Recommended Reading
Leadership Resources
Freedom Writers by Erin Gruwell
As an idealistic first-year English teacher at Wilson High School in Long Beach, CA, Erin Gruwell confronted a room of "unteachable, at risk" students. One day she intercepted a note with an ugly racial caricature and angrily declared that this was precisely the sort of thing that led to the Holocaust-only to be met by uncomprehending looks. So she and her students, using the treasured books Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Sarajevo as their guides, undertook a life-changing, eye-opening, spirit-raising odyssey against intolerance and misunderstanding. They learned to see the parallels in these books to their own lives, recording their thoughts and feelings in diaries and dubbing themselves "The Freedom Writers" in homage to the civil rights activists -The Freedom Riders.”
Good to Great by Jim Collins
The findings of the "Good to Great" study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. This is one of the best books I have read.
Leadership on the Line by Heifetz and Linsky
"This book goes well beyond making significant contribution to the field of leadership. Heifetz and Linsky leverage their formidable professional and personal experiences to show all of us, at work and love and play, how to lead and live more fully." -Warren Bennis
Leading Change by John Kotter
If you want to move from being a manager to being a leader, this is the book. "It is the best single work I have seen on strategy implementation." - William C. Finnie, Editor and Chief of Strategy and Leadership
Leading with Soul by Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal
"Wonderful lessons about leadership in a very personal story of a relationship between a teacher and a student. It is teaching and storytelling at its best." James A. Autry
Real Leadership by Dean Williams
Real Leadership will teach you how to:
•Diagnose the specific nature of the most critical challenge your group or organization faces
•Understand the kind of leadership strategies needed to address that challenge
•Apply real leadership practices to help people face reality, attend to demanding problems, and ensure that your enterprise is given its best shot at success
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
"Splendid, beautifully written. Goodwin has brilliantly woven scores of contemporary accounts into fluid narrative.This is the most richly detailed account of the Civil War presidency to appear in many years." - John Rhodehamel
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencion
A gripping analysis of what makes teams work effectively. This fine work is a must-read for any leader that has come to grips with the fact that no one makes progress-much less succeeds-alone.
The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner
The subtitle is how to keep extraordinary things happening in an organization. This is a fascinating book about how leaders and followers view leadership.
The Leadership Moment by Michael Useem
This book has nine true stories of triumph and disaster and their lessons for all. A really good story is a time-honored way to show how leaders respond to extreme challenges (and) that's what Michael Useem delivers. - USA Today
Definitely for Teachers
A Child Called "It" by Dave Pelzer
An unforgettable account of one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history.
A Lost Boy by Dave Pelzer
This is Pelzer's long awaited sequel to his first book. Answers will be exposed and new adventures revealed in this compelling story of his life as an adolescent.
Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire by Rafe Esquith
"Rafe Esquith is a genius and a saint. The American education system would do well to imitate him. These children’s lives have been changed by their year with this man." - The New York Times "Esquith’s children walk through cobwebs in this world. Poverty is darkness; to live in streets that are barely lit, in houses with dim bulbs, in furnished rooms stained by those who have passed before. This classroom is the way out; hope is the light." - Los Angeles Times
The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer
This book takes teachers on an inner journey toward reconnecting with their vocation and their students and recovering their passion for one of the most difficult and important of human endeavors.
Thought Provoking Readings
1776 by David McCullough
In this masterful book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence-when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper.
Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam
The collapse and revival of America community.
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
In this brilliant and groundbreaking book, Gladwell looks at why major changes in our society so often happen suddenly and unexpectedly.
Personal Growth Resources
First Things First by Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill, Rebecca R. Merrill
In the spirit of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the #1 nationwide bestseller, First Things First, is a revolutionary guide to managing your time by learning how to balance your life.
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
Facing the diversities of a Nazi concentration camp, Frankl discovers the importance of knowing one’s self. His survival and future successes are outlined in this dramatic autobiography. Dr. Kent Lashley and Charlie Hollar say this is on their Best Books of All Time Short List!
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principle centered approach for solving personal and professional problems.
Valuable Information for Every Educator
Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
This book documents that emotional intelligence matters more than twice as much as cognitive abilities such as IQ or technical expertise in determining star performance in every field.
Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
In Social Intelligence, Daniel Goleman explores an emerging new science with startling implications for our interpersonal world. Its most fundamental discovery: we are designed for sociability, constantly engaged in a "neural ballet" that connects us brain to brain with those around us.
The Hero's Journey by Brown and Moffett
This is a book about hope. It affirms the power of personal and collective responsibility to enact heroic changes in our schools. Through a shared vision, purpose, and inquiry and using the collective wisdom of myth, legend, and metaphor from around the world. We can find the inspiration and courage to face the challenges inherent in transforming schools into authentic learning organizations.
The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman
With his inimitable ability to translate complex foreign policy and economic issues, Friedman explains how the flattening of the world happened at the dawn of the twenty-first century, what it means to countries, companies, communities, and individuals, and how governments and societies can, and must adapt. This is one of the most important books I have read.
Working with Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
Drawing on his unparalleled access to business leaders around the world, as well as on studies conducted in more than 500 organizations, Goleman reveals the skills that distinguish the star performers in every field.
Readings to Energize Schools
The Hero's Journey by Brown and Moffett
This is a book about hope. It affirms the power of personal and collective responsibility to enact heroic changes in our schools. Through a shared vision, purpose, and inquiry and using the collective wisdom of myth, legend, and metaphor from around the world. We can find the inspiration and courage to face the challenges inherent in transforming schools into authentic learning organizations.
Fiction
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
"This should be on the list of every literate music lover. The story is riveting, the participants breathe and feel and are alive, and throughout the elegantly written novel, music pours forth so splendidly that the reader hears it and is overwhelmed by its beauty. Ann Patchett is a special writer who has written a special book." - Lloyd Moss, WXQR
Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
"This is one of those unforgettable stories that stay with you for years. All the great themes of literature and of life are the fabric of this extraordinary novel: love, honor, guilt, fear, and redemption." - Isabel Allende
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
"Once in a great while, a book comes along that has such wonderful characters and marvelous prose, that you read it as much for the pure joy it offers on every page as to find out how it ends." - Tom Walker, The Denver Post
Silas Marner by George Eliot
What is the value of human relations, the connection between souls? In Silas Marner George Elliot expels this question in the story of a reclusive weaver in a small English town who learns to trade his love of gold for the love of those around him.
The Curious Incident of the Dog at Nite-Time by Mark Haddon
Reviews by the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle and the Miami Herald use such words to describe the book as “Astonishingly captivating,” “Both clever and observant,” “Smart, honest and wrenching.”
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
The tale of one motherless daughter's discovery of what family really means and of the strange and wondrous places we find love.- The Washington Pos