Each summer, Eaglebrook faculty members read a book that will help them better understand boys in middle school and provide a common ground for discussion.
In the summer of 2023, the Eaglebrook faculty will read one of three books and discuss them during the school year.
Those who read this book will learn:
- What to expect in the normal course of adolescent emotional development and when it’s time to worry
- Why teens (and adults) need to understand that mental health isn’t about “feeling good” but about having feelings that fit the moment, even if those feelings are unwanted or painful.
- Strategies for supporting teens who feel at the mercy of their emotions so they can become psychologically aware and skilled at managing their feelings.
- How to approach common challenges that come with adolescence, such as friction at home, spiking anxiety, risky behavior, navigating friendships and romances, the pull of social media, and many more.
- The best ways to stay connected to their teens and how to provide the kind of relationship that adolescents need and want.
With clear, research-informed explanations alongside illuminating, real-life examples, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers gives parents and teachers the concrete, practical information they need to steady their teens through the bumpy yet transformational journey into adulthood.
It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving more than four hundred people. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola, a former plantation turned maximum-security prison in Louisiana that is filled with Black men who work across the 18,000-acre land for virtually no pay. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers.
A deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country's most essential stories are hidden in plain view—whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods like downtown Manhattan, where the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women, and children has been deeply imprinted.
Informed by scholarship and brought to life by the story of people living today, Smith's debut work of nonfiction is a landmark of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in making sense of our country and how it has come to be.
The Power of Language: How the Codes We Use to Think, Speak, and Live Transform Our Minds by Viorica Marian As Dr. Marian explains, while you may well think you speak only one language, in fact, your mind accommodates multiple codes of communication. Some people speak Spanish, some Mandarin. Some speak poetry, some are fluent in math. The human brain is built to use multiple languages, and using more languages opens doors to creativity, brain health, and cognitive control.
Every new language we speak shapes how we extract and interpret information. It alters what we remember, how we perceive ourselves and the world around us, how we feel, the insights we have, the decisions we make, and the actions we take. Language is an invaluable tool for organizing, processing, and structuring information, and thereby unleashing radical advancement.
Learning a new language has broad lifetime consequences, and Dr. Marian reviews research showing that it:
- Enhances executive function—our ability to focus on the things that matter and ignore the things that don’t.
- Results in higher scores on creative-thinking tasks.
- Develops critical reasoning skills.
- Delays Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia by four to six years.
- Improves decisions made under emotional duress.
- Changes what we see, pay attention to, and recall.
Past Faculty Summer Reading Titles:
The Unlikely Art of Parental Pressure, by Dr. Christopher Thurber and Hendrie Weisinger, Ph.D.
Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds by Ruth E. Van Reken, Michael V. Pollock, and David C. Pollock
Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success by Marc Brackett
Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter Brown, Henry Roediger, and Mark McDaniel.
Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning by James Lang.
The Owner's Manual for Driving Your Adolescent Brain by Joann Deak, Terrence Deak, and Freya Harrison.
I Can Learn from You: Boys as Relational Learners by Michael Reichert and Richard Hawley.
We Can't Teach What We Don't Know: White Teachers, Multiracial SchoolsThinking Differently: An Inspiring Guide for Parents of Children with Learning Disabilities by David Flink.
Studio Thinking 2: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education by Lois Hetland, Ellen Winner, and Shirley Veenema.
Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It by Kelly Gallagher.
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen.
What Does Math Have to do With It? by Jo Boaler.
Changing Lives: Gustavo Dudamel, El Sistema, and the Transformative Power of Music by Tricia Tunstall.
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
Meet Me in the Middle: Becoming an Accomplished Middle-Level Teacher by Rick Wormeli.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.
The Multiplier Effect: Tapping Genius Inside Our Schools by Liz Wiseman, Lois N. Allen, & Elise Foster.
It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens by Danah Boyd.
LGBTQ Youth in American Schools by Jason Cianciotto and Sean Cahill.
How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character by Paul Tough.
Imagine: How Creativity Works, by Jonah Lehrer.
Differentiation: From Planning to Practice, Grades 6-12, by Rick Wormeli
The Purpose of Boys by Michael Gurlan.
If Holden Caulfield Were in My Classroom by Bernard Schein.
Whose Game is it, Anyway? by Richard Ginsburg, Stephen Durant, and Amy Baltzell.
The Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv.
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.
Raising Cain by Dr. Michael Thompson.
Family Matters by Robert Evans.
Why Do They Act That Way? by Dr. Davis Walsh.