What Are We Reading?

Let’s put all the cards on the table before we get into our book list. When we say “reading”, what we really mean is “what pages do we look at after putting the kids to bed”. It’s hard to fit in reading, for professional growth or for fun into a day that is full of work and family. And yet, we try, as we imagine most of you do to.

Given the nature of this project, reading for professional growth has become more important to us. For sure we still try to find the time to read for pleasure but that time is shrinking as we get closer to launching The Shift. Certainly, if we are going to be the conduit through which innovative teaching practices are shared we better have some evidence to fall back on.

We both started by reading Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era. This book was the basis for the companion documentary Most Likely to Succeed, which was screened twice last semester in our board. The documentary itself was attended by over 500 Halton staff and prompted many great conversations in our schools. The film was even shown to students from Milton District High School. The book itself asks, among other things, how should classrooms be changing to reflect the skills needed to be successful in the 21st Century.

We have also moved on to the book Open, by David Price. Open wonders how we’ll work, live and learn in the future. How can our schools evolve in a world where many companies give away their products for free? Likewise, sharing in the 21st century seems to becoming the norm so how can our classrooms and professional relationships reflect that? Certainly we can continue to teach using our current model, which is formal (pre-determined time and place), linear (follows a curriculum) and transmitted one way (teacher to student). Open imagines an education system where learning is social and knowledge is gained as the task or project demands.

At least one of us is reading Burn Math Class (Hint: It’s not Matt). The author, Jason Wilkes,

describes a reordering of the math curriculum where students start with addition and subtraction and create their own mathematical facts based on experimentation and failure. At its core, the novel stresses removing the emphasis on memorization of procedures and instead have students construct methods that make sense to them.

Being a wide-eyed fan of his TED brilliant talks, we have picked up Sir Ken Robinson's Creative

Schools: The Grassroots Revolution that Transforming Education. As we are looking to SHIFT education at HDSB, the promise of direct call to action in this book has brought this one to the top of the "next read" list.

Finally, both of us are looking forward to reading Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a

Traditional Grades School. Neither of us have opened the cover yet but we can’t wait to dive in. Both of us struggle with the question “What is this worth?” or “Is this getting marked?”. Hacking Assessment is about shifting everyone's thinking away from grades. School should be about the learning, not about the number attached to that learning. We can’t wait to start this one!

It is important to remember that no one book or idea is the magic bullet for our schools. Rather, the synthesis of ideas is important, especially when each individual educator thinks about their strengths and areas for growth. Reflection, as always, is important. We can picture a classroom where project based learning is the norm, each student is learning something different so that they can be successful on their own project and the curriculum is delivered in a way that makes sense to each individual student. More than that, each student engages in the classroom not because it is worth a mark but because they want to learn that material. We aren’t there yet, but we are working on it.

Want to learn with us? Consider joining Innovators Mindset, a book club with a twist! If you are an employee of the HDSB you can join in the discussion and get a free copy of the book. Over the course of five evenings the book will be discussed online. Participate from the comfort of your own home, or meet up with friends and collaborate as a group.


We look forward to participating in the conversation.