Through research and 20 years of experience working with nearly 14,000 education leaders across the country, we know that effective professional learning is critically important to keeping leaders in their jobs longer and creating better outcomes for students. To help celebrate the start of a new school year and kick off your own professional learning goals, we offer you this hot-off-the-presses book list comprised of resources –all of which are brand-new or coming soon in 2023 – to help support the creation of culturally responsive learning environments where every student can thrive.
Featuring several exciting new titles from our team here at The Leadership Academy as well as our partners in the work, this diverse list represents a range of perspectives and insights to help you to enhance your instructional leadership, deepen your equity work, drive change, and foster a thriving school or systems culture. Click here for a printable version of the list.
- Blended Coaching: Supporting the Development and Supervision of School Leaders (2nd Edition) by Gary S. Bloom and Jackie Owens Wilson builds on the groundbreaking model outlined in the bestselling first edition of Blended Coaching, offering a powerful set of strategies for effective supervision with a significant new focus on coaching leaders through issues of equity.
- From Tinkering to Transformation: How School District Central Offices Drive Equitable Teaching and Learning by Meredith I. Honig and Lydia R. Rainey (available for preorder) is a guide to helping education leaders reimagine the central office through an equity-aligned, research-based approach. Using lively case studies, detailed examples, and performance data from ten US school districts, Honig and Rainey highlight how central offices must transform to support equitable teaching and learning in schools.
- Improving America’s Schools Together: How District-University Partnerships and Continuous Improvement Can Transform Education, edited by Louis M. Gomez, Manuelito Biag, David G. Imig, Randy Hitz, and Steve Tozer, focuses on continuous improvement in school district-university partnerships, highlighting in-depth stories, improvement methods, theory, research, and practical tools that can be adapted to any setting.
- Justice Seekers: Pursuing Equity in the Details of Teaching and Learning by Lacey Robinson discovers the many ways that justice is in the details of race, pedagogy, and standards-driven education. The book offers strategies to help educators see the ways in which they can contribute to eradicating racial inequity and methods for improving the quality of your own teaching here and now.
- Leading Your School Toward Equity: A Practical Framework for Walking the Talk by Dwayne Chism presents a four-step Equity Leadership Framework that is filled with practical guidance, exercises, and activities that you can apply to your school environment.
- Leading Within Systems of Inequity in Education: A Liberation Guide for Leaders of Color by The Leadership Academy’s own Executive Director of Curriculum Development & Equity Mary Rice-Boothe explores what leaders of color need to succeed in the systems that have often marginalized the populations they represent. With first-hand insights from equity officers and principals, this timely book will help leaders of color to succeed within white spaces while working to dismantle those spaces for a new system where they – and students – thrive.
- Leverage the People Who Love and Care About You Personally and Professionally by Ron Rapatalo is an amalgamation of the stories, values, and lessons of Rapatalo’s own personal “circle of champions,” which he offers alongside advice on seeking out your own circle of champions and how to learn from them.
- The Open System: Redesigning Education and Reigniting Democracy by Landon Mascareñaz and Doannie Tran is a call to action for school and community leaders to reframe educational institutions as open systems that are adaptable and responsive to the needs of students, families, and communities.
- Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal by Bettina L. Love lays bare the devastating effect on 25 Black Americans caught in the intersection of economic gain and racist ideology. With input from leading U.S. economists, Dr. Love then offers a road map for repair, arguing for reparations with transformation for all children at its core.
- Stay and Prevail: Students of Color Don’t Need to Leave Their Communities to Succeed by The Leadership Academy’s Lead Executive Officer & President Nancy Gutierrez & Roberto Padilla calls out deficit-based thinking that reinforces the idea that students of color living in low-income communities must leave their communities to succeed. With real-world examples of leaders who gave back to their communities as well as reflection questions and clear and simple tips, this book helps educators honor the backgrounds, cultures, and strengths of Black and Brown communities.
- Shifting Self and System: How Educational Leaders Propel Excellence for Achieving Equity by Ruby Ababio-Fernandez and Courtney Winkfield (available for preorder) presents an original framework built on the interdependent pillars of self-mastery, adaptive leadership, racial literacy, emergence, and whole-body healing.
- There Are No Deficits Here: Disrupting Anti-Blackness in Education by Lauren M. Wells disrupts the deficit beliefs that steal belonging, purpose, pride, and joy from Black students, examining school reform models and offering a counternarrative of how interrelationships and interdependence govern healthy systems.
- Understanding Your Instructional Power: Curriculum and Language Decisions to Support Each Student by Tanji Reed Marshall challenges us to question our assumed impact in the classroom and to reflect on whether we use our power for the betterment of students. The Power Principle Matrix is central to the book, pushing readers toward deep, critical self-examination through its two focus areas, teacher autonomy and instructional power.
- Unearthing Joy: A Guide to Culturally and Historically Responsive Curriculum and Instruction by Gholdy Muhammad is a follow-up to Cultivating Genius, introducing the fifth pursuit of joy to her groundbreaking HILL (Histories, Identities, Literacies, and Liberation) model. Filled with quotes, poems, artwork, and playlists, this book awakens all of the senses for a truly joyful reading experience.
- Unwrapped: The Pursuit of Justice for Women Educators by The Leadership Academy’s own Kendra Washington-Bass and Kelly Peaks Horner aims to create an inclusive space for women educational leaders to cultivate positive and enriching educational experiences that ensure equitable access for all students, particularly those from marginalized backgrounds.
- Coming soon: Finding Your Leadership Soul by Carlos Moreno, releasing December 2023— while it’s not yet available for preorder, we encourage you to keep an eye out for this exciting new title.
If you’ve read or discovered a new equity-focused leadership book or resource that you don’t see on this list, we’d love to hear about it! Feel free to tell us about it here.
Happy reading, and wishing you a phenomenal start to your new school year and professional learning journey!