Last summer, we looked at schools with Common Reading Programs, where institutions assign or recommend titles for students and instructors to read over the summer, so that they can come together to discuss the book as a community in the fall. Believe it or not (I don't), but summer is here again, and so are these reading programs. While several schools have already announced their picks, there's still no way to tell which books will be the most common (pun intended) choice. While some common reading programs include the entire student body, many of them are aimed specifically at students entering their first year of college. This gives incoming students the opportunity to share something with their instructors and peers before they step on campus, and provides them with a taste of what they can expect from their institution over the course (pun not intended) of their studies. So, for those of you still deliberating on your common reading choices, or those of you who simply want more reading recommendations, take a look at the Macmillan catalog on Books for the First-Year Experience. These critically-acclaimed books are ideal for the first-year experience: they're accessible and challenging, timely and classic, broadly appealing, stimulating, and moving. They foster individual growth while also inviting campus-wide discussion. Overall, a perfect summer reading for an incoming student who wants to start their first year on the right page (last pun, promise!). Here are some examples of books featured on Macmillan's Books for the First-Year Experience Catalog:  The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton with Lara Love Hardin Oprah's Book Club Choice for June 2018! In 1985, Anthony Rae Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. Stunned, confused, and only twenty-nine years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence and ultimately set him free. But with an incompetent defense attorney and a different system of justice for a poor black man in the South, Hinton was sentenced to death by electrocution. He spent his first three years on Death Row at Holman State Prison in despairing silence—angry and full of hatred for all those who had sent an innocent man to his death. But as Hinton realized and accepted his fate, he resolved not only to survive, but to find a way to live on Death Row. For the next twenty-seven years he was a beacon—transforming not only his own spirit, but those of his fellow inmates, fifty-four of whom were executed mere feet from his cell. With the help of civil rights attorney and bestselling author of Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, Hinton won his release in 2015. With a foreword by Stevenson, The Sun Does Shine is an extraordinary testament to the power of hope sustained through the darkest times. Hinton’s memoir tells his dramatic thirty-year journey and shows how you can take away a man’s freedom, but you can’t take away his imagination, humor, or joy. Anthony Ray Hinton spent nearly thirty years on death row for crimes he did not commit. Released in April 2015, Hinton now speaks widely on prison reform and the power of faith and forgiveness. He lives in Alabama. Check out his chat with Oprah about his book on her Facebook page here. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande    Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession’s ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person’s last weeks or months may be rich and dignified. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering. Being Mortal asserts that medicine can comfort and enhance our experience even to the end, providing not only a good life but also a good end. Atul Gawande is author of three bestselling books: Complications; Better; and The Checklist Manifesto. He is also a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. He and his wife have three children and live in Newton, Massachusetts. In the Country We Love: My Family Divided by Diane Guerrero with Michelle Burford Diane Guerrero, the television actress from the megahitOrange Is the New Black and Jane the Virgin, was just fourteen years old on the day her parents were detained and deported while she was at school. Born in the U.S., Guerrero was able to remain in the country and continue her education, depending on the kindness of family friends who took her in and helped her build a life and a successful acting career for herself, without the support system of her family. In the Country We Love is a moving, heartbreaking story of one woman’s extraordinary resilience in the face of the nightmarish struggles of undocumented residents in this country. There are over 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., many of whom have citizen children, whose lives here are just as precarious, and whose stories haven’t been told. Written with bestselling author Michelle Burford, this memoir is a tale of personal triumph that also casts a much-needed light on the fears that haunt the daily existence of families like Guerrero’s and on a system that fails them over and over. Diane Guerrero is an actress on the hit shows Orange Is the New Black and Jane the Virgin. She volunteers with the nonprofit Immigrant Legal Resource Center, as well as with Mi Familia Vota, an organization that promotes civic involvement. She has been named an Ambassador for Citizenship and Naturalization by the White House. She lives in New York City. Walking to Listen: 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time by Andrew Forsthoefel At twenty-three, Andrew Forsthoefel walked out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read “Walking to Listen.” He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to being his adult life, but he didn’t know how. So he decided he’d walk. And listen. It would be a cross-country quest for guidance, and everyone he met would be his guide. Thousands shared their stories with him, sometimes confiding their prejudices, too. Often he didn’t know how to respond. How to find unity in diversity? How to stay connected, even as fear works to tear us apart? He listened for answers to these questions, and to the existential questions every human must face, and began to find that the answer might be in listening itself. Ultimately, it’s the stories of others living all along the roads of America that carry this journey and sing out in a hopeful, heartfelt book about how a life is made, and how our nation defines itself on the most human level. Andrew Forsthoefel is a writer, radio producer, and public speaker. After graduating from Middlebury College in 2011, he spent nearly a year walking across the United States. He first recounted part of that journey in a radio story featured on This American Life. He now facilitates workshops on walking and listening as practices in personal transformation, interconnection, and conflict resolution, and is currently based in Northampton, Massachusetts. This post was adapted from an entry in A Word from Macmillan tagged 2017, A Word from Macmillan on 10/19/2017. ... View more

Fall may not mark the beginning of the calendar year, but it certainly presents an opportunity for growth and change with the beginning of the academic year. Think back to the end of the last semester, or the end of your last assignment – do you feel it went well? Is there something you wish you had done ahead of time to make things easier for yourself, or some project that you felt could have used more work if you had had the time? Work piles up fast, sometimes before you realize what’s happening; use these first few weeks of school to get yourself prepared for the busy season ahead of time.   Get Organized       Spring cleaning isn’t the only time for clearing out space and reorganizing. Whether you’ve moved to a new living situation or work station or you’re returning to the same old office space, organizing now will make life much easier when there are stacks of papers and books to go through later in the semester. When you’re organizing, keep in mind that you should arrange your space in a way that is most efficient for you - your desk may look great cleared off, but if that doesn’t fit in with your working style, your work will probably be undone quickly. Need inspiration? The following image from CCN Money shows how you can organize your desk for maximum productivity. Dedicate a Study Space       Whether you like to work at a desk, in your room, in a library, or another public setting, try to pick a spot and dedicate it just for your work. If possible, avoid bringing distractions like your cell phone and snacks to this space, so that your brain will get in the habit of treating these places as work-only spaces. Try to avoid working on your bed, as this can make it more difficult to concentrate on your work and make it more difficult for you to fall asleep later. In fact, it’s generally better to avoid doing work in your bedroom altogether, though that’s not always possible. Finding a spot, as small as that spot may be, to work consistently will help your brain concentrate when you’re in that space. I used to waste so much time procrastinating on my final papers by deliberating over work spaces, but three of my favorites were the desk carrels in the library, the table in the laundry room, and the floor of my bedroom, when it was too late to use a public space.   Plan Ahead       The great thing about a college syllabus is that it provides a roadmap for how you can expect your semester to go. Most instructors will include the due dates for writing assignments, exams, and even your midterms and finals. Mark these due dates on a calendar, in a journal, or on your phone so that you can keep them in mind when making plans for travel, friends, or extracurricular activities. You can also compare the due dates for different classes, so you can try to get some of the lighter assignments done early when they conflict with larger priority assignments. Also look out for particularly lengthy reading assignments – bring some of the longer works with you when you know you’ll have some reading time, so that way you won’t be cramming it all in at the last minute. If you decide to record these assignments on paper, be sure to use a pencil, as the course syllabus is likely to change as the semester goes on!   Find a Study Buddy / Form a Study Group       Nothing makes preparing for a final exam or writing a final paper easier than having friends in the class to help you brainstorm. During the first few weeks of class, talk to your peers about your ongoing assignments, and see who might be interested in joining you for future study sessions. By reaching out now, you’ll ensure that you have someone to get in contact with if you ever have a question on an assignment that your instructor might not be able to answer right away, and someone to keep you company in the library when writing papers or completing reading assignments.   Note: Unlike the study group in Community, you want to form a group that actually studies. Think Back to Last Semester       If this is your first semester in college, think back to the last time in your life when you were really stressed out with a lot of work piled up. Back then, what did you wish you had done earlier? What do you think could have helped you avoid that stress? Premeditating your future needs and taking proactive measures will help you make this semester as productive and stress-free as possible.   ... View more

Learning more about the College Success course over the past two years has helped me recognize the tools and strategies I use that have contributed to my success in my career. One of the things I truly pride myself on is organization, and I use various tools in my daily life to help me manage my projects. Last time, I shared my bullet journal, which has helped me organize personal and professional to-do lists in one place. But for large, long-term projects, I find Trello incredibly helpful in keeping everything in order and on track. So what is Trello? According to Trello’s help site, “Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, Trello tells you what's being worked on, who's working on what, and where something is in a process.” Basically, you can use a board to plan a large project with multiple people. Beyond its application to managing projects in the professional world, Trello could be a very useful tool in college for both instructors and students. For example, Trello can be used as a digital/visual syllabus that would help structure your course and help your students stay on track with their assignments. Below, I will outline how to set up your own Trello board as a course syllabus to share with your students! For the purpose of this tutorial, I’m going to use a board without multiple people. Setting up your Trello board as a syllabus: Get yourself a Trello account. It’s easy and free! You can sign up for a business account too that gives you more options, but in my opinion, you’ll get everything you need out of the free account. I have a free account, and I used that to create my images for this tutorial. Create a board and name it appropriately. For creating a digital/visual syllabus, I would suggest naming it the course name. For example, “UNIV 101.” Make sure to mark your board as public. This is how you will be able to share it with your students later. Create your columns. These are where you’ll organize your syllabus items. You can see in the image how I organized my board. Here’s what each column means: General Information: My favorite column that I add into all of my Trello boards is the General Information column. It helps me organize important links, documents, and other stuff that is helpful during the process of completing my project. Course Assignments: This is where you can put week to week what students will be doing. You can divide this up in any way that you want! Have a card for each week, each class, or each assignment. In Progress, Completed, and Questions for Class: These next three columns are for your students once they copy your course syllabus to their own Trello account. As they move through the class, they can move cards to In Progress and Completed to easily (and visually) track their progress. I also included a place for them to note questions they may have. This lets them quickly jot down the question so they don’t forget it. Add in your cards. Your cards should be individual pieces of the semester. You can see that I made a card for every week of class. All of your cards should start in Course Assignments. Share your Trello with your students. Once you’ve set up the shell of the syllabus in Trello, you can share with your students so they can copy the board into their accounts. If you marked your board as public when you created it, click Show Menu on the right side> More. There will be a link to the board. Copy and paste that to share with your students. Your students can copy the board by following this tutorial. If you didn’t mark your board as public when you created it, click Show Menu on the right side>More>Copy board. Change the privacy of your new board by clicking Change after “This board will be Private. Change.” Then follow the steps on the new board I listed above. Start using your board! On their boards, students can drag and drop the cards or course assignments into new columns as they move from “Not Started” to “In Progress” to “Completed.” Cards will be a handy way for them to keep track of their progress, but they can also add in important links, attach documents, create due dates, take notes, and make check lists. See below for more on how to use cards! How to effectively use cards Once you share the Trello board with your students, they can use it to stay on top of their assignments and deadlines through using cards. Cards on a Trello board represent one individual piece within a project. In this example, I used the weeks of the semester, but you could also create a card for each individual assignment, each day the course meets, or anything else that makes sense for you! Cards also have a ton of functionality that can help you keep the various tasks in order while completing a course. Here are just a few of my favorite card functionalities. Include important links. I typically use a card in my General Information column for important links. These can be anything from your online course information to items you need to keep referencing throughout the semester. Attach documents. This is a great way to keep all of your documents in one place. You can either use a file sharing service to add a link or just upload the documents directly onto the Trello site. Create due dates. I have found it helpful to set up due dates for items about a week before they are due. You can even set up Trello so you get an email reminder for these tasks. Take notes. One of my favorite uses of Trello is taking notes on individual cards throughout a project. This lets you keep all of the relevant information in one place, plus you can even print this out using some cool apps within your browser. This site is my favorite way to create a notes sheet from my Trello board. Make check lists. We all know that not all tasks can be finished with a single step. Sometimes including a checklist helps you know what you have done and what needs to happen before moving a card into the Completed column. You can check off the items as you go along, and you get a satisfying progress bar that helps you know what you have left to do! What else can Trello do? I only talked about basic Trello functionality in this post, but you don’t need to stop here. Beyond using Trello as a course syllabus and general project management tool, Trello has many other applications for you and your students. In fact, you can get some great inspiration by going to https://trello.com/inspiration. They even have a section on education! Trello’s Help Site is additionally filled with great tips and tricks to help you figure out how to best use Trello for your specific purpose. Also, search for Making the most out of Trello. You’ll see a lot of great articles that can show you how to use Trello to manage everything from a blog to a party to a group project. Have fun! How do you see yourself using Trello? Can you see this being an effective tool for you? What about for your students? ... View more