As teachers, how do we foster and celebrate ability and natural capacities? In Out of Our Minds Sir Ken Robinson suggests that the answer may just be creativity. He points out that our world is shaped by human imagination. Emphasis is also placed on the fact that finding, and fulfilling, our creative potential helps us live a happier life.

In Think Like a Monk, Jay Shetty calls his readers to a life of service noting that service fulfills us on many levels. We are born to care for others, so service does us good. By design, teaching is a service profession. How long has it been since you have examined your practice as an educator through the lens of love and as an act of service?

Have you ever caught yourself ruminating about “What ifs…?” Or have you been paralyzed by fear, unable to make decisions? In Emotional Agility, Susan David provides a guidebook grounded in psychological research to help us embrace all of our emotions, even the most uncomfortable ones, discover our “why”, and align our lives with our values.

In his book Distracted, James Lang explains that “the human brain is an eminently distractible organ. We thus are fighting a losing battle if we try to solve the problems of attention by eliminating distraction. Banning devices from the room still leaves pencils for doodling, windows to stare through, coughing and sniffing humans to irritate us, and the endless chaotic swirling of our thoughts. Instead, we need to think about how the learning environments that we build for students can be safe and supportive spaces.

David Epstein uses Range to convince the reader that it may in fact be the generalists who add more value as the world becomes more and more complex. His basic premise is that for complex problem-solving and decision-making, it is often those with broad experience and diverse backgrounds who fare better (e.g., professionals with hobbies outside of their profession).

Are you always asking questions about the world? Do you wish you were more curious? Warren Berger uses A More Beautiful Question to train you to think systematically and deeply about questions that we ask.

Screenwise, by Devorah Heitner, was written with parents in mind, but there are many helpful parallels to education. She also calls off the wolves on some parental concerns (e.g., most teenagers aren't looking to meet new people online and almost all digital interaction is polite and caring) and walks the reader through what the reality of the digital landscape is for kids. The overarching message is to engage with children in their digital world and seek to mentor more and monitor less.

Talking to Strangers is different from talking to our friends and acquaintances. Using contemporary case studies, Gladwell challenges his readers to see where experts have made mistakes in communicating with strangers and how we can use those lessons to approach strangers with more humility, compassion, and kindness.

In Grit, by Angela Duckworth, the reader is taken on a journey to analyze how persistence makes the difference in a successful life. If you are looking to identify and/or foster grit this book will give you research, anecdotes, and theories to do that.

What if the educational emphasis on cognition and ability was all a mistake? What if we focused on developing persistence, self-control, and curiosity instead of cognitive skills? In How Children Succeed, Paul Tough argues that teaching soft skills might be more important than the traditional educational curriculum.

If you are interested in motivation for yourself, your students, or those you lead, you will find plenty of ideas and research in Drive. Daniel Pink sandwiches mastery, autonomy, and purpose in between his call for new methods of motivating and toolkits to do so. A masterful combination of history, research, and theory will be a joy for anyone interested in motivating themselves or others.

In Permission to Feel, we learn that some of the most important aspects of learning - attention, focus, and memory - are all controlled by our emotions, not by cognition. Marc Brackett helps us understand what emotions are, how to label them, and the information emotions communicate, potentially transforming how administrators and teachers lead and how students learn.

All Learning is Social and Emotional boldly claims the necessity of cultivating social and emotional skills in students. This is a quick read packed with valuable information for school leaders and classroom practitioners alike.

Different Schools for a Different World is a quick read for anyone who needs convincing or reminding why traditional education hasn’t, and isn’t, working. Links to organizations doing great work, the TRUDACOT model for tech integration, and examples of deep learning schools at the end are all handy. Use them to remind us that there are tools and examples for us to tap into for inspiration and guidance.

George Couros’, The Innovator’s Mindset convincingly makes the case that schools should exist to empower students to be innovative leaders, creators, problem finders, and problem solvers. He creatively introduces a blueprint for how schools can do this by introducing two different approaches focused on making meaningful connections by building trust and taking risks.

Seth Godin’s Linchpin proclaims that the industrial model of schooling and living as cogs in a machine is outdated, and in turn, explains how individuals can transform themselves into indispensable linchpins that create art, inspire human connections, and solve interesting problems. Godin chips away at traditional educational models that rely upon fear, compliance, and rote memorization; however, he also provides innovative alternatives centered around the belief in students, growth, leadership, and taking risks.

In what is perhaps the most buzzworthy and conversation-inducing book within education this century, Mindset vividly demonstrates the difference between a “growth” and a “fixed” mindset. The former is a blueprint for a life of learning and achievement, and the latter, a life of low-effort, defensive responses creating a feeling of constantly not measuring up.

In The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle proposes all hotbeds of talent (e.g., Russian female tennis players from 2005-2007, Dominican players in the Major Leagues, the home that produced the three Brontë sister authors) have commonalities: Deep practice, Ignition, and Master Coaching. In some ways the sociological equivalent to Daniel Pink's Drive, The Talent Code offers solid examples of how myelin is the key to developing talent.