achieve the humility, empathy, emotional intelligence and self-reflection necessary to engage openly and constructively with others.
Effective listening skills are essential for school leaders who must communicate with diverse audiences of various ages and constituent interests.
Getting the Message: The Wisdom of Listening and Thinking would better serve this need if it more fully described how to acquire these skills.
Reviewed by J. Michael Wilhelm, consultant, Maine Department of Education, Casco, Maine
The Unfinished Leader: A School Leadership Framework for Growth and Development
by Mike Lubelfeld, Nick Polyak and P.J. Caposey, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Md., 2021, 180 pp., $35 softcover
“Unfinished leaders know that only through their own growth will they be able to adequately support the growth of others.”
That’s one of the compelling points raised in
The Unfinished Leader, a book containing practical and applicable strategies for continuing one’s own growth in order to help others grow.
The work is the product of three active Illinois superintendents and authors — Mike Lubelfeld of North Shore School District 112, Nick Polyak of Leyden Community High School District 212 and P.J. Caposey of Meridian CUSD 223. They stay on point with their messages of being true to oneself, lifting up others, communicating your message and, most of all, continuing to develop. In this book, you will find the same compassion, storytelling and passion that those who know these leaders see in person.
Each of the 15 chapters contains practical nuggets of wisdom. Some reflect what resourceful superintendents do already, but everyone will find some new way to thrive and help others to be successful through this book. The key takeaways and reflective questions at the end of each chapter make this easy to turn into a leadership read for your district team or area superintendent book club.
The best section in this book is the final one, which focuses on the change process. The ideas shared and reflective questions help you digest what is happening and how to move forward to best support your students, staff and communities.
Reviewed by Nancy Wagner, superintendent, River Trails School District 26, Mt. Prospect, Ill.