Books for Teachers
and School Staff

The best books for teachers and school staff are Why Don’t Students Like School? by Daniel Willingham, Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov, Make It Stick by Brown, Roediger and McDaniel, You Are Capable of More by Chris Sund, Onward by Elena Aguilar, and The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer. Willingham is the one most likely to change what you do next week.

Two notes before the list

The first is that you have been handed more books than almost any other profession, most of them at a professional development day you did not choose to attend, and a fair number of them making claims that the research does not support. So the standard here is higher than on other pages. Three of these are built on cognitive science, and two of those quietly dismantle ideas still being taught in teacher preparation programs.

The second is about who this page is for. A school building runs on paraprofessionals, aides, front office staff, custodians, bus drivers, and food service, and almost nothing is written for them specifically, which is a real gap. I have marked which books apply to anyone who works with students and which assume you run a classroom, because a list that pretends otherwise is not much use to a para who was handed it by a well-meaning principal.

One

Why Don’t Students Like School? by Daniel T. Willingham

A cognitive scientist writing directly for teachers, and the most useful book on this list. Willingham organizes it around nine principles about how minds actually work, and several of them cut against what teachers are commonly told.

The central one is that people are not naturally good at thinking, we avoid it where we can, and curiosity is fragile and situational rather than a trait a student has or lacks. His line that memory is the residue of thought is the most practically useful sentence in education writing, because it means students remember what they spent time thinking about, not what you spent time presenting. He is also direct that learning styles are not supported by evidence, which is still being taught in some programs. Useful to anyone who works with students.

Two

Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov

The practical standard, built from watching video of unusually effective teachers and naming what they actually do, at the level of specific moves rather than philosophy.

What makes it valuable is the granularity. Cold call, wait time, the technique he calls no opt out. These are things you can try on Monday and notice a difference by Wednesday. The honest criticism is that some techniques come out of a particular charter school context and read as rigid in other settings, so take the ones that fit your room. Assumes a classroom.

Three

Make It Stick by Brown, Roediger and McDaniel

The learning science book, written by two cognitive psychologists and a novelist, which is why it reads better than it has any right to.

Its findings are counterintuitive in a way that matters. Rereading feels productive and does almost nothing, while retrieval practice, meaning testing yourself, works far better and feels worse. Spacing beats massing, and difficulty during learning improves retention. Read alongside Willingham and you have most of what the evidence actually supports. Useful to anyone who helps a student study.

Five

Onward by Elena Aguilar

The most useful book here for staying in the profession, and the reason I would not have you read mine for that purpose. Aguilar was a teacher and coach, and the book is organized around a school year, month by month, which matches how the exhaustion actually arrives rather than treating it as a single event.

What I appreciate is her honesty that a great deal of what wears educators down is structural, and that no amount of individual resilience fixes a staffing shortage or a schedule. She works on what is within reach without pretending it is all of it. There is a companion workbook if you want the exercises. Useful to anyone in the building. If what you are carrying has gotten heavy, that belongs with a person rather than a book, and there is a short list of places to start here.

Six

The Courage to Teach by Parker J. Palmer

The oldest and least practical book on this list, and the one people tend to keep. Palmer’s subject is the inner life of the teacher, and his argument is that technique matters far less than identity and integrity, because you teach who you are and students detect the difference immediately.

It is reflective and occasionally abstract, and it is the wrong book for a first-year teacher trying to survive November. It is the right book for somebody eight years in who has the techniques and has lost the thread of why. Useful to anyone who works with students.

Seven

The First Days of School by Harry K. Wong and Rosemary T. Wong

Unfashionable, enormously practical, and still the book most experienced teachers name when a new colleague asks. The Wongs’ argument is that the first days determine the year, and that what determines those days is procedures rather than rules or personality.

How students enter, what happens with materials, how you get attention back. Dull to read and it prevents most of what makes a first year miserable. Read it in August, not in October. Assumes a classroom.

Which one to pick

If you want one, read Why Don’t Students Like School?. It is short, it is evidence-based, and it will change something about next week rather than about how you feel.

Common questions