This article appeared as "What Your Colleagues Are Reading" in the Summer 2026 issue of Independent School.
Flourish: The Art of Building Meaning, Joy, and Fulfillment
by Daniel Coyle
I was captivated from the moment I heard Daniel Coyle on Adam Grant’s WorkLife podcast, and having enjoyed his earlier books, The Culture Code and The Talent Code, I was eager to see what he would explore this time.
What I appreciate about Coyle’s work is his deep curiosity. He travels to communities facing challenge and opportunity alike in search of the small, repeatable conditions that help people reconnect and move in the same direction—from miners trapped in Chile, to the Dutch national soccer team, and communities across very different landscapes. He examines how communities come together and, as he puts it, “awaken”—through what he calls “moments of receptive stillness that create meaning by illuminating connection.”
The connections we need are often already there, waiting to be revealed through new ways of thinking or small shifts in perspective. The book left me reflecting on how we might more intentionally animate and strengthen these ties to meet this moment with openness, creativity, and shared purpose.
—Guybe Slangez, Senior Director of Expansion, Horizons National
The End of Education As We Know It: Regenerative Learning for Complex Times
by Ida Rose Florez
This book invites teachers and school leaders to take a hard look at the factory model of schooling many of us inherited without ever choosing. Drawing on her background in psychology and educational assessment, as well as her leadership at the Elementary Institute of Science (CA), Florez argues that schools have been organized like machines—predictable, hierarchical, and oriented toward compliance and obedience rather than curiosity and discovery.
Florez contrasts this machine way of seeing with a regenerative model inspired by living systems. Biological organisms are self-organizing, adaptive, and irreducibly whole; meaningful change, she suggests, grows from relationships and local conditions rather than from top-down design. Her five “Simple Rules”—think in wholes, circles, dynamics, networks, and generative possibilities—give educators a set of mental moves they can actually try. The foreword by evolutionary biologist Peter Gray reinforces this idea through the example of democratic and self-directed schooling, where shared power and student voice cultivate intrinsic motivation rather than external reward.
Florez calls for reverence for children, reciprocity across ages and roles, and “mutual thriving” as a guiding ethic. She cautions that disruption without sufficient timing or patience can simply harden the status quo, yet she remains optimistic that small, locally rooted efforts—gardens; inquiry circles; adaptive projects; and cross-age, cross-disciplinary engagement—can link into living networks of practice that extend beyond the classroom to the entire campus and community.
—Stuart Grauer, Head of School Emeritus, The Grauer School (CA)
Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century
by Jessica Bruder
I found this nonfiction work on display at the South Coastal Library in Bethany Beach, Delaware. The shiny Airstream on the cover caught my eye, bringing to mind the cover of Nowhere for Very Long by Brianna Madia—with her 4x4 “Big Bertha” set against the salt flats of the Great Salt Lake—one of my favorite books.
While Nomadland became an award-winning film starring Frances McDormand, I had never seen it and hadn’t realized there was a book behind it. Bruder takes readers on an anthropological journey into a subculture that I didn’t even know existed: older Americans who live full time on the road in RVs, working seasonal jobs in places like state parks, beet farms, and Amazon.
The book offers insight into a demanding nomadic lifestyle shaped by choice, economics, marital changes, financial loss, and more, as well as the strong sense of community nomads have created, largely in the West. It changes how you see RVs passing by—and invites reflection on your own future as you grow older.
—Geneviève Courbois, Director of Advancement Events and Engagement, The River School (DC)
AQ: A New Kind of Intelligence for a World That’s Always Changing
by Liz Tran
The world is changing faster than most of us would care to admit. In AQ: A New Kind of Intelligence for a World That’s Always Changing, Liz Tran names something I have watched unfold in schools for years: The teachers and leaders who thrive are not the ones who know the most—they’re the ones willing to adapt as the world around them evolves.
Tran identifies four archetypes that describe how people respond to change: the novelist, the astronaut, the firefighter, and the neurosurgeon. Recognizing your type, as well as those of your faculty, administrators, and staff, can shift how you coach, support, and build teams.
Her core argument is simple. Technical skills expire, while durable skills endure. Agility is one of those durable skills, and it can be developed. For school leaders, this means hiring for learning aptitude, treating disruption as an opportunity for growth, and building cultures where change is met with curiosity rather than resistance.
—Laura Leathers, Head of School, The Hockaday School (TX)
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