- Teaching as Leadership - The Teach For America manuals started it all for me. Introduced me to the importance of backwards planning.
- Tools for Teaching by Fred Jones - Given to me by my first principal. Every chapter and possibly every page had an important idea that I'd immediately wished I'd started out with.
- Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol - Friends and coworkers had referred to Kozol's books as a source of inspiration. What I took from this book was a deeper sense of how unequal our society can be and perhaps how there has been some real progress in the last 20 years even though we are still far off from true equality.
- Whatever it Takes by Paul Tough - I'd heard about the book over a year ago and already knew something about the Harlem Children's Zone, but I really learned something from this book. It took a deep gaze into how HCZ operates and how it has succeeded where others have failed. I truly came to appreciate the importance of early education through reading this.
- Teaching with Love and Logic by Jim Fay and David Funk - I haven't read more than a few excerpts from this book, but the lessons learned this far have shown me that it belongs on this list. Communicating your genuine concern is easy to do and it works.
I'll just add that while they may not have published books, Doug Lemov and Dan Meyer have had real things to say and we all need to catch up to them.
