Guest blog by Steven Baule, Superintendent of Muncie Community Schools in Muncie, Indiana.
As July closes out, I have an urge to reflect upon my summer reading and think ahead about what I want to recommend to others. My summer reading tends to be what I recommend to teachers and others for their fall reading. One thing that I think education struggles with is a lack of a strong unified core cannon of work that summarizes the current state of our profession. I would posit such a reading list might be helpful for both experienced professionals and those just entering the field. I would suggest that Khan’s The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined is an excellent start. His desire to individualize education for each learner isn’t a new idea. Khan himself references Carleton Washburne, a progressive era educator who was way ahead of his time. All educators should know a bit more about Washburne and his plan to individualize education (known today as the Winnekta Plan). However I struggle with what else to recommend for late summer reading. I like Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains and Charles Wheelon’s Naked Statistics. For those who prefer less paper and more video, try Mark Barnes’s Teaching the iStudent. Under connections there are a variety of short instructional videos. For those of you who would like to find their own educational reading, I would suggest the following three booklists, Education Closet’s list of summer reading, Andrew Potter’s list and Online Learning Insight’s 2015 Must Read List.
