Education, standards, and teaching methods are continuously evolving with new research. As teachers, it is important to stay up-to-date on the latest ideas regarding all things in the classroom so our students receive the best education they can get.
Here is a descriptive list with links to 20 of our favorite professional development books for teachers of any subject and grade. Time to get reading!
1. Assessing with Respect: Everyday Practices That Meet Students' Social and Emotional Needs
This book for teachers focuses on the social and emotional aspects of education and how to assess students in a healthy, positive, and self-motivating way. The goal is to encourage students to be lifelong learners by creating a safe environment around learning and student outcomes.
2. The First Days of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher Revised Edition
Acclaimed Author Harry Wong shares personal stories and classroom examples regarding connected learning and efficient teaching strategies for any classroom. This best-selling book is widely used by institutions and individuals to learn about classroom management and how to foster innovative thinkers.
3. Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters
Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst do it again with this practical guide on how to inspire your students to get the most out of reading. With humor and accounts from real teachers, they captivate readers and explain how teachers can help their students deeply comprehend any text and develop basic practices to foster lifelong readers.
4. Empower: What Happens When Students Own Their Learning
Well, the title says it all! John Spencer gives a modern approach to teaching by showing you how to provide students with the confidence to take control of their own learning experience.
5. Understanding By Design
Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe have many books for educators regarding how to design an effective curriculum. His beliefs with classroom instruction are backed by feedback from a variety of educators: K - 12th learning and beyond.
6. I Wish My Teacher Knew: How One Question Can Change Everything for Our Kids
This book by Kyle Schwartz began with one simple fill-in-the-blank question, but the responses started an important discussion about what students want from their education. The personal accounts and ideas will give you insight and inspiration for your own classroom.
7. An Educator's Guide to STEAM: Engaging Students Using Real-World Problems
What is a STEAM classroom? Danielle Herro and Cassie Quigley show us how it can be implemented in your K-8 classrooms. They use real-world accounts of its success with elementary teachers and secondary teachers. They also discuss its diverse uses in urban schools as well as collaborating with traditional models.
8. Teach Like a PIRATE: Increase Student Engagement, Boost Your Creativity, and Transform Your Life as an Educator
Dave Burgess's best-selling teacher guide has tons of ideas for active learning and effective teaching that will give you and your students a boost in creativity, engagement in literacy, and collaboration.
9. Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities
John Warner was a college writing teacher for twenty years and realized the way we teach writing isn't as effective as it can be. This book dives into the writing process and the dozens of practices that have led to a decline in successful academic writing in our universities.
10. Positive Mindset Habits for Teachers: 10 Steps to Reduce Stress, Increase Student Engagement and Reignite Your Passion for Teaching
This is one of the best books on classroom management for you to feel inspired and reinvigorated for your classroom. It provides insight and ways to amplify student engagement, reduce lesson planning stress, and over-working outside of the classroom.
11. Because of a Teacher: Stories of the Past to Inspire the Future of Education
This book is all about educators with ideas. There are 15 personal accounts from all types of teachers and administrators in the school system. Their stories will uplift you and give you hope for the future of teaching.
12. Ratchetdemic: Reimagining Academic Success
Christopher Emdin is a best-selling author with an empowering education philosophy regarding inclusion and awareness as the center of student learning. His focus on social justice helps to build an antiracist classroom where students feel safe and understood. If you like this book, check out his others!
13. Courageous Conversations About Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools and Beyond
This book opens up an honest discussion about race and how it factors into our schools. Fostering a trauma-sensitive classroom is something we should all be working towards, and this is an in-depth guide to making it happen.
14. Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students
This book dives into the science and research regarding the brain, how we learn, and what affects us cognitively in the classroom. Read and learn how to foster the correct teaching environment best-suited for your students and their ever-growing and absorbing brains.
15. Blended Learning with Google: Your Guide to Dynamic Teaching and Learning (Shake Up Learning)
In this day and age, technology is essential in our classrooms. We are coming into a culture of creativity where we can use Google and its features to help us and our students get the most out of education going into the modern world.
16. Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy
Cultivating Genius is a guide to promoting an understanding of the journey and struggles of literacy among students of color. Throughout the book, Gholdy Muhammad focuses on showing you how to foster key learning objectives in your classroom regarding reading, writing, and critical thinking.
17. If You Don't Feed the Teachers They Eat the Students!: Guide to Success for Administrators and Teachers
This book is a guide to all things regarding education. A must-read for teachers and administrators, with stories, insights, and tips for how to make your students motivated and your workload fun and light.
18. Not Light, but Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classroom
Inspired by Frederick Douglass and his passion for justice and equality, this book will light a fire underneath you and your students to pursue meaningful discussions about modern-day issues regarding race and how it affects our success inside and outside of the academic arena.
19. Better Than Carrots or Sticks: Restorative Practices for Positive Classroom Management
The carrot-and-stick approach is all about creating a classroom climate of compassion, openness, and collaboration. It gets into ways to manage difficult grades (such as middle school) and tips for how to maintain a healthy and positive communication channel between yourself and your students, and your students with one another.
20. Happy Teachers Change the World: A Guide for Cultivating Mindfulness in Education
This book is based on the Plum Village approach to teaching mindfulness practices in education. It provides a step-by-step guide to how to create a safe place for students of any age to learn and develop into healthy and confident members of their communities.
Final Thoughts
I hope you find some useful books that inspire you and help you become a more well-rounded teacher for your students! Happy Reading!
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