Design for Deeper Attentiveness

The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life by Suleika Jaouad
Random House, April 22, 2025

Reflective practice is formative. Long understood as central to professional learning, it shapes what educators are able to notice, discern, and do. For Donald Schön, it is the capacity to think in and on action. For John Dewey, it bridges experience and learning. For Rita Charon, it deepens professional judgment and relational awareness. As educators face increasing complexity, reflection can feel out of reach, yet it is deeply essential. Suleika Jaouad’s The Book of Alchemy offers creative ways to support and sustain reflective practice. It gathers 101 essays, organized around themes like memory, fear, and rebuilding. Though not written for educators specifically, the book offers a compelling model when read through the lens of professional learning. Like Jaouad’s Substack, The Isolation Journals, The Book of Alchemy extends journaling and reflection beyond solitude into a shared, generative endeavor. In this, the book invites reflection not only as a personal habit, but also as a collective practice. Journaling becomes reflective infrastructure through which readers surface insight, interpret experience, and respond collectively to complexity. The Book of Alchemy is not only about journaling—powerful in its own right. It is about designing for deeper attentiveness. It has the potential to inspire educators to (re)commit to practices of reflection—individually and collectively. Where might reflection live more intentionally in the rhythms of a school? What might shift if it were treated as infrastructure for learning, teaching, and leading? How might reflective practice—through journaling or otherwise—become a form of institutional attentiveness, helping communities sense what is emerging, build shared understanding, and guide action?