It’s official: summer vacation is here! We’ve made it through another fantastic school year, and now it’s time to sit back and relax. The summer months are the perfect time for educators to get some well-deserved rest and catch up on personal pursuits––like reading a new book or two!
As an educator, it can be a challenge to find time to read during the busy school year, with grading and lesson planning always getting priority for your time. That’s why the summer offers the perfect opportunity to read some of the books you’ve been wanting to read all year but just haven’t had the time. While you have a break from school, you can catch up on your reading list––or even discover a new favorite read from the list below.
Inspirational Reads
This portrait of joy and grief follows the creatures and plants in the writers backyard over the course of a year, providing a thoughtful glimpse at the changing rhythm and seasons of human life.
From the #1 New York Times Bestselling author of "Untamed", “We Can Do Hard Things” is a guidebook to being alive. The authors share their wisdom and perspectives on navigating love, heartbreak, joy, parenting, friendship, uncertainty, aging, grief, new beginnings, and more.
This easy-to-understand guide teaches readers how to let go of things they can’t control and set themselves free from the opinions, drama, and judgments of others. This no-nonsense approach presents readers with the mindset and tools to unlock their full potential to reach the happiness and success they deserve.
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of “Braiding Sweetgrass,” this book offers a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.
Books for Educators
This book provides a generation-defining investigation into the collapse of youth mental health in the era of smartphones, social media, and big tech—and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt issues a clear call to action, proposing four simple rules that might set us and our children free.
As a public figure with autism, Temple Grandin advocates for those who have different approaches to thinking and learning. In this book, she illuminates cutting-edge research and proposes new approaches to educating, parenting, employing, and collaborating with visual thinkers.
Dr. Gholdy Muhammad, an expert in culturally responsive education, offers practical guidance and tools for educators to develop curriculum and instruction that celebrate students' identities and promote a deeper understanding of the world around them.
Literacy is the foundation for all learning and must be accessible to all students. In this book, teachers can find the tools to build culturally relevant intentional literacy communities (CRILCs) with students, making the literacy classroom a place where students can safely talk about key issues, move to dismantle inequities, and collaborate with one another.
From Stanford University's d.school, this book offers a practical, illustrated guide to using the tools of design to create feelings of inclusion, collaboration, and respect in groups of any type or size—a classroom, a work team, an international organization.
Books to Boost Creativity
For those who want to begin or deepen their journaling practice, this book provides a guide to the art of journaling and a meditation on the central questions of life. A companion through challenging times, “The Book of Alchemy” is broken into themes ranging from new beginnings to love, loss, and rebuilding.
Originally published over 30 years ago, The Artist’s Way is the seminal book on the subject of creativity. This powerful book offers an invaluable guide to living the artist’s life through tools, activities, and rituals that inspire creativity.
This vibrant, illustrated guide aims to help readers pursue a unique and fulfilling creative path through inspiration and lessons from creative problem-solvers. Organized like a course, the book provides activities to help readers see and shape their own path—and follow it to the fulfillment of their creative goals.
Self-Improvement Books
This eye-opening and accessible guide shows readers how to easily create their own personal system for knowledge management, otherwise known as a Second Brain. Readers will discover the full potential of their ideas and translate what they know into more powerful, more meaningful improvements in their work and life.
The key to good and efficient writing lies in the intelligent organization of ideas and notes. This book helps students, academics and nonfiction writers to get more done, write intelligent texts and learn for the long run––all by taking smart notes.
We live in a time where busyness is often seen as a badge of honor, but being busy doesn’t always lead to productivity, accomplishment, or satisfaction. This book presents a guide for leveraging the transformative power of leisure to recapture calm and creativity.
Summer Reads for Leisure
When retired math teacher Grace Winters inherits a crumbling house in Ibiza from a long-lost friend, she embarks on a journey with no plan—only questions. What she discovers among the island’s hills and beaches forces her to confront not just a mysterious past, but the possibility of an entirely new future.
While clearing out her grandmother’s New York brownstone, auctioneer Emsley Wilson finds a diary that unexpectedly belonged to Johanna Bonger—Vincent van Gogh’s sister-in-law. As Emsley unravels Johanna’s inspiring story, she finds unexpected courage to face her own unraveling life, love, and legacy.
Tova Sullivan copes with lifelong grief by cleaning at an aquarium, where she forms a surprising bond with a giant Pacific octopus named Marcellus. When Marcellus uncovers the truth behind the decades-old disappearance of Tova’s son, he sets out to reunite Tova with the answers she never thought she’d find.
In 1960s Virginia, four suburban housewives form a book club that quickly transforms into a lifeline as they wrestle with dissatisfaction, identity, and the promise of something more. United by friendship and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, they awaken to their own strength and reimagine what their lives can become.
Sam and Sadie, childhood friends reunited in college, build a legendary video game empire that brings them global success—and emotional turmoil. Spanning decades and coasts, their story is a moving exploration of creativity, love, ambition, and the pixelated spaces where human connection thrives.
Summer comes and goes quick, so consider this your sign to pick up a book and get to reading!
Looking for more ideas? Check out our past lists of books for educators from spring 2024 or summer 2023. Happy summer from all of us at VHS Learning; we hope you enjoy your well-deserved break.