Our (Sort of Secret) Summer Reading List for Educators
Our (Sort of Secret) Summer Reading List for Educators
It’s summer time! We are used to seeing or maybe even assigning summer reading lists for students, but this post is a little different. This is our summer reading list for adults, more specifically a summer reading list for educators. Whether you are looking for great beach reads, inspirational books to help motivate you for the upcoming year, or a good fiction book that helps you escape the daunting teacher tasks that are hiding behind the month of July, this list should have a book for you. So let’s start reading!
The Summer Reading List We’re Proud of
Topping off our Inspirational Reading List is the book, The Wild Card: 7 Steps to an Educator’s Creative Breakthrough by Hope and Wade King. This book has changed the way we look at school. Once we read this book we revamped our lessons and looked at ways to make them better. Put this at the top of your must read list!
Have you ever read a book that made you wish you could start over as an educator? Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess did that for us. It challenged all of our plans for the year and made us look at our classes as opportunities to create experiences for our students. This would be such a great school-wide book study.
Does this scenario sound familiar: a teacher gives zeroes to a student who never turns in his homework. In actuality that student deserves a gold medal for surviving his home-life each night. This book sheds light on the home life that many of our students secretly and bravely endure. It is written in small snippets, making it very easy to read. The fact that this is written from the standpoint of how the author overcame his upbringing inspired me to use portions of it as a book study with some of my older elementary students. It would be great for middle school and high school students, too.
If you work with, talk to, live near, wave at, or ever have any encounter ever with another human, you need to read this book. I often say that if people could all walk around with buttons pinned to them explaining what they are going through or what they have overcome, we might have a lot more patience and understanding with each other. This book does a great job of teaching the reader how to look beyond a person’s behavior to understand the why behind their actions.
Books We Are Going to Read this Summer
Do you know how many times I have asked the question, “Why don’t we have a reality show?!” The scenarios that are witnessed in school offices each day are so funny! I have also threatened to “ghost-write” a book in the future. It would sort of be like The Help. You know, how she used a different name but errbody knew who each story was about. Anyway, I love thinking that Gerry Brooks and I think alike. He sees the humor and the life lessons that can be learned from the daily encounters we have each day. I can’t wait to read this!
The title alone intrigues me. I’m a big dreamer, and I love to imagine what a school would look like if I could design it myself. Similarly, this author set out on a cross-country adventure to see what the education system looks like across the nation. I am so curious to know what he discovered. I am certainly hopeful that this is one of those books that might transform the way we do “school.”
I’m actually embarrassed that we haven’t read this one yet. So many people reference it as a must-read, especially for those of us in school counseling. I pinky promise, cross my heart to read it this year!
The Summer Reading List We’re Embarrassed to Tell You About
This section contains a list of fiction books that we have read that left an impression on us. Who said summer reading lists have to be ALL educational? These are wonderful beach reads or relaxing, rainy summer day reads. Let me explain something about southern people. We don’t say ugly words and we don’t talk about private things. Here’s the thing about books, sometimes it’s difficult to know until you’re wrapped up in the plot whether or not your mom would turn you over your knee for reading it. Also in the south, there is no age where a person is exempt from being turned over his/her mother’s knee. For that reason, we’re asking that you don’t tell our mothers that we have read the following books:
This might be the best book I’ve ever read. I was hooked from the beginning. Consequently, my pulse didn’t slow down the whole time I was reading it. I think I read it in just a little over 24 hours because I truly couldn’t put it down. It does have a few ugly words and a little sexual content, but wooooow, I don’t think you would regret reading this one!
I have a term for what this book made me do: fat laugh. That’s the very best kind of laugh. You know the kind of laugh? It comes from the center of your stomach. A “fat laugh” has nothing to do with a person’s size, but rather the size of the laugh. I read this book while running on the treadmill. There were times I had to stop the treadmill because I was laughing so hard. There were several ugly words and more sexual content than I prefer in a book, but it was HILARIOUS. I hope you love it as much as I did!
This was one of those books that kept me guessing throughout the whole book. Consequently, I was certain I had the ending figured out so many different times. The language and sexual content were definitely more than I would have preferred. You may already know this, but there is a series on HBO that is based on this book.
This is another book by Liane Moriarty. Once I discovered that I liked Big Little Lies, I read several other books by her. She’s a wonderful author. I haven’t read anything by her that I didn’t like. This book was kind of a feel-good book. Since I can’t remember what the ugly word or sexual content was like, maybe it wasn’t too bad?
I’m not embarrassed to tell you that I read this one. It just fits better here than the other sections. I’m also not just adding this book out of guilt about the rated R books I posted above. This is an excellent book. It was another one that I couldn’t put down and read within 24 hours (before I had children). It is a fiction book, but it shows you how easily human trafficking and rough situations can happen for young girls. To sum it up, it was an eye-opener!
So there is our summer reading list for educators. Please let us know which of these you plan on reading. Also, tell us which books we need to add to our list! Oh, and just so you know, the links in this post are our Amazon affiliate links. You’re welcome to use those or search on your own. We just want to share our list with you!
