Although many have found themselves in conversations about 21st-century skills in schools, Third Millennium Thinking: Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense offers a fresh perspective on the strategies students and faculty need to thrive in an increasingly complex world. The authors, physicist Saul Perlmutter, philosopher John Campbell, and psychologist Robert MacCoun, combine their scholarship and experience to offer guidance on ways of knowing, tools for thinking, and habits of mind that are rooted in scientific practices and can help solve the problems that plague society. It is easy to imagine how engaging students with ideas from the book, such as probabilistic thinking, uncertainty, and cognitive biases, will serve them well throughout school and beyond. Additionally, the authors’ exploration of scientific optimism – the idea that any problem can be solved with enough effort and time – is a useful mindset for students to adopt. Indeed, faculty and school leaders will find the strategies outlined in Third Millennium Thinking compelling as they seek to develop a common vocabulary and understanding of how to move the work of our schools forward. Full of anecdotes, examples, and broad insights for teaching and learning, this is an engaging and useful resource.

In an academic yet approachable tone, Jonathan Haidt’s call for fundamental reforms – "no smartphones before high school; no social media before 16; phone-free schools; far more unsupervised play and childhood independence” – is furthered in this engaging text. Haidt makes the compelling claim that with the increased emphasis on standardized testing and quantifiable learning in schools, students’ inability to come together to play and to problem solve independent of adult interference or outside of scheduled activities has exacerbated the issues associated with near-constant digital device use. In fact, children and teenagers are now “overprotected in real life and under protected in digital spaces.” The chapter, “What Schools Can Do Now,” is particularly illuminating as Haidt suggests that to curb adolescent addiction to smartphones, and thus lessen some of the mental health issues that come with their reliance, collective action is needed among families, schools, and districts. Likewise, the text asks readers, how might schools offer more opportunities for students to engage with productive difficulty, risk, or moments of collaboration with limited adult interference? Fundamentally, this is a book for anyone who has sensed there might be something problematic about the fact that in our hyper-connected world, “Everything is available to every individual, all the time, with little or no effort.”

Language City by Ross Perlin makes the reader feel smarter – not because it is full of endless, interesting facts (although it is), but because it models a kind of open-minded curiosity and wonder that should resonate with any educator. Perlin zooms in on modern-day New York City and reveals it as a haven for some of the most endangered languages in the world. Following six ordinary immigrants, we learn how language reflects and informs culture while also contemplating challenges like bringing the Lenape language back to its motherland or saving written Yiddish. Although useful in itself as a teaching tool in history, geography, civics, and social science classrooms, Perlin’s text is perhaps most valuable in how it situates language survival within the larger project of diversity and inclusion. Recognizing language as a core aspect of students’ identities – and understanding how it may quite literally structure their view of the world – is a valuable step in the creation of a culturally sensitive classroom. The fact that Language City instructs readers about complex linguistic concepts while also centering New York’s immigrant population and its incredible depth of knowledge, courage, and savvy is merely icing on the cake.

Are smartphones and social media to blame for a rise in teenage mental illness? Jonathan Haidt’s new book, The Anxious Generation, makes precisely that claim. Haidt suggests that “diminished outdoor free play” and “the rise of phone-based childhood” have created the conditions wherein society and schools are, according to Haidt, “overprotecting children in the real world and underprotecting them in the virtual world.” Haidt’s thesis is bold, but are his assertions backed by rigorous analysis of the available data? In a recent review of The Anxious Generation, Candice L. Odgers argues that Haidt’s claims lack evidence. Odgers writes that Haidt’s “repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science.” Indeed, Odgers points out, “Hundreds of researchers, myself included, have searched for the kind of large effects suggested by Haidt. Our efforts have produced a mix of no, small, and mixed associations. Most data are correlative.” Odgers argues that we do face a mental health crisis in teens – but she laments that Haidt is “telling stories that are unsupported by research and that do little to support young people who need, and deserve, more.”

School discipline is a complicated topic, and reassessing or revising a school’s approach to discipline can be daunting. Hacking School Discipline Together: 10 Ways to Create a Culture of Empathy and Responsibility Using Schoolwide Restorative Justice is a valuable resource for administrators or teachers who are about to embark on this process. This well-organized and easy-to-digest resource offers a concise and practical approach for those looking for fresh perspectives on discipline, and the book’s emphasis on community engagement encourages a collaborative approach to disciplinary policy-making. While its brevity does not allow for comprehensive study, its concise nature benefits busy educators who are already familiar with the subject matter or looking for an overview of the topic. Each chapter in the book presents a "hack" or simplified tip addressing a specific problem, such as ensuring consistent data collection for discipline decisions or designing de-escalation plans before they are needed. An overview of the topic is shared, followed by practical implementation advice offered under the section "What You Can Do Tomorrow," as well as a blueprint for full implementation and specific questions for administrators and faculty members. Optional timelines for community engagement and system implementation are provided, along with valuable communication and leadership tips throughout the book.

‍

Play is serious. So serious, in fact, that Nathan Holbert, Associate Professor of Communication, Media, and Learning Technology Design at Teachers College, claims “all good learning should involve play to some extent.” In the most recent Pursuing the Public Good podcast, “How Playful Technologies Can Build More Meaningful Schools,” President Thomas Bailey of Teachers College teams with Holbert to pick up where the late British Cultural Anthropologist, Victor Turner, left off. Both Holbert and Bailey believe that, broadly speaking, academia views the concept of play to be good, if unserious and superfluous to the actual point of education. Bailey and Holbert invite listeners to reconsider their posture toward play, and to view it as serious work. They invite educators to be free to imagine the multitudinous ways in which play can inform teaching and learning. Greater still, the host and guest push educators to do that which is hard, but necessary – taking young people seriously, and taking their play seriously.

How often do we pause in the busyness of our daily lives to truly appreciate and see the world and individuals in front of us? While the frenetic nature of our days can prevent us from engaging in valuable reflection and perspective-taking, the picture book Noticing, written by acclaimed author Kobi Yamada and illustrated by Elise Hurst, challenges readers to do just that. Through this story about a painter who helps a young girl recognize the possibilities in an ordinary day, Yamada and Hurst encourage readers to savor otherworldly pictures and take to heart an underlying message: looking for the good in others enables us to find it in ourselves. As Yamada writes, “The more you pause and allow for the extraordinary, the more you find it. And often what we see depends on what we look for.” Educators and parents will find this text engaging and thought-provoking for students of all ages. In a world that moves much too quickly, Noticing urges readers to slow down to pay attention to their surroundings and embrace curiosity rather than rushing to judgment.