Resource Roundup: The Hits of the Year

I LOVE any kind of quiz or personality assessment, but this one is great for helping the future inventors I work with to explore career options.

—Christina DeSanto

Principal at San Diego County Office of Education

The RIASEC framework from San Diego Workshop Partnership uses six themes to describe people’s interests and match them with careers. 

When a person’s work environment fits their interest themes, they are more likely to perform better at work, achieve greater academic and career success, and may even earn more money than their peers.

This resource outlines 10 features from effectively redesigned high schools and highlights examples of schools that are putting these features into practice.

I’ve been working with schools that are going through total redesign, and have found this article tremendously helpful.

—David Brazer

I really enjoyed my coaching visits with Ted Zehr. He is a genuine human being, leader and role model.  I appreciated his kind and professional demeanor.  I also enjoyed the Portico conversations around the counterpart on variety of topics!

—Claudia Ruiz-Flores

Assistant Principal at Anaheim High School

Inflexion pairs you with an experienced school leader who has not only been a principal but has led transformational change at the site level. Meet with your coach monthly for an hour-long strategy session and check in weekly to keep the work going. This coaching is coupled with a monthly meeting with a cohort of peers to foster a community of continuous improvement.

A Path for Warriors for the Human Spirit is based on the understanding that good leaders and engaged activists now require a very different kind and quality of training if they are to persevere in their work as effective leaders for their organizations, communities and causes. Warriors appear in every culture when hard times come upon the people. Warrior weapons can be aggressive or peaceful, yet they share one value: They commit to protect and preserve what must be saved.

Warriors for the Human Spirit train to develop the qualities and skillful means necessary to protect and preserve the human spirit and the spirit of life. They have only two “weapons”—compassion and insight.

Margaret Wheatley’s work on organizational theory has been a significant influence in our approach to school transformation, so her shift in focus to warriorship in our current system is worth paying attention to.

—Michelle Liebhardt

An evidence-based resilience toolkit to help you find better, more sustainable ways to succeed at work and life

In The Burnout Fix, the award-winning psychologist and board-certified leadership coach Dr. Jacinta M. Jiménez shows you how to harness science-backed resilience strategies to survive, and thrive, in today’s “always on, always connected” world―where a reported 60% of employees report being stressed out all or most of the time at work.

Some of you know what the last few years have been like for me, having my school building destroyed by an ice storm and having my students spread out to different schools. This book has helped me to redefine my thoughts on becoming a healthy future Dr. T. Brown-Warrens who doesn’t have to give up my life for my goals!

—Dr. Traniece Brown-Warrens

Principal at Markham Elementary School

Over the past few months I’ve started using Canva, and it has made it possible for me to complete projects that I would otherwise need to lean on really busy folks to support me. It’s been helpful to me but I love that it can help educators with so many things that would take them tons of time to do other ways, and it’s totally free!

—Rachel Phillips

Canva offers free access to eligible K-12 teachers and students through Canva for Education and to nonprofits through Canva for Nonprofits. Create, collaborate, publish and print. Design anything with thousands of free templates, photos, fonts, and more.

Although individuals can use this reflection tool, it is designed for collaborative reflection. To the greatest extent possible, talk with and listen to others at your school. For each of the ten dimensions of belonging, reflect on what you are doing well and what could be done better or differently. To ensure this reflection leads to observable action, agree on taking at least three actionable steps that will make a noticeable difference in promoting inclusion and belonging at your school.

I encountered this resource at a conference recently, and I love that it gives really practical ways that you can increase belonging and connection. We know how important that is for students, and this gives educators real steps they can take to make an impact.

—Elise Kuykendall

This is the most recent book, but all of his leadership fables are worth reading.

—Mike Garling

In The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, Pat Lencioni offers another compelling leadership fable. This time, Pat’s focus is on a leader’s role in building a healthy organization—an often overlooked but essential element of business life that is the linchpin of sustained success.

In this thought-provoking documentary, scholars, activists and politicians analyze the criminalization of African Americans and the U.S. prison boom.

We must confront the systemic inequities and injustices deeply rooted in our educational system—forces that fuel the school-to-prison pipeline. Only through awareness and action can we begin to break this cycle.

—Ling Deng