9 Books to Add to Your Summer Reading

As you reflect and renew this summer, here are 9 book recommendations from the Mira Education team to add to your list.

1. Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides by Geoffrey L. Cohen

Recommended by Alesha Daughtrey

At its heart, teaching and learning are about creating communities in which each learner feels safe enough to be brave. This book shares research about what builds a sense of community among (sometimes) very different personalities and identities. It also offers surprisingly concrete guidance about how to put the research to work practically as a learning facilitator, K12 educator, or workplace.

2. Dare to Lead by Brené Brown

Recommended by Mariah Najmuddin Estrada, MPP

Leveraging both research and lived experience, Brené Brown charges her readers to lead with empathy and courage. Dare to Lead is a human-centered approach to cultivating a practice of brave leadership. It's a reminder that hard conversations while necessary, require empathy and trust.

3. Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers by James Macanufo, Sunni Brown

Recommended by Lori Nazareno

Great things don't happen in a vacuum. But creating an environment for creative thinking and innovation can be a daunting challenge. How can you make it happen in your district or school? The answer may surprise you: gamestorming. This book includes games to help you break down barriers, communicate better, and generate new ideas, insights, and strategies.

4. Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World by Meg Wheatley

Recommended by Lori Nazareno

We live in a time of chaos, rich in potential for new possibilities. A new world is being born. We need new ideas, new ways of seeing, and new relationships to help us now. New science offers this guidance. It describes a world where chaos is natural, where order exists "for free." It displays the intricate webs of cooperation that connect us. It assures us that life seeks order but uses messes to get there.

5. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure by Hirohiko Arak

Recommended by Candace Dewith

Take a page from your students and read JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Hirohiko Araki. This multi-part series follows the Joestar family and their individual supernatural abilities. As they overcome adversity, each member must make hard decisions to take down their supernatural foes.

6. Rethinking Intelligence: A Radical New Understanding of Our Human Potential by Rina Bliss

Recommended by Allison Alter

Author Dr. Rina Bliss shares insights from the burgeoning science of epigenetics to help us harness our environments to empower our minds. If we truly want to nurture potential, we must eliminate toxic stress so that our genes can work optimally and in harmony with our environment. This book offers successful strategies we can use as individuals and as a society, including embracing a growth mindset, prioritizing connection, becoming more mindful, and reforming systemic issues—poverty, racism, the lack of quality early childhood education—that have a negative and lasting neurobiological impact.

7. The Innovator’s Mindset: Empowering Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity by George Couros

Recommended by Iesha Williams, M.Ed.

Fostering a culture of innovation and creativity, George Couros advocates for a shift from traditional teaching methods to learner-centered approaches. Prioritizing an innovative mindset and personalized learning experiences connect to build a culture of collaboration between instructor and learner.

8. Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: School Desegregation and Resegregation in Charlotte by Roslyn Arlin Mickelson, Stephen Samuel Smith, Amy Hawn Nelson

Recommended by Alesha Daughtrey

As an alumna of CMS during the surprisingly narrow period of its integration, I’ve been tempted to take that legacy of the public school experience and value proposition for granted. This book helpfully documents the myriad ways that districts have tried to meet complex challenges for their communities amid growth and demographic change – as well as the challenges and strengths of some of those approaches. It raises questions about what the purposes of our public schools are. Most of all, it seeks to ground those questions in data as well as values, as a corrective for increasingly polarized debates about the future of public schools, community and economic development, and educational equity.

7. Small Shifts, Meaningful Improvement?by P. Ann Byrd, Jonathan Eckert, Alesha Daughtrey, Lori Nazareno

Recommended by Mira Education

How can administrators and teachers work together in ways that lead to significant—and sustained—improvement over time? This practical guide answers this question with recommendations for small, powerful shifts that educators can make to their daily practice.

What are you reading this summer??Let us know in the comments!?