The two most important books I've written are part of what I call “The Heart of the Work” series.
- In 2018, I came out with These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most (Corwin). Its subtitle tells the whole story: if teachers focus on just six areas of practice, they can stress less about teaching and getting better results with students.
- In 2023, I came out with The Will to Learn: How to Cultivate Student Motivation without Losing Your Own (Corwin). It presents a comprehensive, simple approach for secondary schools and teachers to radically improve student motivation for learning.
These are my most important books to date because in them I attempt to make as coherent and meaningful a contribution to our professional dialogue as I possibly can.
Other books
I have written other books as well:
- In 2022, our colleagues Matthew Johnson, Matthew Kay, and I came out with Answers to Your Biggest Questions About Teaching Middle and High School ELA (Corwin). This was a project that our editor at Corwin came to us with; it is part of a larger series of “Answers to Your Biggest Questions” books. I was grateful to work with the Matts on the book, and I learned a lot about teaching and gained an ever greater deal of respect for them than I already had. It's perfect for new secondary ELA teachers.
- In 2016 or so, I came out with a book called Never Finished: Continually Becoming the Teachers We Want to Be (self-published). I've since discontinued selling it just to avoid drawing people to stuff that's not been vetted by a publisher.
- In 2014, I came out with A Non-Freaked Out Guide to Teaching the Common Core: Using the 32 Literacy Anchor Standards to Develop College- and Career-Ready Students (Jossey-Bass). It was a book that served its purpose at the time but is now more of a collector's item.