{"id":437,"date":"2025-10-11T15:31:20","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T15:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/center.antioch.edu\/csc\/?p=437"},"modified":"2025-12-17T12:18:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T12:18:23","slug":"a-good-book-can-change-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/center.antioch.edu\/csc\/2025\/10\/11\/a-good-book-can-change-everything\/","title":{"rendered":"A good book can change everything"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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As part of\u00a0this year’s celebration of\u00a040 years of the Critical Skills Classroom<\/strong><\/a>, I’ve been looking back through the archives. I’ve spent time with books,\u00a0articles, tools, newsletters, photos, challenges (written by hand or typed on electric typewriters!), correspondence, and meeting minutes from the days before the internet.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Each references\u00a0the best thinking of the day, the emergent research around learning, technology, nature, neuroscience, and collaboration, filled with citations-\u00a0educators and authors who were thinking, observing, connecting, and\u00a0exploring\u2014\u00a0documenting what they were learning so that others could stand on their shoulders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Four decades of teachers turning theory into practice, creating tools and strategies that teachers could use on Tuesday, rooted in the big ideas of the day. Designing challenges that bridged\u00a0the\u00a0ever-evolving needs of communities and the things we most wanted our students to know and do, while also respecting the goals and needs of the teacher as a co-learner.<\/p>\n<\/div>

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The whole thing has taken a very\u00a0If You Give a Mouse a Cookie<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0sort of turn, as I find myself revisiting the voices that underpinned the\u00a0work in 1986, 1993, 2001, and 2015. Some are familiar and some are new, and (as often happens at this stage of my life,) I\u00a0think<\/strong>\u00a0some are new until I start reading, only to remember that they’re actually familiar.\u00a0

Or, as\u00a0Ralph Waldo Emerson mused,“I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me” –<\/strong><\/em>

Last month, I asked you to think about the people who shaped you into the educator you are today. I’m a big fan of reflection, so why not repeat the exercise? What do you recall about the books that\u00a0made you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n