What are you reading?

We've all heard the adage, "Readers are leaders."  While I agree with this in principle, I know it is not always true.  Many avid readers are not necessarily leaders. However, I have found very few strong leaders, especially in education, who are not readers.  So, I would propose changing this to: "Leaders are readers."

With that in mind, I'm always looking to see what other leaders are reading.  So, what are YOU reading?  Please add your list to the comments and let's share the knowledge.

Below is I'm currently reading and why.  

Books

1) What Great Principals Do Differently - Todd Whitaker (@toddwhitaker)  

    I bought this book at the TASSP conference and started it that evening.  Right now, I'm about halfway through.  I also got the opportunity to hear Todd Whitaker speak on Thursday.  As a new administrator, I look forward to gain wisdom from those who've been there already.  Who better than Todd Whitaker to learn from.

2) Dealing with Difficult Teachers - Todd Whitaker.

    This was Todd Whitaker's first book and, while it is several years old, it contains great strategies for dealing with those difficult members of the school staff.  Learning lots to apply in Year 2 of my admin journey.

3) The Fundamental Five - Sean Cain (@lysnation) and Mike Laird.

    As a campus, we are implementing the Fundamental Five next year so I am rereading it in preparation for leading this initiative.










4) Wonder - R. J. Palacio

       This is a YA fiction book I'm reading because I was asked to facilitate a kids book club this summer at our public library.  Wonder(ful) read that can help kids realize the importance of judging someone from the heart rather than the outside appearance. Looking forward to discussing with the group.

Periodicals

1) Educational Leadership

      This is the journal of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (@ASCD).  A must read for any educator, whether supervisor or not. The last issue was on Professional Learning Revisited.  Loved the article about edcamps. 

Twitter/Zite/Paper.li/blogs

 1) Twitter - I am on Twitter probably more than I need to be.  I regularly following links shared by others and grow professionally because of this practice. I also share links with others as I seek to add to the professional community.

2) Zite is an app that creates a personalized online journal for its users. I regularly skim through my Zite pages to gather useful articles, blogs posts, etc which I then either post on Twitter or save to Pocket.

3) paper.li is site the allows you to create an online newspaper based on your areas of interest.  The only real work involved is in setting it up. After that, it populates itself every 24 hours. Others can also subscribe to your paper.  My paper.li page is called "Mr. Q's Daily News."  Every day, I look forward to the new learning I gain from the multiple education, tech, and leadership articles I find there.  You can also follow other people paper.li creations
. 

4) Blogs - I love to read blogs for the variety of ideas that are presented.  A great place to find educational blogs is cybraryman.com by Jerry Blumengarten (@cybraryman).  

That's my list.  It may look like a lot, but since I do most of my reading in the morning before work and at night before retiring, it doesn't take too much time.  My goal is a chapter a day, plus at least three articles/blogs.

So, once again, what are YOU reading?  I look forward to seeing your list in the comments below.