Your lesson, should you choose to accept it, is to reflect on all the wisdom shared in Lesson: Impossible’s second season.  The special agent assigned to help you with this task is your host, and mission coordinator, Aviva Levin.

As many school years come to an end, so does Lesson: Impossible’s second season.  I will be taking a break in July, and will be back in August with some episodes I’m really excited about, such as home-schooling partnerships, gradeless assessment, and trauma-informed teaching. However, for our last episodes I wanted to reflect on some of the wisdom my special agents/guests have shared, and pull a quote from each interview that really impacted me, and hopefully you as well.  Part I will be released on June 28, and Part II on July 1.

Some updates for the summer from the guests of Part I & II:

• Agent LaTezeon Humphrey Balentine: Her book, Fur Friends Forever, came out April 24th. She’s also currently gathering pantry items for 50 elders at her grandma’s church, which you can help with here.

• Agent Rita Wirtz: Rita is continuing her advocacy.  Her latest blog post is “Challenging Times, Extraordinary Opportunities!”

• Agent Rebecca Blouwolff: Rebecca is leading some PD this summer: MaFLA Collaborative Classroom on target language use Week of July 13 (members only, register here), ACTFL Summer Learning Series on authentic resources with Leslie Grahn Week of July 6 (register here), and a live "spark talk" and a session at National Foreign Language Center's virtual summit July 21-23 (free, sign up here)

• Agent Kate Ames: Kate was featured on an Australasian series on online teaching. So if you want some more tips from her, check it out here.

• Agent Lauren Porosoff:  Lauren’s book, “Teach Meaningful: Tools to Design the Curriculum at Your Core”, was delayed because of the pandemic and instead was released on June 30. Also, she’s now part of a team called Re-Set School which is helping school communities tell the stories of their struggles and achievements, and bear witness to one another’s losses and gains, as a way of reaffirming the values that make them a community.

• Agent Shannon Anderson: Both of her growth mindset books are releasing in August: “Mindset Power: A Kid’s Guide to Growing Better Every Day” and “Y is for Yet: A Growth Mindset Alphabet”

• Agent Marie Kueny: Marie is doing a ‘summer enrichment’ series on her podcast ‘The Compassionate Educators Show’. I was honored to be the first guest in this series, talking about how to engage and motivate your students, regardless of academic or language abilities, in an incredibly fun way, through improv!