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Unforgettable: Enabling Deep and Durable Learning
We have an uneasy relationship with the relentless deluge of information gushing out of academia and our media outlets. To turn it off is escapist, but to attempt to cognitively grapple with it is overwhelming.
In Unforgettable: Enabling Deep and Durable Learning, a nationally recognized master teacher gives professors and their students the means to chart a clear path through this information explosion. Humans crave explanatory patterns, and this book enables teachers to think deeply about their academic disciplines to find and articulate their core explanatory principles and to engage their students in a compelling way of thinking. An alternative title for this book could be Why the Best College Teachers Do What They Do because the author articulates a compelling rationale that will equip faculty to create and deliver transformative courses. Students in transformative courses grapple with essential questions and gain mental muscle that equips them for real world challenges.
In Unforgettable: Enabling Deep and Durable Learning, a nationally recognized master teacher gives professors and their students the means to chart a clear path through this information explosion. Humans crave explanatory patterns, and this book enables teachers to think deeply about their academic disciplines to find and articulate their core explanatory principles and to engage their students in a compelling way of thinking. An alternative title for this book could be Why the Best College Teachers Do What They Do because the author articulates a compelling rationale that will equip faculty to create and deliver transformative courses. Students in transformative courses grapple with essential questions and gain mental muscle that equips them for real world challenges.
- GenresNonfiction
302 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2016
8 people are currently reading
30 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 30, 2018
Dr. Michael Gray is an accomplished academic and a teacher of teachers. If you read Unforgettable: Enabling Deep and Durable learning, then you will see what I mean.
The book is written to to help teachers become "Clear Thinking Teacher that is a teacher who analyzes her thinking within her academic discipline ignorer to foster thinking itself in her students." (xiii, 3)
This book is for educators whom Gray assumes has mastered their disciplines. It seems to me he speaks primarily to college and university professors. This should not dissuade the rest of us from reading this book. Whatever career path we are on, or however clear or unclear our thinking is we must learn to think and express our thoughts more clearly than we do presently. If that is your goal then pick up this book and read it.
That is not to say this is an easy read. It is above my level, but when one is committed to excellence regardless of the field, he/she must read beyond what they currently understand.
Gray takes 9 chapters to help the reader reconstruct his thought process so she is able to see the flaws in her logic until she becomes an expert (1-3), clarify her ideas so that she may communicate them to others (4-5), and make a plan for her students (6). The teacher must want her students to flourish (7), so she must draw out what the students know by asking questions not telling the students what they should know. (8) All of this must be assessed in a way that shows love and compassion. (9)
Dr. Gray has done the academic world a service by writing this book if only they will then the call that Augustine did, "Take up and read".
The book is written to to help teachers become "Clear Thinking Teacher that is a teacher who analyzes her thinking within her academic discipline ignorer to foster thinking itself in her students." (xiii, 3)
This book is for educators whom Gray assumes has mastered their disciplines. It seems to me he speaks primarily to college and university professors. This should not dissuade the rest of us from reading this book. Whatever career path we are on, or however clear or unclear our thinking is we must learn to think and express our thoughts more clearly than we do presently. If that is your goal then pick up this book and read it.
That is not to say this is an easy read. It is above my level, but when one is committed to excellence regardless of the field, he/she must read beyond what they currently understand.
Gray takes 9 chapters to help the reader reconstruct his thought process so she is able to see the flaws in her logic until she becomes an expert (1-3), clarify her ideas so that she may communicate them to others (4-5), and make a plan for her students (6). The teacher must want her students to flourish (7), so she must draw out what the students know by asking questions not telling the students what they should know. (8) All of this must be assessed in a way that shows love and compassion. (9)
Dr. Gray has done the academic world a service by writing this book if only they will then the call that Augustine did, "Take up and read".
August 15, 2021
This is an incredibly insightful and well organized work written to equip teachers (particularly those in higher level education) to understand and organize the conceptual frameworks of their courses in a way that optimizes the student’s learning through skillful and gentle guidance. Dr. Gray expertly leads teachers away from a “teaching as telling” model to one that is rich in student/teacher interaction that results in student comprehension and lasting learning. Through activity and inquiry assisted dissection and analytical rebuilding of the road map in an educator’s course, instruction in and examples of inquiry based learning and logic driven assessment, and clarifying graphics and tables, Dr. Gray gives his hard earned insight to help overhaul every aspect of teaching to enable deep and lasting learning in your student’s lives. As a former student of his and a new teacher, I’m walking proof that this approach to teaching is exactly what the world needs.
June 19, 2017
Every college professor should read this book!
It takes you through the process of defining your own expert thinking in a way that will enable you to engage students in the same kind of thinking.
Far too many college classes consist of lectures followed by assessments of content memorization. As a former student of the author, I can attest to the effectiveness of the method in this book!
The "homework" assignments in the book are time-consuming, but so valuable to dissecting how experts in my field think. Be prepared to spend a lot of time developing your own discipline's logic as you make your way through this book. Although I've finished, I will undoubtedly go back, especially to chapters 8 and 9, as I develop plans for individual class periods and the assessments that go with them.
I have more work to do to make my class as effective as Dr. Gray's classes were for me!
It takes you through the process of defining your own expert thinking in a way that will enable you to engage students in the same kind of thinking.
Far too many college classes consist of lectures followed by assessments of content memorization. As a former student of the author, I can attest to the effectiveness of the method in this book!
The "homework" assignments in the book are time-consuming, but so valuable to dissecting how experts in my field think. Be prepared to spend a lot of time developing your own discipline's logic as you make your way through this book. Although I've finished, I will undoubtedly go back, especially to chapters 8 and 9, as I develop plans for individual class periods and the assessments that go with them.
I have more work to do to make my class as effective as Dr. Gray's classes were for me!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews