Put on your Shelf from #cftrecommendations

Some pieces to embrace over the next few weeks as you look to learn.

• Brain Pickings shared a simple, powerful piece from the book, Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience, written by E.B White.  The piece entitled, E.B. White’s Beautiful Letter to a Man who had lost Faith in Humanity, brings home the value of hope and faith.  White captures it in his letter.
• Harnessing the Power of PLCs, an article written by Richard DuFour, tells the story of how PLCs are used at Adlai Stevenson High School in IL.  It appeared in the May 2014 issue of Educational Leadership.  DuFour was the superintendent of the school district and launched the PLC movement at Stevenson.  If you don’t know a lot about PLCs, this article would be a good first read to see what impact it had on one school district.
• Digital Reading Poses Learning Challenges for Students appeared in EdWeek May 6, 2014, written by Benjamin Herold.  It isn’t just that reading a piece can be challenging on a computer or tablet, it is more about all the bells and whistles that are ever-present can be quite distracting for students.  This article points out that computers may compromise the ability of students to focus on their reading or learn more deeply.  I found this article enlightening and important.
• Good professional learning for faculty depends on how well it is planned.  This is the message from Thomas Guskey in Planning Professional Learning, an article he wrote for the May 2014 issue of Educational Leadership.  Guskey has written other pieces on professional development, most notably his book on Evaluating Professional Development.  He suggests that those of us involved in planning professional development, plan for results not for processes.  The professional learning needs to be “job-embedded, contextually relevant, and based on results from surveys that capture what teachers really need.
• In How to Build Schools Where Adults Learn, Kevin Fahey and Jacy Ippolito, share their vision for how to craft a culture where adult learning sets an example for student learning.  The article appeared in JSD, a publication of Learning Forward, April 2014.  They point out that adults in schools need: (1) a learning practice as well as a teaching practice; (2) to understand that adult learning changes over time; and (3) to understand that as adults’ learning practice makes a difference in their teaching practice.  An interesting article that parallels nicely with Guskey’s article about planning meaningful professional learning.
• Finally, link to Its About Learning for Bo Adams #mustreads shares (weekly).  He shares a post weekly that aggregates some good information for educators or learners to be aware of.  Take a look!

Share your thoughts and comments about any of these pieces.  If you have some interesting readings that you want to share, post them in a comment box.