The Sun Doesn’t Shine the Same on Everyone: Reparations, Community, and The Science of Lesson Planning
The summer of 2026 is what I would call transformative. I use that word a lot in my work, about the kinds of things that get beneath the surface and stir something in us to reflect, renew, and where necessary, make change. I think I'm changed by my summer.
When students return to school, the first questions on everyone's minds are about how the summer was. For some, it’s a joyous recounting of many travels, camps, social engagements, and the benefits of growing taller, getting a new haircut, or a pair of sneakers they can’t wait to wear on the first day of school. For others, it’s a painful experience. Either summer was fraught, or being at home is worse than the safety of schools.
Everyone's lived experiences are so different, and we need to calibrate that effectively as we welcome the young people—and the adults—back to work. Summer is typically a sunny season, but the sun doesn't shine the same on everyone. It’s important to remember that.
The Pulse in Orlando
In June I went to Orlando, Florida, for the ISTE+ASCD annual conference. I have a new book coming out in September 2026, and I was excited to present with my dear friends Nita and Mike and also introduce my book to the world. But also in June, in Orlando, 10 years ago, 49 beautiful souls who were living in their full expression lost their lives to murder at the Pulse Nightclub. That moment was painful for me 10 years ago, and paying tribute to these lost lives was equally painful as I stood at the all-too-hot memorial on the corner of a street across from a bagel shop. I said a mourner's prayer in Hebrew, paid my respects, and took my leave back to the conference.
It was June 2016 when I decided to be more fully out than I had been before, what I often referred to as my second coming out. My first coming out was a stutter-step process of selectively being out when it suited me, but not being out out. The events at Pulse changed all that. And now I see myself as a fierce advocate for the dignity of queer and trans folks, but I also extend that advocacy to all those on the margins. After all, the story of marginalization has different paragraphs for everyone, but the common bond that unites us is how clearly we can see who the system was designed for. In our solidarity, we can make meaningful change rather than continue to sow divisions among ourselves.
Austria on My Mind
The biggest breakthrough of my summer was receiving my Austrian citizenship. This might be a record-scratching pause for some of you who are wondering why in the hell I would want Austrian citizenship. If you have the time and want to sip beverages while I regale you with tales of my family’s harrowing European Holocaust experiences, I’d be happy to have your attention—and I'll gladly pay for your beverage.
But where brevity will serve me best, let me just say: I didn't even know this citizenship was available to me until I got word from a dear friend while visiting London a couple years ago, and I went through a yearslong process to cull family records—including deportation notices, records from Nazi death camps, and reparations pay stubs—to link my lineage to my great grandparents in Vienna, Austria. So alas, I have the good fortune to close the loop in a broken family story, a story I was only fortunate to learn from my grandmother's willingness to share after almost 70 years of staying mum about what happened to her.
As I think about advocacy and justice, I think about the generations of those whose lineages have been broken by oppression, enslavement, displacement, and the separation of families for the sake of a false sense of dominance guided by big egos, dehumanization, and small imaginations. Much like Pulse, my own links to this history galvanize me to work for justice and repair, even if it means holding up a mirror to my own communities in the process.
A Hard Left Into Lesson Planning
Which brings me to The Science of Lesson Planning. Another hard left, I imagine, for those of you wondering how I land here after such in-depth tales of devastation.
But for those of us who have taught young people, from the youngest of the young to those whose growing bodies betray their still-developing brains, we know well how the lived experiences of young people are full of similar types of experiences, from celebratory to suffering. And we as the adults in the building hold the kinds of power that can overlook the human experience in favor of content and test scores, or we can support students in making the kinds of connections to these funds of knowledge that can be transformative for young people.
Lineages get broken by design, and they get repaired by design. A lesson plan is a much smaller instrument than a citizenship file, but it works the same way: it decides, in advance, whose experience the room is built for.
What the Teaching Field Gets Wrong
Here's the part I want to shout to the people in the back: When teachers say they're overwhelmed by planning, we hear a time problem and offer more prep periods. Or we hear a tools problem and offer another template. It’s neither. As I write in the book, teachers “have become saturated with so many frameworks, management tools, initiatives, and strategies that they don't always know where to begin.”
Teachers aren't short on strategies. They're drowning in them. What we’ve never done is treat planning as what it actually is: the place where the science of learning meets the complex lives of the students in front of us.
I had the good fortune to be in classrooms for 20 years, and centering people and purpose was a first principle in my work. So much so that in the past two years I heard from two different students I had taught ages ago, ones I never imagined hearing from, both of whom shared about my impact on their learning. One was sharing about a family loss and how the way I taught him to write helped him learn how to think. The other, who had been successful in life and in school, had made the time to do grassroots work for the past few years, serving communities far outside his own and organizing communities toward making better choices in favor of the collective.
Neither of them wrote to me about content coverage.
Intentional and Incremental
In The Science of Lesson Planning, my first solo book and perhaps my happiest achievement, I chronicle some of my experiences in the classroom and as a student, typically the ones that speak to my failings (typically the most transformative), and how those failings and their accompanying neuroscientific and cognitive underpinnings shape what good learning and teaching look like. I worked with new teachers over many years of my career, and this book is dedicated to them, to the students who transformed who I am as a person, and to all those who work toward greater teacher retention, human dignity, and ways to transform learning and teaching.
None of which asks you to overhaul your practice before the first day of school. As I write in the book: transformative planning is a practice, not a destination, and the most effective approach is both intentional and incremental.
My Hopes for You This Year
As this reflection comes to a close, my hopes for you as you enter this school year: that you take the time to pause and reflect on ways (small or large) you may have transformed this season; that you stay alert for ways to work on behalf of the collective; that you allow students' lived experiences to become the wisdom that guides your teaching; and that you celebrate the communities of which you're a part.
I also hope you pre-order my book. I'm proud of it. And I'm excited to share it with you.
If you want to start before the book arrives: the Transformative Lesson Planner is free and live right now at scienceoflessonplanning.app. You can draft a lesson, troubleshoot one that fell flat, or get Glow-Grow-Go feedback on something you're not sure about. No cost, no sign-up.
The Science of Lesson Planning: High-Impact Practices That Deepen Student Learning arrives in September 2026 from ISTE+ASCD. You can pre-order it directly from ASCD right now (ascd.org/books/the-science-of-lesson-planning), and member pricing applies if you're a member. It'll show up at other retailers closer to publication, but ASCD is where you can find it today.
