The kids are the least of our worries. Seriously. If that sounds blasphemous in a book for concerned parents and educators (and anyone, really, who worries about "kids these days"), then I am so glad you're here. If you have a kid, work with a kid, or love a kid, you will find something inspiring in this audiobook. Dare I say, game-changing.

Teachers show up in different forms and in many chapters of a child’s life. Teaching is literacy and numeracy, but most importantly, it’s showing up with your whole heart. It’s walking kids - and yourself - through the hardest conversations about trauma, loss, grief, racism, or violence. As we work to piece together our education system in the fallout from the global pandemic, the focus must be on the teachers. If the people in charge - those teachers - aren’t OK, the students don’t stand a chance.

We live in a world that’s obsessed with talent. We celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But admiring people who start out with innate advantages leads us to overlook the distance we ourselves can travel. We underestimate the range of skills that we can learn and how good we can become. We can all improve at improving. And when opportunity doesn’t knock, there are ways to build a door.

Gerry Brooks is an elementary school principal turned YouTube celebrity who entertains K-12 teachers, administrators, and parents across the country. He tells jokes with the kind of mocking humor that gets a laugh yet can be safely shared in school. After all, even great schools have bad days - when lesson plans fall through, disgruntled parents complain, kids throw temper tantrums because they have to use the same spoon for their applesauce and mashed potatoes, and, of course, dealing with...The Horror! The Horror!...dreaded assessments.

There may be no tidy solutions or pithy answers to life’s big challenges, but Michelle Obama believes that we can all locate and lean on a set of tools to help us better navigate change and remain steady within flux. In The Light We Carry, she opens a frank and honest dialogue with listeners, considering the questions many of us wrestle with: How do we build enduring and honest relationships? How can we discover strength and community inside our differences? What tools do we use to address feelings of self-doubt or helplessness? What do we do when it all starts to feel like too much?

It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow—and horror. As Princess Diana was laid to rest, billions wondered what Prince William and Prince Harry must be thinking and feeling—and how their lives would play out from that point on.

In this audiobook inspired by her popular TED Talk, the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code urges women to embrace imperfection and live a bolder, more authentic life. By choosing bravery over perfection, we can find the power to claim our voice, to leave behind what makes us unhappy, and to go for the things we genuinely, passionately want. In Brave, Not Perfect, Saujani shares powerful insights and practices to help us let go of our need for perfection and make bravery a lifelong habit.

You may feel as if you don't control your emotional energy, that it's an inevitable consequence of the world around you and the forces bearing down on you. But that's not the case. To reach your full potential, you can learn to recognize and harness the energy in your brain. Leading neuropsychologist Julia DiGangi will teach you how through eight "codes." Some of the codes will surprise you. All will fortify you. You will learn why these codes work and how to apply them to your own challenges through exercises and reflections.

For more than a decade, Brené Brown has found a special place in our hearts as a gifted mapmaker and a fellow traveler. She is both a social scientist and a kitchen table friend whom you can always count on to tell the truth, make you laugh, and, on occasion, cry with you. And what's now become a movement all started with The Gifts of Imperfection, which has sold more than two million copies in 35 different languages across the globe.

In Atlas of the Heart, Brown takes us on a journey through 87 of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human. As she maps the necessary skills and an actionable framework for meaningful connection, she gives us the language and tools to access a universe of new choices and second chances - a universe where we can share and steward the stories of our bravest and most heartbreaking moments with one another in a way that builds connection.

Social scientist Brené Brown has ignited a global conversation on courage, vulnerability, shame, and worthiness. Her pioneering work uncovered a profound truth: Vulnerability—the willingness to show up and be seen with no guarantee of outcome—is the only path to more love, belonging, creativity, and joy. But living a brave life is not always easy: We are, inevitably, going to stumble and fall.

Western society too often trains women out of feeling innately confident in who we are and in the wisdom we hold inside. Instead, we are handed down a set of expectations about our bodies, our disposition, our religious identification, our sexual orientation, our mothering, and our career choices. Dr. Leah Katz draws on her training as a psychologist and her experience leaving an ultra-Orthodox Jewish faith and culture to offer tools and insights for getting "unstuck" from society's expectations for women. It's time to get gutsy and create the rich, vibrant life we have always wanted.

Jayson Gaddis is a personal trainer for relationships and one of the world’s leading authorities on interpersonal conflict. For almost two decades, Gaddis has helped individuals, couples, and teams get to the bottom of their deepest conflicts. He helps people see the wisdom in conflict and how to get to zero - how “clean and clear” we feel with others when we have successfully worked through a disagreement. In Getting to Zero, Gaddis shows the listener how to stop running away from uncomfortable conversations and instead learn how to work through them.

School discipline is broken. Too often, the kids who need our help the most are viewed as disrespectful, out of control, and beyond help, and are often the recipients of our most ineffective, most punitive interventions. These students - and their parents, teachers, and administrators - are frustrated and desperate for answers. Dr. Ross W. Greene, author of the acclaimed book The Explosive Child, offers educators and parents a different framework for understanding challenging behavior.

Every day we experience the uncertainty, risks, and emotional exposure that define what it means to be vulnerable or to dare greatly. Based on 12 years of pioneering research, Dr. Brené Brown dispels the cultural myth that vulnerability is weakness and argues that it is, in truth, our most accurate measure of courage. Brown explains how vulnerability is both the core of difficult emotions like fear, grief, and disappointment, and the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, empathy, innovation, and creativity.