In our society, is joy a luxury or an act of defiance? NPR's recent Code Switch episode asserts that, especially for marginalized communities, pursuing and expressing joy can be a necessary form of resistance — among other things. While exploring historical and current contexts, the podcast hosts reframe joy continuously. More than fleeting happiness, it is an affirmation of humanity, resilience, and cultural survival. And, for Black and Brown communities, the cultivation of joyful spaces — through art, music, communal gatherings, and everyday acts of living — has served throughout history as a counter-narrative to oppression. As the podcast reiterates, joy is also not justice. Listeners are invited to begin to think of joy as healing and community building, rather than an absence of hardship. For school leaders and educators, this podcast can encourage an evaluation of community cultures and prompt reflection on how our environments either foster or inadvertently suppress expressions of joy. Celebrating joy in all its forms might just be a pathway to cultivating genuinely inclusive, resilient, and human-centered learning communities.

Many leadership books support the development of CEOs, executive directors of nonprofits, school principals, and even school superintendents. Almost no books support leadership in independent schools. With 24 years as head of Tabor Academy followed by six years as director of the NEASC Independent School Commission, Jay Stroud is uniquely positioned to provide insights into the countless challenges and opportunities (i.e., learning moments) a head of school will face. In his new book, Stroud provides these insights with a compelling combination of humor and humility. Stroud’s wisdom unfolds in a delightful series of "principles, parables, and paradoxes" spread over short chapters encompassing just about every situation a head of school can face. With this accessible organization, the book allows readers to engage easily, whether they want to spend 10 minutes or two hours reading. Stroud writes, "I hope for anyone doing the job [of headship], this book might be like a reassuring hand on the shoulder." Here he certainly succeeds, as the sense of being alone in one’s work is lifted by Stroud's countless stories and situations where "you can't make this stuff up" happens on a regular basis. For those who are heads of school, curious about becoming heads of school, or just love school life, this book is a must-read.

At a time when the science of learning and the need for explicit teaching have reemerged at the forefront of simply good teaching, Héctor Ruiz Martín's book, How Do We Learn, serves as a timely reminder: getting to know one’s students as learners begins with understanding how students learn best. Martín translates extensive cognitive research into quick, actionable strategies teachers can digest and instantly implement in the classroom to help students navigate the social dimension of learning, develop intrinsic motivation, make important connections, and visualize representations to strengthen the transfer of learning into long-term memory. The book’s astute and progressive organization allows readers to understand metacognition and how the brain learns. Importantly, it also offers strategies, at the teacher level, for designing purposeful assessment and providing constructive feedback that truly supports learning — in and out of the classroom. Ultimately, this resource will help departments, divisions, and schools to develop a common language and establish high expectations for equitable learning experiences for all.

Amid the AI boom, what habits, skills, and thinking patterns should we value? And teach our students to value? Derek Thompson and Cal Newport answer these questions and more in a comprehensive conversation. Both writers discuss how students and professors now operate; recent studies related to task completion and brain activity when using AI; and the decline in deep reading and writing. They cover concepts and practices that are of value for educators to know and consider: real-time pedagogy demonstrations, supporting the cognitive equivalent of "time under tension," and having "comfort with cognitive discomfort." Thompson and Newport speak to the ways in which AI can enhance one's professional or personal life; they are also wary of its harm on thinking, especially as it relates to the "one-two punch" of reading and writing that "literally changes our brain." Newport's observations expand educators' understanding of how children use AI as a "parasocial" technology. Meanwhile, Thompson's argument for classes resembling dissertation defenses and helping students to become "masters of cognitive time under tension" can spark a discussion for schools to reflect on their academic philosophies and best practices. With its easy-to-follow conversation and thought-provoking questions, this podcast episode is a worthwhile listen. 

This chapter from the forthcoming book The Artificial Intelligence Revolution: Challenges and Opportunities zooms out beyond the "AI in the classroom" discourse to offer a powerful, compelling, and well-argued vision for what and how to teach in our technology-addled age. Rather than seeing the changes wrought by chatbots and generative AI tools as something new, the authors trace important continuities with the use of technology to offload memory and content knowledge. They suggest that the move away from deep, factual, content knowledge in favor of critical thinking and constructivist approaches in the age of information abundance – what the authors dub the "look it up" mindset – led educators to "[miss] how stored knowledge builds the mental foundation needed for advanced thinking." By further examining the distinct roles of declarative and procedural memory, the authors argue that genuine expertise and intuition emerge from the cultivation and internalization of foundational knowledge, not just the development of critical thinking skills with passive externalization of facts. All of this points towards a future in which "the synergy of human cognition and machine capability will define successful education," but in that future, these authors believe that facts matter both as content knowledge and, more importantly, as the essential structure for developing robust mental models and the schemata of deeper critical and reflective thinking.

"Cheating is a natural and normal human behavior, most often enacted as a way to survive or as an error in judgment," write Tricia Bertram Gallant and David A. Rettinger in their forceful The Opposite of Cheating: Teaching for Integrity in the Age of AI. Cheating is not typically "something students do to intentionally dupe, deceive, or insult" their instructors. With the advent of ChatGPT and other AI tools, however, student cheating has certainly taken on thorny, new dimensions in both higher and secondary education. Gallant and Rettinger acknowledge this reality while offering a number of specific recommendations for teachers and school leaders. In seven research-packed chapters, they explain why students cheat; how to center integrity in course syllabi and daily pedagogical practices; how to design courses and assessments for integrity; how to promote and protect assessment integrity; and how to infuse ethics into all elements of teaching and learning in the age of AI. Although framed within the context of managing and contending with AI, their book acts more like a primer on how to approach student cheating through the lens of teaching and learning. Gallant and Rettinger are not only great researchers and writers, but also skilled teachers, made evident through their articulation of specific learning goals and their comprehensive lists of next steps for educators to lean on as they transition from the book back to their real world of their own practice. 

Do you love retellings? Do you get the sense that a piece of the story you have heard since childhood is sometimes missing? Queer Mythology is a tender and powerful anthology that helps teachers and students to discover the hidden nuances of classic stories. Mythology is all around us and helps us to learn more about ourselves and others. In this beautifully and uniquely illustrated collection of stories, Guido A. Sanchez and illustrator James Fenner provide readers with a new take on both classic and lesser known mythologies from around the world. This book offers something new to the canon of mythology. Queer Mythology can be useful for educators who teach storytelling or are looking for something to share that offers another perspective as an inclusive option for students — especially queer students looking for themselves in stories. Each story is preceded by a contextual note for the reader. Multiple cultures and regions are represented. Many students are entranced by the series that center mythology in our school libraries; this collection adds a new dimension.