The Best Educational Books to Read in 2018: Teachers Around the World Share Their Picks

Even if you are a teacher, this still doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stop learning – at least that’s what many teachers believe. Learning helps many of us improve their teaching methods, understand students better, and find the right approach even to the most special of them.

So if you want to improve your methods and techniques, try reading these books recommended by teachers around the world. While not all of them are about teaching specifically, they still help you build skills and knowledge that could aid you in your profession.

1. Teach Like a Pirate: Increase Student Engagement, Boost Your Creativity and Transform Your Life as an Educator by Dave Burgess.

It never hurts to approach the teaching process creatively – and this book could help you do so. It has so many innovative ideas and practical techniques that you could use while working in the classroom to make the whole process more dynamic, engaging, and interesting.

2. The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change The Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier.

If you think that coaching has nothing to do with teaching, think twice. Sure, the age and the goals of your students are different from the ones of coaches’ clients, but the approach is often similar. The main goal of a teacher and a coach is also pretty much the same – they both help other people maximize their potential.

So while this book could improve coaching skills, it could also help teachers develop professionally. It is mostly focused on making you a better listener and developing your questioning skills.

3. Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters by Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst.

While these authors have been helping people to read more effectively for years, this specific book isn’t focused on effectiveness only – it is more about how to engage students in reading and help them benefit from the process more. And it’s really important: after all, sometimes reading could be even harder for students than trying to come up with good argumentative topics, for example.

So if you struggle with encouraging your class to read (or to read something besides school program), use this book to help you. It provides a variety of tools that help engage students better.

4. The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life by Parker Palmer.

What makes a person a good teacher? Some think it’s the set of personality traits only: you could be a good teacher only if you are the right person for that.

This book, however, argues that, claiming that teaching skills and habits can be built and learned – as well as the right attitude towards the process. It also emphasizes on how important it is for the teacher to be genuinely interested in their students and present for them both during classes and after.

5. Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why by Paul Tough.

How to help your students succeed not only in the classroom but in their lives as well? This could be achieved if you help them develop the necessary personal qualities – like self-control, for example.

But this is easier said than done. This could look like a real challenge to the teacher – so this book is designed to change that and to help the teacher teach those skills indirectly, by creating the right environment for the students.

6. The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win by Jeff Haden.

Every teacher, who is genuinely interested in their students, wants to motivate them and to keep them engaged in the learning process. But to do that you need to understand how does the motivation work.

While this book isn’t designed for teachers specifically, it could help them as well, showing how exactly the motivation works for people and what could you do to help your students accomplish various things.

7. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink.

Need some more information about motivation? Then check out this book, which could be a great addition to the previous one.

This one, however, could help teachers mostly, helping them find some extra motivation for they work and to succeed professionally even more. After all, teachers could feel discouraged just like the students – and it’s up to them to learn how to change that any time they need to do so.

As you see, the books are pretty different. Some are related specifically to the teaching process, while some are more focused on other important things that could still be useful to the teachers. Some are focused on students mostly, while some could help teachers build some necessary skills and traits, as well as develop professionally.

So even if you don’t find each and every one of them interesting, we still hope that some of them would be useful and be appealing to you. Pick the one (or two, or three) that seems the most interesting – and enjoy!