We Recommend

Explore Teaching Insights and Resources

Welcome to our collection of teaching-related recommendations, curated by CFC staff and WCU faculty to inspire and enhance your practice. This page showcases a diverse selection of books featured in our monthly newsletters.

2025/2026

• • How to bounce back from teaching disasters? Snafu Edu might just have the answer (November 2025)

  • The Science of Learning Meets the Art of Teaching (October 2025)

  • Why authentic instructors produce strong classrooms: Lessons from Liz Norell’s The Present Professor (September 2025)

  • One Book Celebrates Lifelong Learning (August 2025)

2024/2025

• • Embracing Your Inner Nerd: A Fresh, Fun, and Evidence-Based Guide to Effective College Teaching (June 2025)
  • Lilly Conference on Innovative Strategies to Advance Student Learning (May 2025)
  • Teaching in the Age of Distraction (April 2025)
  • How Humans Learn (March 2025)
  • Managing your Academic Career (February 2025)
  • Playful Pedagogy in Higher Education (January 2025)
  • An Inspiring Resource for Making Small Changes in Instruction and Learning (December 2024)
  • A Succinct and Valuable Resource for Improving Instruction (November 2024)
  • Infusing Kindness into your Pedagogical Approach (September 2024)

Neuhaus, J. (2025). Snafu Edu. Teaching and Learning When Things Go Wrong in the College Classroom. The University of Oklahoma Press. 

Picture this: you, a dynamic college professor, lecturing animatedly and effortlessly in a lecture hall filled with students who are on the edge of their seats and in absolute awe of every word that comes out of your mouth. Does that sound like a regular Monday in the classroom to you? Jessamyn Neuhaus finds this persisting stereotype of what an effective college learning experience “should” look like, troublesome, and the reality is far from that. Instead, Neuhaus’ newest book, Snafu Edu, starts with the premise that – by nature – we are going to make mistakes in the classroom, and that we should instead of trying to live up to impossible standards of an “ideal professor,” humanize the college educator, learn from mistakes, and continue growing as instructors.  

As she reminds us: “Teaching effectively is an ongoing process of accruing new knowledge, trying new things, assessing the result, reflecting on what worked well and what didn’t, revising your pedagogical practice, and repeat.” (p. 83) Snafu Edu helps you to do exactly that – it encourages you to reflect on your teaching practice and to build onto your own already existing teaching strategies. In her book, Neuhaus identifies five major root causes of classroom snafus (inequity, disconnection, distrust, failure, and fear), analyzes why and how they might negatively impact both our teaching experience as well as the learning experience of our students, and provides repair strategies for each of these areas.  

I want to leave you with two mini pieces of advice from her book. First: Surround yourself with fellow educators who you can have those conversations with when things don’t go as planned. Why? Teaching is not, contrary to popular belief, a solitary undertaking, and building our own village of instructors we can confide in and seek advice from is crucial for our own well-being and professional development. And secondly, remember to STIR – Stop, Think, Identify, Repair when you find yourself in an unpleasant teaching situation (no worries, she explains this strategy in detail). So, I hope you will find Snafu Edu helpful for when (not if!) it becomes necessary to pull in additional advice and it will help you to continue creating classrooms in which equity, connections, trust, success, and agency are thriving.  

McGuire, S. Y. (2023). Teach students how to learn: Strategies you can incorporate into any course to improve student metacognition, study skills, and motivation. 

One book that I keep going back to and have been recommending to faculty for years is Saundra McGuire’s Teach Students How To Learn. My copy is highlighted, scribbled in, and has oh so many earmarks. Her book became an instant classic for a reason – she explores the importance of how we, as instructors, can have an even bigger impact on our students’ lives that goes beyond the content knowledge and the skills we want to teach. Originally written ten years ago, McGuire (a chemistry professor) provides actionable strategies on how and when in the semester you can (and should) incorporate lessons that help students to develop metacognitive strategies that will make them more proficient lifelong learners – and keep them motivated along the way.

The suggestions in her book cover a wide range of topics:   

• identifying where and how students formed their current study habits,  
• developing a growth mindset that embraces challenges and mistakes as learning opportunities,  
• teaching students specific strategies for reading textbooks effectively,  
• showing students how to approach and work through assignments systematically, 
• creating study groups that follow the proven study cycle method,  
• connecting course content to Bloom’s taxonomy levels,  
• understanding different teaching styles and how they affect student learning,  
• as well as developing strategies for underprepared students by adapting teaching methods to meet varying skill levels and backgrounds. 

While Saundra McGuire’s tips were written from the perspective of teaching STEM courses, lessons learned apply to all courses. If you have ever asked yourself, “How can I support my students’ learning?”, this book is for you! 

Norell, E. A. (2024). The Present Professor. The University of Oklahoma Press.

We all know it’s hard for students to learn when they’re stressed – but it’s just as hard for us to teach when we’re carrying stress, too. Between institutional pressures, global challenges, and the personal demands we all juggle, it’s no surprise that teaching can sometimes feel like a heavy lift. That’s exactly the reality Liz Norell takes up in The Present Professor, a book that feels both timely and deeply needed.

Norell reminds us that our presence in the classroom – our ability to be grounded, authentic, and fully engaged – can make all the difference for our students. But being present isn’t just about showing up with good slides or a clear syllabus. It’s about doing the inner work: noticing the insecurities, stresses, and habits we’ve learned to hide in academic spaces that often reward knowledge over vulnerability. By addressing those inner struggles, we create more room for teaching that really transforms students – and, honestly, transforms us too. 

What I appreciate most about this book is that it doesn’t stop with theory. Norell offers practical strategies and research-backed insights that help us think critically about what presence looks like in our own teaching. For anyone wrestling with how to make their classroom more inclusive and supportive, her message is refreshingly simple: if we want students to feel safe and empowered to learn, we have to give ourselves that same permission. 

In a time when higher education feels stretched and uncertain, The Present Professor reads like both a guide and a companion. It encourages us to take a breath, to look inward, and to remember that the best teaching begins with the person we bring into the room. 

Chambers, B. (2021). A psalm for the wild-built (First ed.). Tordotcom, a Tom Doherty Associates Book. 

This year’s One Book; A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers is a cozy sci-fi novella about a monk and a robot on the fictional world of Panga. The two explore and connect with nature, discuss the nature of life, what it means to be human, and what people truly need. The book starts with the main character Sibling Dex leaving their comfortable life in the city to live in the countryside and pursue a new career as a tea monk. In this fictional world a tea monk is sort of a bartender/ therapist who chats with folks about their problems while serving them tea; a role where Sibling Dex doesn’t immediately excel but eventually becomes adept. I think that the themes of leaving one’s longtime home to move to a rural place, learning to succeed even at things you initially struggle with, and of course being a lifelong learner will resonate with most of us in the WCU community.

Neuhaus, J. (2019). Geeky pedagogy: A guide for intellectuals, introverts, and nerds who want to be effective teachers (First ed.). West Virginia University Press.

Geeky Pedagogy by Jessamyn Neuhaus is a funny, evidence-based, multidisciplinary, pragmatic, highly readable guide to the process of learning and relearning how to be an effective college teacher. It is the first college teaching guide that encourages faculty to embrace their inner nerd, inviting readers to view themselves and their teaching work in light of contemporary discourse that celebrates increasingly diverse geek culture and explores stereotypes about super-smart introverts. 

Geeky Pedagogy avoids the excessive jargon, humorlessness, and endless proscriptions that plague much published advice about teaching. Neuhaus is aware of how embodied identity and employment status shape one’s teaching context, and she eschews formulaic depictions of idealized exemplar teaching, instead inviting readers to join her in an engaging, critically reflective conversation about the vicissitudes of teaching and learning in higher education as a geek, introvert, or nerd. Written for the wonks and eggheads who want to translate their vast scholarly expertise into authentic student learning, Geeky Pedagogy is packed with practical advice and encouragement for increasing readers’ pedagogical knowledge. 

Lilly Conference, an annual teaching conference in Asheville: “Our mission is to provide a forum to share and model a scholarly approach to teaching and learning that reports quality student learning outcomes while promoting professional development of faculty.”

Lang, J. M. (2020). Distracted: Why students can’t focus and what you can do about it (First ed.). Basic Books, Hachette Book Group. 

“My students are so distracted!” – If this is a thought that has crossed your mind while teaching recently, this book is for you. James M. Lang begins his book Distracted: Why students can’t focus and what you can do about it with an examination of why humans are both able to focus on specific tasks but also get easily distracted. He then turns to the modern classroom, where students face both internal distractions (mind-wandering) and external ones (technology, peers, and environment). 

Distracted does not provide a quick fix that allows you to implement an easy-to-follow-3-step procedure that will eliminate all distractions from your classroom and turn your students into attentive sponges. Instead, Lang’s book is an acknowledgement that everyone gets distracted and that getting distracted is part of human nature. While a more apt title might have been “Cultivating Attention in the College Classroom for the Distracted Mind,” his advice is very actionable. It ranges from creating community by learning and using student names, selecting and wording a technology policy for your syllabus, being strategic about how you structure your course and implementing active learning activities, to utilizing assessments in different manners.  

If this is a topic of interest to you, you will finish Lang’s book with a clear idea of how you as a college instructor can become a “steward for attention” through a range of small and larger actionable choices in both course design and classroom practice you can take.  

Eyler, J. R. (2018). How humans learn: The science and stories behind effective college teaching (First ed.). West Virginia University Press. 

Lang, J. M. (2016). Small teaching: Everyday lessons from the science of learning. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.

As the fall semester begins to wind down, some of us may be wondering is there anything we can do during the rather short winter break to improve both the instructional value in our courses and the learning outcomes for our students? The surprising answer is yes, quite a lot. Many teaching “strategies” tend to focus on large, sweeping reforms to both instruction and learning modalities. While those can be productive and sometimes necessary, they also require large swaths of time, feedback, and analysis. These methods would tend to fall under the umbrella term of “big” teaching, i.e., large or chambered shifts. On the other hand, the idea of “small” teaching, looks to allow instructors to make incremental or bite-sized changes to their instruction (5-10 minutes) and learning outcomes in the immediate; minute activities and strategies one can implement into any course to elevate student learning and participation.

In Small Teaching, Lang offers various models to help instructors of all levels, focus less on ‘higher order thinking’ learning and more on strategies that help students recall and critically think about as well as understand the basic concepts of their discipline. Some of these “bite sized” strategies, all of which are backed up by current research in teaching and learning, include participatory engagement with student-led reviews at the beginning of each class, summarization by students of the key points of the discussion at the end of class, or low-stakes quizzing. Lang’s book is an excellent resource and guide for anyone who is interested in shifting the focus of their classroom towards student success, motivation, and retention. The suggestions included in this book do not require a mass restructuring of one’s entire course but rather offers “small” strategies that can be implemented in the here and now. Small Teaching is available from various online retailers and independent bookstores. A 30 page preview is available. 

Bishop-Clark, C., & Dietz-Uhler, B. (2012). Engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning: A guide to the process, and how to develop a project from start to finish. Stylus. 

Many of us teaching in higher education honed our instructional skills through the School of Hard Knocks; we began our teaching careers with enthusiasm and good intentions, started out with some early successes (and plenty of failures?) to learn from, and with practice, the support of colleagues, and professional development, we’ve continued the slow journey towards mastery of our craft.  But we haven’t reached the end of our teaching travels, and many of us look for ways to foster our own intentional, consistent growth as instructors. One way to continually improve our courses and instructional techniques is through the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL).

In Engaging in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (Stylus, 2012), Cathy Bishop-Clark and Beth Dietz-Uhler offer several definitions of SoTL, including “the study by classroom teachers of the impact of their teaching on the learning of students in their classroom (p.12)”. Their accessible text wraps up at only 147 pages, and includes chapters on Generating the Research Idea, Designing the Study, Collecting the Data, Analyzing the Data, Presenting and Publishing Your Results, and more.  Information is clearly presented, and the authors even include worksheets throughout to assist you in developing your own SoTL plans.  If you’d like a sneak peek at the book, you can look at a 30+ page preview and it is readily available from online retailers.

If you’re interested in SoTL research, I’d love to hear from you. I’m currently serving as a Faculty Fellow for SoTL with the Coulter Faculty Center (CFC), and whether you’re considering starting your first SoTL project or have expertise to share in this area, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at clhallyburton@wcu.edu. If you’d like the support of other WCU colleagues in starting or advancing your SoTL journey, I also encourage you to join our SoTL Faculty Learning Community. In the meantime, keep learning and teaching!

Denial, C. J. (2024). A Pedagogy of Kindness. The University of Oklahoma Press. 

In many institutions, academia is not, by and large, a kind place. Individualism and competition are what count. But without kindness at its core, Catherine Denial suggests, higher education fails students and instructors—and its mission—in critical ways.

A Pedagogy of Kindness articulates a fresh vision for teaching, one that focuses on ensuring justice, believing people, and believing in people. Offering evidence-based insights and drawing from her own rich experiences as a professor, Denial offers practical tips for reshaping syllabi, assessing student performance, and creating trust and belonging in the classroom. Her suggestions for concrete, scalable actions outline nothing less than a transformational discipline—one in which, together, we create bright new spaces, rooted in compassion, in which all engaged in teaching and learning might thrive.