In This Issue:

1. How leaders can get better at handling stressful situations

2. What can elite athletic coaches teach school leaders?

3. Moral education, meaning, and the pressures on high-school students

4. The surprising impact of a grade 3-12 gifted program in Florida

5. Debate as the best way to develop and test critical thinking

6. Teaching science content and literacy skills with high-quality texts

7. A tribute to Art Costa

8. Award-winning children’s nonfiction books

 

Quotes of the Week

“The paradox is that children become smart by being treated as if they already are intelligent.”

            Art Costa (see item #7)

 

“Kids in a room, arguing with each other, under pressure, with nowhere to hide.”

            Stefan Bauschard on debating (see item #5)

 

“Trust is not automatic. What follows a decision – how it is explained, owned, and discussed – shapes whether trust is strengthened or weakened before the next one.”

            Alan McCall, Adrian Wolfberg, Johann Bilsborough, and Richard Pruna (see item #2)

 

“Technology hijacks creativity and curiosity. Technology inhibits peer-to-peer interactions, social and emotional learning, and behavior. Students are habituated toward immediate feedback and answers and thus do not have stamina or tolerance for waiting or wondering.”

            An Illinois elementary teacher, quoted in “What Educators Really Think About Tech

Use in Schools” by Kevin Bushweller in Education Week, June 2026 (pp. 14-15)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. How Leaders Can Get Better at Handling Stressful Situations

            In this Harvard Business Review article, Jon Miller (Brunswick Group) and Drew Keller (Harvard Business School) say that when leaders are stressed, there are six different ways they tend to react: Lighthouse, Alchemist, Firefighter, Stoic, Diplomat, and Container. They provide a link to the Stress Intelligence Test to give insights on one’s default crisis response. The goal, say Miller and Keller, is “to help leaders understand how they operate under duress and make better decisions when it matters most.” Here’s a description of each crisis-response style, its advantages, and adaptive strategies to address potential weaknesses:

            • The lighthouse – These leaders remain calm and stay focused on the bigger picture. This can be very helpful in a high-pressure situation, helping colleagues avoid “the emotional contagion of fear” and think through the best course of action. The downside is that the leader appears aloof and indecisive. Adaptive strategies:

-    Explain your stance: “I’m staying calm so that we can think clearly” versus “I’m calm because everything’s fine.”

-    Invite the team to share their emotions and how they’re coping, legitimizing the stress people feel and creating psychological safety.

-    Make small decisions and take next steps, showing momentum toward a solution.

• The alchemist – These leaders see pressure not as a threat but a catalyst for reinvention, a signal that the old playbook is no longer working. “Be brutally honest about the short term,” said one leader, “and optimistic and confident about the long term.” The risk is confusing colleagues by asking for one change after another. Adaptive strategies:

-    Focus on a North Star – the underlying problem and why changes need to be made.

-    Establish a regular, predictable cadence for change, cycles of push and pause, invention and consolidation.

-    Moderate the tendency toward solo reinvention by collaborating with teams organizing and implementing solutions.

• The firefighter – These leaders react to a crisis by moving fast, radiating urgency, and mobilizing others for immediate action. “Often fueled by adrenaline,” say Miller and Keller, “they restore a sense of empowerment when others freeze.” The danger is that actions can be impulsive and inadvertently fan the flames. Adaptive strategies:

-    Pause before acting, regulating your nervous system and clarifying intent to colleagues.

-    Involve others in decisions early on, distributing the cognitive load to sustain energy and prevent exhaustion.

-    Hold quick after-action reviews to check what’s working and what isn’t.

• The stoic – These leaders get analytic under stress, looking inward, focusing on what went wrong, and minimizing emotional reactions. The risk is seeming to withdraw when human connections are most important. “Their desire to stay rational,” say Miller and Keller, “can push them deeper into data and process, producing technically accurate but emotionally clueless decisions.” Adaptive strategies:

-    Regulate yourself, steadying your emotional responses without suppressing them.

-    Acknowledge emotions in others and invite discussion.

-    Build trust by acknowledging how difficult the situation is.

-    Acknowledge your own emotions with a trusted adviser or peer, suggest the authors, “turning stress into a source of insight rather than a silent load.”

• The diplomat – These leaders react to stress with dialogue, social connection, and defusing conflict. “Their social intelligence helps them hold together teams that might otherwise fracture,” say Miller and Keller. The problem might be emphasizing consensus over candor, “smoothing over conflict rather than addressing it directly. Their composure can become caution, and their diplomacy can slide into delay.” Adaptive strategies:

-    Surface the tensions, saying plainly what others sense but won’t voice, clearing the air in a way that creates space for honesty without blame.

-    Orchestrate debates in which a “red team” is the devil’s advocate so disagreements are surfaced in a structured way.

-    Be clear about where you stand on direction, objectives, and what happens next.

• The container – These leaders want to maintain control, responding to stress by imposing structure and holding the system together, often working with a small inner circle. Their mantra might be “strong and steady, left foot, right foot, only the paranoid survive.” This intense focus can exclude voices outside the elite team, making them feel shut out. Adaptative strategies:

-    Know when to release pressure, widen the lens, and let others help carry the load.

-    Use reflection, feedback, and recovery to allow yourself to reset and blow off pressure.

-    Zoom out and orchestrate systematic shifts of perspective to avoid tunnel vision.

-    Model resilience, visibly making rest and renewal part of performing well under pressure.

Miller and Keller conclude with some pointers on how leaders can use these paradigms to respond more effectively to crises that will inevitably occur:

-    Expand your range of responses, considering a style that’s not your default.

-    Test and adjust in real time, asking if a response is working.

-    Develop flexibility, because each response style has distinct strengths.

-    Share the cognitive load; you don’t have to shoulder the responsibility alone.

-    Consciously shape a leadership team with a balance of response types.

-    Normalize open discussions of stress and people’s responses to it.

-    Build a trusted group of peers, mentors, perhaps a coach or therapist to help you “interpret stressors, challenge your default responses, and widen your options.”

 

“Six Ways Leaders Harness Stress” by Jon Miller and Drew Keller in Harvard Business Review, July-August 2026 (Vol. 104, #4, pp. 100-111); Miller can be reached at [email protected].

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2. What Can Elite Athletic Coaches Teach School Leaders?

            In this Harvard Business Review article, Alan McCall (Research & Innovation for Sports), Adrian Wolfberg (Organizational Insight Consulting), Johann Bilsborough (NBA), and Richard Pruna (FC Barcelona) report on what they learned about decision-making from interviews with professional football, basketball, baseball, soccer, and rugby coaches:

Before games – creating the conditions that make clarity possible under pressure:

• Coaches anticipate the in-season and in-game decisions they’ll need to make, and rehearse possible scenarios. “This planning is practical rather than theoretical,” say McCall et al. If this happens, what do we do? Who decides? What evidence will matter?

• They control how information reaches them and avoid getting data overloaded. “Too much information from too many people makes for a cloudy decision,” said an NBA coach. “Just give me focused and valuable data.” Coaches are clear that the information they receive will not replace their judgment.

• Leaders understand their people. One coach, say the authors, “made a point of walking through offices, locker rooms, and shared spaces, noticing individual differences and changes.” This helped him make smart in-game assignments and shifts.

During games – drawing on their preparation in the heat of the action:

            • Coaches manage positive and negative emotions. “Their goal is not to eliminate emotion but to regulate it so that it does not distort their judgment,” say McCall et al. “The coaches we talked to don’t suppress their feelings; they shrink them and bring their focus back to the moment: what matters right now and only right now.”

            • They read the room. Coaches notice when things are off based on body language, verbal signals, and subtle shifts of energy. “Coaches repeatedly described checking and rechecking what they see,” say the authors, “often validating their impressions with others before committing.”

            • They turn preparation into instinct. Coaches trust their pre-work and pattern recognition to make good decisions during the action.

After games – viewing game videos, analyzing key decisions, and preparing:

            • Coaches normalize being wrong. The key is to “accept one’s own errors and communicate about them with others to model a growth mindset,” say McCall et al. An NFL coach had this standard response to a screw-up: “I may have got that wrong, but I always learn for next time.”

            • They repair trust. Coaches are deliberate about making sure any relationship damaged in the heat of the moment is restored to good health. “Trust is not automatic,” say the authors. “What follows a decision – how it is explained, owned, and discussed – shapes whether trust is strengthened or weakened before the next one.”

            • They upgrade the system. They ask “not just what happened but why it happened and what needs to change,” say McCall et al. “Their focus shifts from the decision itself to the conditions that shaped it.”

 

“How Elite Sports Coaches Make High-Pressure Decisions” by Alan McCall, Adrian Wolfberg, Johann Bilsborough, and Richard Pruna in Harvard Business Review, July-August 2026 (Vol. 104, #4, pp. 131-135)

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3. Moral Education, Meaning, and the Pressures on High-School Students

            In this report from Making Caring Common, Richard Weissbourd and Trisha Ross Anderson (Harvard University) update a 2016 paper that flagged high-school students’ focus on personal success versus concern for others and the common good. Over the last decade, say Weissbourd and Anderson, “troubling trends that have long simmered in American life have come to a boil” – political division, hostility on social media, demonization of others. Many more students have mental health challenges, especially anxiety and depression, say they lack purpose, and feel intense pressure to achieve and get into good colleges.

The new report, drawing on survey data and conversations with scores of college admissions officials, makes the case for moral and character education in K-12 schools, suggests how schools and parents can help teens find meaning, and lists strategies for mitigating achievement pressure.

• Preparing teens to be ethical community members and citizens – “The notion that we should focus on building young people’s moral capacities in our homes and schools is not radical or new,” say Weissbourd and Anderson. “Yet over the last several decades, we’ve demoted ethical character in raising and educating children to a degree that may be unprecedented in our history.” They list moral and civic commitments that are at the heart of flourishing communities and democracies and need to be explicitly addressed in schools:

-    Caring for and engaging respectfully across race, culture, class, religion, and politics;

-    Humility and self-understanding, less about winning than finding common ground;

-    Curiosity and openness, asking substantive, probing questions and listening well;

-    Valuing and searching for the truth, consuming media critically, and recognizing lies;

-    While appreciating complexity, upholding principles of human rights and fairness;

-    Collective responsibility and interconnectedness beyond students’ self-interest.

These are crucial, say Weissbourd and Anderson, “not only because they respond to the moral challenges of our time, but also because high-school communities and college campuses thrive, and learning is far deeper, when students possess these capacities.”

            • Fostering meaning and purpose – Surveys show that 34 percent of teens and 51 percent of young adults feel little or no purpose in their lives – while feeling pressured to have a purpose. “This sense of being unmoored and directionless cuts widely across gender, race, class, geographic region, and political ideology,” say Weissbourd and Anderson. It’s associated with depression, anxiety, addiction, gun violence, health problems, extremism, apathy. and increased risk of suicide.

            While it’s not fair to expect that high-school students have figured out their life mission, schools and families should help kids develop “some understanding of what they care about and how those cares can connect to opportunities in the adult world,” say Weissbourd and Anderson. This can help high school be less like a hamster wheel of “achieving to achieve,” and increase the odds that students will connect with kindred spirits and make good choices in college and life. Some things schools and parents can initiate:

-    Requiring students to engage in coming-of-age rituals or capstone projects;

-    Doing more to explore the “why” of classes, connecting it to college and career;

-    Parents asking their children about what in school bores and inspires them;

-    Parents talking about what bores and inspires them as adults;

-    The college admissions process acting as forum to explore what students value;

-    Parents dialing back achievement pressure and exploring what stirs students’ souls.

“In these conversations,” says Weissbourd and Anderson, “teens can develop a process for exploring, discovering, creating, and committing to meaningful goals.”

            • Reducing excessive achievement pressure – “While students in many low-income communities lack access to extracurricular activities and advanced courses,” say the authors, “students in many middle- and upper-class communities often assume that they need to pile up extracurricular activities and AP courses and create long ‘brag sheets.’” But quality matters more than quantity, and admissions officers need to make that point loudly and clearly, emphasizing the importance of character and authenticity.

Students should also be discouraged from pursuing “manufactured” research projects and internships geared only to college admission. Colleges can promote a new approach with these actions:

-    Add an essay question focusing on ethical attributes and dialogue across differences.

-    Commit to a research-informed method of assessing ethical attributes for admission.

-    Send admissions staff to training on character assessment.

-    Add new language to admissions materials on the importance of ethical qualities.

-    Ask those who write college recommendations to speak directly to ethical attributes.

-    Communicate that applicants will be assessed within the context of their circumstances and opportunities.

-    Emphasize balance in courses and extracurriculars.

            Finally, say Weissbourd and Anderson, parents, counselors, and college admissions officers should steer students away from overinflating the importance of getting into 25 or so highly selective colleges, emphasizing that there are hundreds of great colleges and that what students do in college is far more important to career and life outcomes than where they attend.

 

“Turning the Tide in 2026: Preparing Students for Lives of Caring and Purpose” by Richard Weissbourd and Trisha Ross Anderson in collaboration with the National Association of College Admission Counseling Center for Innovation in College Admission, Making Caring Common, June 2026; Weissbourd can be reached at [email protected].

 

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4. The Surprising Impact of a Grade 3-12 Gifted Program in Florida

            “Public debate over gifted education tends to focus on fairness,” say David Card (University of California/Berkeley), Eric Chyn (University of Texas/Austin), and Laura Giuliano (University of California/Santa Cruz) in this article in Education Next. “Who gets to be called ‘gifted’ and what sort of extras do they receive?” And indeed, the percent of students in different racial groups enrolled in U.S. gifted classes is far from equitable:

-    Asian – 12 percent

-    White – 8 percent

-    Latin – 4 percent

-    Black – 3 percent

These disparities have led some large districts (including Seattle and New York City) to reconsider gifted programming.

            “Underlying these debates,” say Card, Chyn, and Giuliano, “are fundamental questions about the impacts of gifted services.” Do students of color benefit? Can gifted programs address achievement disparities? To answer these questions, they studied an urban Florida district’s gifted program to measure its effect on students. The details:

            Unlike many gifted programs, this one was inclusive. All second graders in the district took an in-class, non-verbal universal screening test, and students who met minimum cutoffs were automatically referred for IQ testing. The qualifying score was 130, but students who received free and reduced-price meals, or were English learners, qualified with a score of 116.

Students attaining that threshold met with their parents, teachers, and an Exceptional Student Education (ESE) specialist to decide on admission. Notably, the district was flexible on measures of leadership, creativity, and motivation – subjective criteria that can screen out quirky students with potential. Each selected student got an Education Plan that specified needs, services, and goals, including for social and emotional development.

Selected students were in separate gifted classrooms through grade 5 and could receive priority access to an accelerated math program in middle school. Most middle schools also offered separate ELA classes for gifted and high-achieving students. Students in the gifted program had biannual meetings with counselors about their individual goals, and huddled with ESE specialists as they transitioned to middle and high school to help choose courses. Students in the gifted program got gifted-specific guidance counseling every other year and when they entered middle and high school, encouraging them to take challenging classes.

The researchers analyzed data on students in the gifted program from 2003 to 2012, focusing on low-income and EL students who stayed in the district for at least seven years after fifth grade. The study compared students with IQ scores just above and below the gifted program threshold – those admitted compared to a control group of those barely not admitted – to measure the long-range impact of the program. Data included students’ reading and math state test results, PSAT scores, discipline records, course selections, middle- and high-school grades, on-time high-school graduation, and college enrollment. The study’s conclusions:

-    Participating in the gifted program did not improve the focus students’ cognitive skills as measured by state tests and the PSAT.

-    However, boys in the program made gains in non-cognitive skills, behavior, course selection, and grades, essentially catching up with girls with similar IQs.

-    71 percent of boys passed Algebra I in middle school compared to 42 percent in the control group.

-    In high school, boys in the gifted program took four AP classes compared to two AP classes in the control group. Girls in both groups took four AP classes.

-    Participating in the gifted program boosted students’ on-time high-school graduation.

-    74 percent of boys in the gifted program enrolled in college compared with 46 percent of their peers just below the IQ cutoff.

-    Boys who reported lower enjoyment of school in third grade, once enrolled in the gifted program, were seven times more likely to enroll in college; 3 out of 4 boys in the gifted program enrolled in college compared to 1 out of 10 boys in the control group.

-    The college enrollment rate of girls in the program was less dramatic but significant: 80 percent compared with 53 percent for the control group.

One of the biggest takeaways from the study is that many boys with above-average IQs don’t feel good about school in the lower-elementary grades and have not developed the non-cognitive skills and motivation to achieve up to their potential – skills that were boosted by being in the gifted program. Girls with similar IQ scores enjoy school more in elementary school and have developed non-cognitive skills aligned with their cognitive skills. They benefit from the gifted program but not as dramatically as boys.

 

“How a Gifted Program Impacts Disadvantaged Students” by David Card, Eric Chyn, and Laura Giuliano in Education Next, Spring 2026 (Vol. 26, #1, pp. 1-22); the authors can be reached at [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected].

 

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5. Debate As the Best Way to Develop and Test Critical Thinking

            In this article in Education Disrupted, Stefan Bauschard says AI has undermined an education system that has claimed to be about critical thinking but is actually little more than students retrieving information. Debate, he says, has always been more effective than standardized tests and essays at activating and assessing critical thinking. With the ready availability of AI, debate is more important than ever. Here’s why:

• Debaters have to retrieve information from memory in real time – no asking Claude, phoning a friend, editing their responses. “That’s cognition under load,” says Bauschard, “the only kind that’s actually hard.”

• Your reasoning comes under immediate attack. “Debate stress-tests your argument in front of you,” he says, “in the moment, by a person whose entire job is finding the weakest joint and snapping it.”

• You have to listen to the other side of the argument. If you’re doing that well, you’ll find the real point of disagreement and refute that, not a strawman.

• You have to adapt. Your opponent makes an unexpected argument, the clock is ticking, and the judge has no patience for dithering. “That’s judgment,” says Bauschard, “weighing, prioritizing, deciding what matters under pressure.”

• You can’t fake understanding. Cross-examination quickly unmasks a shallow grasp of the facts and logic and exposes bluffing.

• You have to argue the other side of the question. “You can’t cherry-pick one thesis and ignore the rest of reality,” he says. “Switch-side debate forces you to build the strongest version of the position you walked in hating.”

In terms of intellectual demand, Bauschard concludes, there’s no comparison between writing a school paper, easily done by AI, or taking a test that rewards rote memorization. Face-to-face debating is in another league entirely: “Kids in a room, arguing with each other, under pressure, with nowhere to hide.”

 

“Why Debate Beats the Paper, Plainly” by Stefan Bauschard in Education Disrupted, June 18, 2026; Bauschard can be reached at [email protected]. See also this photo-essay, “Resolved: High-School Debate, Our Real National Pastime” by Jay Caspian Kang and Eli Durst, The New Yorker, May 11 & 18, 2026.

 

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6. Teaching Science Content and Literacy Skills with High-Quality Texts

            “Integrating science and literacy in elementary education enhances student learning,” say Amanda Dahl (Michigan State University/East Lansing) and Tanya Wright (University of Michigan/Ann Arbor) in this article in The Reading Teacher. They developed 200 free, open source science texts within the OpenSciEd curriculum, tried them out with 550 teachers, and got very affirming feedback. Dahl and Wright suggest five principles for using science texts to support science and literacy learning:

            • Use conceptually coherent texts. These “provide students with repeated exposure to important terms and concepts to build a deeper understanding of a topic over time,” they say. “Instead of listing isolated facts or scientific terms, these texts communicate core scientific and engineering ideas and vocabulary in meaningful ways to build and deepen students’ understanding over time.”

            • Use a variety of science text types for different purposes. In the study, these included readaloud informational books, biographical books featuring science and engineering experts, books showcasing science and engineering phenomena in different contexts, and books that explain how experts and students can take up science and engineering concepts. Students were also exposed to newspaper articles, infographics, and a science website.

            • Align science texts with first-hand experiences to deepen understanding. The science texts were paired with first-hand experiments, investigations, and analyzing data – for example, one lesson had students read about and study what happens when the same amount of light shines on different surfaces.

            • Use science texts to highlight how scientific phenomena are experienced in different communities and cultures. The elementary texts serve as mirrors, reflecting students’ identities, lived experiences, and communities, and as windows into urban, suburban, and rural communities around the world.

            • Multimodal texts extend science learning. The texts in the curriculum include picture books, magazine and newspaper articles, and other media with words, pictures, diagrams, graphs, and other visual elements to convey complex information, supplemented by audio narration, videos, and material on a website.

 

“Text Development for an Open-Access Elementary Science Curriculum: Five Principles for Supporting the Use of Science Text” by Amanda Dahl and Tanya Wright in The Reading Teacher, July/August 2026 (Vol. 80, #1, pp. 1-34); the authors can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].

 

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7. A Tribute to Art Costa

            Art Costa, author, consultant, and professor at California State University/Sacramento, most often associated with Cognitive Coaching and Habits of Mind, died last week. Some memorable quotes:

-    Intelligent behavior is knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do.

-    We are not just teaching content. We are teaching children how to behave intelligently for a lifetime.

-    Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality, the other a matter of time.

-    The paradox is that children become smart by being treated as if they already are intelligent.

-    If you make people think they are thinking, they will love you. If you really make them think, they will hate you.

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8. Award-Winning Children’s Nonfiction Books

            This Social Education feature lists the 2026 Septima P. Clark Women in Literature Award winner and honors at each level, then the 2026 Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray Book Award winner and honors:

Septima P. Clark Women in Literature – Elementary:

-    Ablaze: The Story of America’s First Female Smoke Jumper by Jessica Lawson, illustrated by Sarah Gonzales

-    Where Are the Women? The Girl Scouts Campaign for the First Statue of Women in Central Park by Janice Hechter

Middle/High:

-    Harriet Tubman, Force of Nature: A Biography in Poems by Caroline Brewer

-    The Black Mambas: The World’s First All-Woman Anti-Poaching Unit by Kely Crull

-    The Five Sides of Marjorie Rice: How to Discover a Shape by Amy Alznauer, illustrated by Anna Bron

-    Magic in a Drop of Water: How Ruth Patrick Taught the World About Water Pollution by Julie Winterbottom, illustrated by Susan Reagan

Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray Book Award – Elementary:

-    Mary Oliver, Holding On to Wonder by Erin Frankel, illustrated by Jasu Hu

-    Jim: Six True Stories About One Great Artist by Jerrold Connors

Middle:

-    Edi for Equality: Edie Windsor Stands Up for Love by Michael Genhart, illustrated by Cheryl Thuesday

High School:

-    Trans History: From Ancient Times to Present Day by Alex Combs and Andrew Eakett

-    Generation Queer: Stories of Youth Organizers, Artists, and Educators by Kimm Topping, illustrated by Anshika Khullar

 

“Septima P. Clark Women in Literature Award 2026” and “Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray Book Award, 2026” in Social Education, May/June 2026 (Vol. 90, #3, pp. 157-163)

 

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