MAC Reads 2024-25

A state-wide engagement that encourages Michigan educators to read and engage around a common book, and participate in a live virtual conversation with the author.


Join us for MAC Reads 2024-25!

Successful learning is as much about emotion as it is about cognition.

Discover how to manage the emotional dynamics of learning success and build strong relationships in order to realize profound achievement gains. Bestselling author Rick Stiggins shares important lessons learned from his career—most importantly, how to help students become confident, lifelong learners. 

This Book Study is ideal for:

  • School-level administrators
  • District-level administrators
  • Aspiring administrators
  • Teacher leaders
  • Organization leaders who mentor/equip teachers

Featured book for 2023-24

Give Our Students the Gift of Confidence: It’s Essential for Learning Success
by Rick Stiggins

Separate chapters for teachers, parents, and school leaders discuss how to form teams to explore home and school partnerships, the keys to effective learning, a growth mindset, the Visible Learning® research, and assessment FOR learning. Rick shows us how to ensure students:

  • Understand the learning targets 
  • Are able to monitor their own progress 
  • Can act assertively to close the gap between where they are now and where they need to be 

Call it self-efficacy, student agency, or internal locus of control—the label doesn’t matter. What does matter is that every student discovers that they can meet whatever challenges our rapidly changing society presents.

Event Resources

Presenter: Rick Stiggins

Rick Stiggins is the retired founder and president of the Assessment Training Institute (ATI) in Portland, Oregon, a professional development firm that helps educators learn to use the classroom assessment process to promote learners’ academic success. Rick’s ATI team has helped teachers maximize student achievement by helping those students come to believe in themselves as capable learners.  The team mission has been to maximize both achievement and academic confidence.  He earned a doctoral degree in educational psychology from Michigan State University in 1972.  Since then, he as devoted his career to studying the challenges teachers and local school leaders face in meeting the task demands of day-to-day classroom assessment.  Rick created ATI in 1992 to help educators in local school districts, regional service centers, state departments and faculties of higher education master the basic principles of sound classroom assessment practice.  Over the past four decades, ATI print, video, and online programs, as well as conferences and workshops, have spread across the country and around the world in the service student academic well-being.

Learning Moments

How assessment can enhance, not merely measure, student learning success
How assessment can measure and narrow achievement gaps
How policymakers can contribute to confident, lifelong learners
How families can partner with teachers to nurture confident learners
Importance of compassion PLUS high expectations

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