4 Summer Reads for Educators: Including neuroscience and a novel
How do teachers and administrators spend their summer down time? Those outside of education often think we have 8 weeks of glorified vacation time. While many of us do spend some time traveling or binging shows we’ve missed all year, our days are also filled with doctor and dentist appointments, deep cleaning our homes, servicing our cars–essentially, we spend these weeks taking care of responsibilities we’ve had to put off because of the all-encompassing work of teaching. While I’m waiting at the service center or the doctor’s office, I often like to read, maybe you do, too?
Here are a few neuroscience books, plus a novel that might fit the bill!
Cultures of Growth: A few months ago at the Learning and the Brain conference, a group of neural educators had the opportunity to hear Carol Dweck speak about growth mindset and, during her talk, she mentioned the extending research of Mary C. Murphy. That endorsement was enough to cause me to purchase Cultures of Growth immediately, and I am so glad I did!
Peak Mind: We also heard Dr. Amishi Jha, Director of Contemplative Neuroscience at the University of Miami speak during the same conference. Her book, Peak Mind, is a foundational text for our Neuroscience of Attention Institute this summer. Dr. Jha’s analogy of “focusing your flashlight” is extremely helpful as a reminder that the skills of attention can be trained.
What Happened to You?: This book by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey has been a central text for neural educators for a few years. We have found Dr. Perry’s suggestion to shift from asking, “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?” offers us a powerful reframe for student behavior.
And, finally, the novel, Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett. It was released in the second half of 2023 which means I didn’t have a chance to read it until this year and it’s one of my favorites so far. It’s a lovely story of family, love, and growing up. I love to read novels using my library’s Libby app and this one is read by Meryl Streep which only added to my enjoyment of the story.
All of these books speak broadly to our ability to grow and change in response to experiences and the powerful impact of community and belonging, as well as our ability to bounce back after hardship. If you are interested in learning more and connecting with educators who are also learning and growing, we invite you to join us for one of our upcoming institutes! Click on the links here to find out all the details about our upcoming institutes: Neuroscience of Attention at PLU and Neuroscience of SEL and Resilience at ESD 113. Each institute is three days of exciting new learnings and we have so much fun together–we look forward to sharing them with you!
*Purchase the books from your favorite independent bookstore or order using the Amazon Affiliate links above to support Neural Education!
