The Delta Issue #39
The Watershed Summer Reading List
Most people use summer reading to escape from everything else going on in the world. I love a breezy, page-turning story as much as anyone (I’m currently reading “Sunrise on the Reaping,” the latest Hunger Games prequel).
Summer reading is for fun, but it’s also a chance to catch up on the ideas and research that influence the work we do. If you’re looking for some summer reads that bring perspective, here are our top recommendations.
Jessica’s Book Recs
by Emma Brown
This book hit me hard, as a mom of boys and as someone who works in education. It’s packed with staggering stats, like the fact that 23% of boys believe men should use violence to get respect, and stories about what it means to grow up male in America. It left me asking big questions: How do I raise my sons to be different? And how do we make sure schools help them get there?
by Sharon McMahon
Sharon McMahon has turned civic storytelling into something powerful and deeply human. This book is a reminder that systems are built by ordinary people: kids in camps, schoolteachers, telephone operators. It’s a call to see the people behind the policy, and to remember that we each have a role in shaping the systems we exist in.
by Tui T. Sutherland
I’m reading this one by proxy. My two oldest sons are deep into Wings of Fire, and by now, so is our whole household. We’re racing through chapters and making last-minute Barnes & Noble runs when the library can’t keep up. It’s a reminder that reading can be pure joy, but only if kids find stories they actually want to read.
Kunjan’s Book Recs
by Dennis Lehane
This one’s brutal and brilliant. Set in 1970s Boston during school desegregation, it’s a story about race, power, and the lengths people will go to protect what they think is theirs. It made me think about how communities respond to change, and what happens when systems are built to preserve power, not share it.
by Ezra Klein
We talk a lot about scarcity in public education: There’s always not enough time, not enough staff, and not enough money. Abundance flips the frame and asks: What would it look like to build systems for what we actually want, not just what we can scrape by with? At Watershed, that’s the shift we’re trying to help systems make every day. And in last week’s conversation about the southern surge, we came back to this same idea: so much student progress is buried under red tape.
Abundance is the perfect book for anyone stuck in “we can’t” and ready to ask “what if?”
by Jennifer Pahlka
This great Jennifer Pahlka book is about government writ large, but it could just as easily be about public education specifically. It’s about why good ideas fall apart on the way to implementation, and what it takes to make change actually stick. If you’ve ever seen a bold plan (or good policy) get delayed or derailed before it can make an impact, this book hits home.
