Choosing to See: A Framework for Equity in the Math Classroom

Authors: Pamela Seda and Kyndall Brown

Description: In Choosing to See, Pamela Seda and Kyndall Brown offer a substantive, rigorous, and necessary set of interventions to move mathematics education toward greater equity, particularly in serving the needs of Black and Brown students, who are underrepresented and underserved as math scholars. The authors’ thoughtful ICUCARE equity framework serves as a lens to help teachers see where they are achieving alignment and where they are not.

Purchase: Available on Amazon.ca and Indigo.ca

Dates: Wednesday meetings 

• October 8, 2025
• October 22
• November 5
• November 19 *rescheduled to November 26!

Time: 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. EDT/EST

Cost: Free

Facilitator: Mervi Salo, Toronto DSB

Meetings have concluded. Thank you to those that participated and provided feedback!

The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can't Stop Talking About

Authors: Mel Robbins and Sawyer Robbins

Description: In her latest groundbreaking book, The Let Them Theory, Mel Robbins—one of the world's most respected experts on motivation, confidence and mindset—offers school administrators a powerful tool to foster trust, autonomy and resilience within their teams. By releasing the need to control every aspect of leadership, administrators can empower staff, promote accountability and create a culture of collaboration.

The book encourages leaders to focus on their own responses rather than trying to micromanage others, allowing for more effective delegation and problem-solving. Setting clear boundaries ensures that administrators protect their time and energy, which allows them to lead with clarity and purpose. Ultimately, this approach reduces stress, builds trust and helps school leaders focus on meaningful impact rather than control.

Purchase: Available on Amazon.ca and Indigo.ca

Dates: Thursday meetings

• October 16, 2025
• October 30
• November 12 *shift to Wednesday
• November 27

Time: 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. EDT/EST

Cost: Free

Facilitator: Nadia Pinelli, Peel DSB

Meetings have concluded. Thank you to those that participated and provided feedback!

Stop the Hate for Goodness Sake: How can classroom teachers disrupt discrimination and promote hope, foster healing and inspire joyful learning?

Authors: Andrew Campbell and Larry Swartz

Description: Stop the Hate for Goodness Sake shows teachers how to confront racism and disrupt discrimination in order to deepen students’ understanding of social justice, diversity and equity. Background information, statistics, and reports on incidents of hate will help students consider ethical and moral behavior.

Forty step-by-step lessons involve discussion, oral and written narratives, case studies, assumption charts and more. This thoughtful examination of today’s world will help teachers encourage reflection, foster inclusion, and inspire students to take action.

This in-depth guide will show teachers of 8- to 14-year-olds how to start and manage important conversations that will lead to change.

Purchase: Available on OrcaBook.com and PembrokePublishers.com

Dates: Thursday meetings

• January 15, 2026
• January 29
• February 12
• February 26

Time: 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. EST

Facilitator: Julia De Rose, York Region DSB

Meetings have concluded. Thank you to those that participated and provided feedback!

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

Author: Jonathan Haidt

Description: In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood” began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood” has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.
Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems” that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

Purchase: Available on Amazon.ca and Indigo.ca

Dates: Thursday meetings 

• January 22, 2026
• February 5
• February 19
• March 5

Time: 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. EST

Cost: Free

Facilitator: Poonam Gahunia, Halton DSB

Meetings have concluded. Thank you to those that participated and provided feedback!

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Author: Robin Wall Kimmerer

Description: As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on "a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise" (Elizabeth Gilbert).

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

Purchase: Available on Outdoor Learning School & Store and Indigo.ca

Dates: Wednesday meetings

• April 1, 2026
• April 15
• April 29 (cancelled)
• May 13
• May 20

Time: 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. EDT

Facilitator: Julia De Rose, York Region DSB

Meetings have concluded. Thank you to those that participated and provided feedback!

Professional Learning Redefined: An Evidence-Based Guide

Authors: Isabel Sawyer and Marisa Ramirez Stukey

Description: The authors have studied the research on effective professional learning for the past 25 years and distilled these findings into this practical guide that has everything that school leaders need to engage staff and implement high quality instructional leadership.

Full of protocols, strategies, and case studies, this book dissects the key components of professional learning, like coherence, connections and content, and examines each through an evidence-based lens.

Purchase: Available on Corwin Press and Amazon.ca

Dates: Thursday meetings

• April 9, 2026
• April 23
• May 7
• May 21

Time: 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. EDT

Facilitators: Emmanuel Peter and Matthew Johnston, Toronto DSB

Meetings have concluded. Thank you to those that participated and provided feedback!