Dear Principals,
Before your summer downtime starts to vanish, take time to recharge your brains, find inspiration, and generate ideas for the fall. Feed your minds with interesting books, articles, and audio while you aren’t so busy and get psyched for the school year ahead. (Obviously, many of you are running summer school, but hopefully, the pace is not as hectic.)
EdWeek’s bibliophiles and audiophiles put together some recommendations to spare you the arduous job of figuring out what to listen to and what to read among the flood of podcasts, books, and articles.
Here’s our short list:
Podcasts:
- Coaching Real Leaders with Muriel Wilkins from Harvard Business Review;
- School Leadership Reimagined with Robyn Jackson;
- Sayre Middle School Podcast, a student-produced podcast on the school’s maintenance crew that won a prize from NPR.
One for pure fun: By the Book, from two witty women who select a different self-help book to live by—follow it to the letter for two weeks—and discuss if it’s actually worthwhile.
“It’s generally lighthearted and also informative in a fun way,” says EdWeek’s Melissa Heyeck. (*Warning: some adult topics and salty language)
Books:
- Principaled: Navigating the Leadership Learning Curve by Kate Barker, Kourtney Ferrua, and Rachael George;
- Connections Over Compliance: Rewiring Our Perceptions of Discipline by Lori L. Desautels;
- Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
One to get lost in: The Cold Millions by Jess Walter, a “great, adventurous novel about labor unions, hoboes, and the West,” says EdWeek’s Daarel Burnette II.
Articles:
- Students (and not just overachieving student council kids) get involved in their teachers’ PD and the results are powerful—how one Des Moines high school did it;
- PD does not have to be a dreaded affair, if you make the learning experience active and joyful;
- Why time management efforts are often a trap that cause even more stress.
One for sheer delight: A wanna-be bat girl for the Yankees whose request to join the dugout was turned down, gets her wish, 60 years later.
Deep tracks:
If you’ve got extra bandwidth and want more reading to sink into, explore the vast collection of articles, opinion pieces, and videos we’ve got on leadership and teaching and learning.
