Educators as First Responders: A Teacher's Guide to Adolescent Development and Mental Health, Grades 6-12 by Deborah Offner
This is a relevant, current, and timely resource for educators at a moment when supporting the mental and emotional health of adolescents is increasingly and critically urgent! Dr. Offner shares her deep understanding of adolescents and of schools with a distinctly engaging book that provides essential insights, compelling stories, provocative questions, and practical advice for teachers to develop their skills for supporting students and to advocate for improved school culture and policy. A must-read.
—Karen Lassey, Assistant Principal, Phillips Exeter Academy (NH)
Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away by Annie Duke
I imagine many will be surprised to hear a writer extol the virtues of quitting. Isn't perseverance a near-universal piece of advice, from Edison's declaration "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work" in books about grit or the virtue of a growth mindset?But as Duke observes, there's a paradox here: "The opposite of a great virtue is also a great virtue." Edison succeeded by grit, but most stars of today's tech revolution did so by quitting their initial paths and striking out into new territory.
Duke argues that "the most painful thing to quit is who you are." She illustrates this with an example most of us will recognize. Remember when many malls were anchored by Sears stores? At its peak, Sears had 3,500 outlets and accounted for 1% of all U.S. sales. Now it has 22 stores. Why? Because it refused to quit, even when it had successfully diversified into insurance, credit cards, real estate, and other services that flourished as retail stores declined. Instead, years ago it sold all those services in order to "get back to its roots." But Kmart, Target, and Walmart soon uprooted Sears.
Duke's case explores such concepts as the "sunk cost fallacy" (persevering as if that would bring back time or money already lost) and is supported by the discoveries of behavioral psychologists and economists, such as Daniel Kahneman and Philip Tetlock, and many others she consulted for her book. Duke might be one of those scholars today had a severe stomach ailment not derailed her academic career.
But Duke also draws on an extraordinary family story. Her father, word-maven Richard Lederer, quit teaching and coaching at St. Paul's School (NH) to become one of America's most beloved columnists and lecturers, and Duke and her two siblings have passed through multiple careers, from academia to chess, to poker, to poetry, to hedge funds, usually with great success. Her family illustrates another of her aphorisms: "Inflexible goals aren't a good fit for a flexible world."
—Richard Barbieri, Longtime Independent School contributor who spent 40 years as a teacher and administrator in independent schools
Mastering Community: The Surprising Ways Coming Together Moves Us from Surviving to Thriving by Christine Porath
In her book, Porath describes humans’ deep desire to feel a sense of belonging. People need to be a part of something meaningful. We want to believe in a group’s mission and feel purposeful. The proliferation of technology and remote work, however, have led people to feel disconnected. As our personal interactions and group activities have decreased, so has our happiness, and this is contributing to a mental health crisis.Porath’s research suggests that by “uniting people and sharing information, creating a respectful environment, providing a sense of meaning, and boosting personal well-being, any one of us can help a community truly flourish.”
Porath defines community as a group of individuals who share a mutual concern for one another, and her book offers insights into how we can build community. This year, at Kent School, we are diving deeply into what it means to be part of our school community as we work together to restore and strengthen it. Community is the heartbeat of our school and must be at the forefront of all that we do.
—Nancy Mugele, Head of School, Kent School (MD)
Between Us: How Cultures Create Emotions by Batja Mesquita
When studying another language, we’re often taught to substitute word for word (triste in French = sad in English, say). But do emotion words mean the same things in different languages? In Between Us: How Cultures Create Emotions, acclaimed psychology researcher Batja Mesquita shows how the environment we live in shapes not just what we call our feelings but how we experience the world. The research and vignettes in this book will give you new insights into your own life and will help build your intercultural competence.—Myra McGovern, Vice President of Media, NAIS