What I’m Reading Now
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Every educator that I have talked to about this book has called it “life-changing”, saying that it has changed how they approach their profession. With those kinds of reviews, I knew I couldn’t pass this book up.
“As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return. – Description on Goodreads
Engage Families from Lynn Dierking and the USS Constitution Museum
Lynn Dierking is one of the foremost thinkers and writers in the field of museums today. Her book, co-written with John Falk, Learning from Museums, is one of my favorites. For this Engage Families project, she collaborated with the USS Constitution Museum to create a guide to developing, designing, facilitating, and evaluating museum exhibits and programs for families.
BEETLES: Better Environmental Education, Teaching, Learning & Expertise Sharing
I love the work that BEETLES is doing. According to their website, they are “a collection of passionate science and environmental educators devoted to improving the quality of outdoor science education.” They have a vast library of resources for program leaders, field staff, and more. These resources extend beyond simple lesson plans to guides for staff training, overarching program development recommendations, videos of their principles in action, and so much more.
Visual Thinking Strategies
Discovering Visual Thinking Strategies early on in my tenure at the Harvard Extension School was revolutionary. Reading the “Thinking Through Art” report out of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was incredibly insightful. This approach to museum education – that “close looking” observation skills were more important to cultivate than were a recitation of facts was an incredible paradigm shift. I have been employing their principles and approach in my work ever since.
Design Thinking for Educators
This framework from Ideo has been influential in shifting my instructional design approach to a learner centered process. Their toolkit has a wealth of worksheets, best practices and insights to help you put your learner at the center of your instructional design process.
Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe
Understanding by Design is a classic. As the introduction to the book’s white paper states “The Understanding by Design offers a planning process and structure to guide curriculum, assessment, and instruction.” The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) website offers a wide range of tools to learn more about this approach to curriculum development.
Cult of Pedagogy
This podcast (and accompanying blog) provide excellent interviews and accessible insights into best practices and trends in education. The podcast’s host, Jennifer Gonzalez, describes the project this way: “With this site, I hope to create what I did not have myself: a vibrant, encouraging, stimulating community of teachers, supporting each other toward excellence.”
Museum Education Roundtable
I have been a member of MER since 2017 and love reading their publications each quarter. They have a wealth of articles in their archive as well.
Curiosity Research
The more I have looked into the cognitive science behind the benefits of being curious, the more I become convinced that fostering curiosity in learners of all ages is one of the most powerful facets of education we can focus on.
Podcasts
I’m a big podcast fan. Listening to how other experts communicate their content with clarity and humor is a great way to get not only learn new things but also to get ideas for how to convey my own work effectively.
