LibGuides: Professional Resources: Readings, Articles, Inspiration

The Highest Result of Education

"The highest result of education is tolerance. Long ago men fought and died for their faith; but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage — the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren and their rights of conscience. Tolerance is the first principle of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think."

Helen Keller (1880-1968) in Optimism: an Essay, 1903.

On this page:

Building Relationship with Your Students
Character Education
College Success
Communication With Students
Gaming
Note-taking
Performance Review - Faculty and Staff Evaluation
Print vs. Digital
Promoting Tolerance and Inclusion
Student Engagement and Motivation
Why You Teach

Building Relationships with Your Students

A 4-Part System for Getting to Know Your Students
Four steps teachers can take to build solid relationships with their students: Break the Ice, Take Inventory, Store Your Data, and Do Regular Check-Ups. Blog post author Jennifer Gonzalez states that this "is arguably the most important thing you can do to be an effective teacher. It helps you build trust so students take academic risks, allows you to better differentiate for individual needs, and prevents the kinds of power struggles often found in poorly managed classrooms."

Character Education

Students Broken Moral Compasses: Why Don't Schools Teach Children Morality and Empathy?
Article in the Atlantic discussing the reasons character education - discussions and instruction related to morals, character, and ethics - is not present in most U.S. public schools. The article surveys efforts to blend character education with traditional curricula. Author: Paul Barnwell - a teacher, writer, and urban gardener based in Louisville, KY.

College Success

The First Year - College Readiness
This Library Journal article discusses the strategies some college librarians do when working with first-year students to help them with research and citations for their course assignments. The article gives the wish list of these librarians, and others who work closely with college freshmen, of what first-year students should come armed with in terms of scholarly skills.
The Top Steps Students Take to Ensure College Success
Cengage Learning blog post about the results of a survey of 20,000 college students that asked: “Beyond completing assigned coursework (e.g. readings and homework), what steps do you take to ensure that you succeed in a class?”

Communication With Students

Email? Texts? Still Searching For the Electronic Path to Students
In this post to Library Journal's 'From the Bell Tower' blog, academic librarian Steven Bell talks about the challenges of connecting electronically with today's college students. He discusses the merits and problems of various communication channels available for instructors trying to reach their students in the most effective way possible. Bell recommends against email in favor of texting, and favors the use of using a technology like Remind, since one of its advantages is that no exchange of personal numbers is needed.
Remind
Use Remind to reach students and parents with simple, quick messages to any device - for free. Teachers can keep their contact information private and access their message history any time. Photos, videos, voice clips, and other files can be attached to any message. Remind allows messages to be translated into more than 70 languages.

Gaming

Is Video Game Addiction a "Boy" Problem?
A JSTOR Daily article reviewing the research on the differences in how boys and girls game. Researchers have found there is a gender gap: boys are much more likely to be daily gamers, and much less likely to refrain from gaming. The article looks at research on whether this difference stems from male dominance of the gaming industry (perhaps leading to the production of games that are more appealing to boys), or from some innate difference in what kids find enjoyable and appealing.

Note-taking

Attention, Students: Put Your Laptops Away
Transcript of an NPR story on a study published in Psychological Science showing laptops and tablets have a tendency to be distracting, and that the fact that you have to be slower when you take notes by hand is what makes it more useful in the long run.

Can Handwriting Make You Smarter? Students who take notes by hand outperform students who type, and more type these days, new studies show
Wall Street Journal article on research at Princeton, UCLA, and University of Nebraska comparing students who type their notes with those who take them in longhand, finding that the writers (as compared to the typists) appear to learn better, retain information longer, and more readily grasp new ideas.

Performance Review - Faculty & Staff Evaluation

8 Signs an Employee Is Exceptional (Which Never Appear on Performance Evaluations)
The article discusses ways exceptional employees distinguish themselves: (1) They think well beyond job descriptions; (2) They're quirky...; (3) And they know when to rein in their individuality; (4) They praise other people in public...; (5) And they disagree in private; (6) They ask questions when others won't; (7) They like to prove other people wrong; and (8) They're constantly exploring. Author: Jeff Haden, contributing editor to Inc.

Print vs. Digital

Do Students Lose Depth in Digital Reading?
The author discusses her own and others' research on reading in print vs. digitally, covering the topics of how learning is measured and the relationship between critical thinking and reading. Author: Naomi Baron, Executive Director, Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning, American University.

Promoting Tolerance & Inclusion

Use these resources to help ensure that WSA has a welcoming environment for youth of all backgrounds, and provides services and resources to meet the needs of all students.

WEBSITES

Cultural Competence
Links to articles and websites on the topics of definitions of cultural competence, building knowledge and skills around cultural competence, and helping teens build cultural competence skills. Maintained by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) of the American Library Association.
Growing Up in a Time of Fear: Confronting Stereotypes About Muslims and Countering Xenophobia
Resources from the New York Times Learning Network: class warm-up activities, readings, discussion questions, videos, and more.
Teaching Tolerance
Free resources for educators including lesson plans, film kits and webinars. Teaching Tolerance is a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

POSTERS AND HANDOUTS

Refugees Welcome Poster
A full page 8.5 x 11" poster, from Burlesque of North America, a design and printing firm in Minneapolis
Refugees Welcome Stickers
8.5 x 11" sheet of stickers, 16 per page, from Burlesque of North America, a design and printing firm in Minneapolis
Words of Welcome Poster
8.5 x 11" poster created by the Chapel Hill Public Library, in response to the the North Carolina General Assembly passing the Public Facilities Privacy and Security act, also known as HB2.
Youth Activist's Toolkit
A guide for teens wanting to bring about social change, including sections on 'What is Organizing', 'Identifying the Change You Want', 'Creating a Strategy', and 'Using Power'. Prepared by Advocates for Youth.

Student Engagement and Motivation

Tips for Students: How to Be Understanding of Others’ Views
Learning how to better understand the viewpoints of others is a valuable skill for anyone. It can be applied when you’re considering the opinions of classmates, an author of a book, a teacher, or even your friends. In this blog post from Cengage Learning, authors John Mauk, Jayme Stayer, and Karen Mauk, in their book Think About It, 1st Edition, suggest that to do this for a reading, students should identify the context, the reasoning, the writer/speaker, and the audience.
Overcoming Writer’s Block: Tips for Getting Yourself Started
Because of fatigue, indecision, or uncertainty about their projects, students may occasionally experience the feeling commonly known as “writer’s block.” They’re stuck in one spot, and don’t know how to proceed. In this blog post from Cengage Learning, authors Sondra Perl and Mimi Schwartz, in their book Writing True: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction, Second Edition, list a number of ideas for starting off a new writing project and suggest ways to help your students overcome writer's block- useful for writing creative nonfiction or any writing situation.

Why You Teach

Anne Lamott on the Life-Giving Power of Great Teachers
An article from the Brain Pickings blog on the value of teaching. It includes excerpts from Anne Lamott's book, 'Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair' and links to related articles. "To me, teaching is a holy calling, especially with students less likely to succeed. It’s the gift not only of not giving up on people, but of even figuring out where to begin."
Lift Off, by Donovan Livingston
The remarks of Donovan Livingston, Ed.M.'16, student speaker at HGSE's 2016 Convocation exercises, in text and video. "So wake up — wake up! Lift your voices until you’ve patched every hole in a child’s broken sky. Wake up every child so they know of their celestial potential...ogether, we can inspire galaxies of greatness for generations to come. No, sky is not the limit. It is only the beginning. Lift off."