The Smartest Person in the Room I’ve long believed that the smartest person in the room is the room—that is, the collective wisdom, curiosity, and experience of the people gathered together. As educators and leaders, we know this intuitively. We’ve seen the magic of collaboration when ideas spark across difference, when someone says “me too,”…
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Thanks to my friend and colleague in Experiential Education, Mike Massingham, for gifting me this book. As educators and leaders, we often look outside of education for insights into how we can improve our schools, our leadership, and our communities. Will Guidara’s Unreasonable Hospitality is exactly the kind of book that offers those insights in…
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Book Review: How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing is not a guide to idleness but a thought-provoking exploration of how we can reclaim our attention and agency in a world that constantly demands our productivity. For educators, this book offers an essential critique of the attention economy and…
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Thanks to Adam Grant for this recommendation ~ I picked this book up because of its subtitle: “Why We Fight about Morality and Politics, and How to Find Common Ground.” The idea of “Common” is of great interest to me, and I found great meaning in this book of the power of commonality. His thesis…
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Who knew it has been 25 years since the publication of Gladwell’s The Tipping Point! This new book, where he revisits key points of Tipping Points and updates examples and brings to life the pressures, forces and mores that make a movement tip, is an excellent read. The book explores the pivotal moments when ideas, trends, or…
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This book was recommended to me through my ISEEN Professional Affinity Group: Leading through Change, and I am so thankful for this recommendation. This is a difficult and challenging book to read ~ in fact, the author spends a few dozen pages trying to talk the reader out of reading the book in its entirety….
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I want to capture the great conversation between these two books, so I’ll try something new. As I read / listened to these two amazing thinkers and futurists contemplate the state of our world, its past and future, I couldn’t help but see how they references one another’s thinking, and played with the ideas in…
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This book caught my eye from the cover design, and seeing that the forward was by Simon Sinek. This is very readable, and accessible, through Hadeed’s storytelling, and synthesis of leadership lessons that have made her the successful entrepreneur and business mind that she is today. Published in 2017, this book is more relevant…
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Full disclosure, that Dr. Belle Liang and Tim Klein are working in a year-long consulting role at our school, and that is why I picked up this book – and I am so glad that I did. Not only am I excited about the work that we will be doing with them this coming academic…
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Thanks to Rosemary Evans, former Principal of University of Toronto Schools for recommending this book to me by UTS Alum’ Asheesh Advani. I really enjoyed this book as an educator who works with highly motivated students and student leaders, and I can imagine this book being of great value to those students; though, don’t get…
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