At Vita Prep, we are readers! We highly recommend the books, podcasts, and videos below to our parents and supporters.
Recommended Books
Courage to Grow
In this second edition, Courage to Grow is the intimate origin story of Acton Academy, one of today’s most innovative schools with a model quickly spreading around the globe. If you have ever wondered if there are more powerful ways for young people to learn, step aboard for a behind the scenes tour of how Acton Academy unlocks the genius in every child, while embracing personal accountability and forging young characters. However, this is not a how-to book. Nor is it a book about educational theory. It is a fast-paced tale of courageous families, transformed by what young people can accomplish when armed with the right inspiration, questions and tools. Like all good tales, there is a surprise ending, a final bit of magic about parenting and life you won’t want to miss.
Unschooling Rules
The most powerful new ideas in education are coming from the families that have given up on schools. From his experience with homeschoolers and unschoolers, education guru Clark Aldrich distills a revolutionary manifesto of 55 core ”rules” that reboots our vision of childhood education and the role of schools. The include:
● Learn to be; learn to do; learn to know.
● Tests don’t work. Get over it. Move on.
● What a person learns in a classroom is how to be a person in a classroom.
● Animals are better than books about animals.
● Internships, apprenticeships, and interesting jobs beat term papers, textbooks, and tests.
● The only sustainable answer to the global education challenge is a diversity of approaches.
This accessible book provides you with a path forward, whether you’re a parent or teacher, a school administrator, or a national policy decision maker.
The One World Schoolhouse
A free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere: this is the goal of the Khan Academy, a passion project that grew from an ex-engineer and hedge funder’s online tutoring sessions with his niece, who was struggling with algebra, into a worldwide phenomenon. Today millions of students, parents, and teachers use the Khan Academy’s free videos and software, which have expanded to encompass nearly every conceivable subject; and Academy techniques are being employed with exciting results in a growing number of classrooms around the globe.
Like many innovators, Khan rethinks existing assumptions and imagines what education could be if freed from them. And his core idea-liberating teachers from lecturing and state-mandated calendars and opening up class time for truly human interaction-has become his life’s passion. Schools seek his advice about connecting to students in a digital age, and people of all ages and backgrounds flock to the site to utilize this fresh approach to learning.
In The One World Schoolhouse, Khan presents his radical vision for the future of education, as well as his own remarkable story, for the first time. In these pages, you will discover, among other things:
- How both students and teachers are being bound by a broken top-down model invented in Prussia two centuries ago
- Why technology will make classrooms more human and teachers more important
- How and why we can afford to pay educators the same as other professionals
- How we can bring creativity and true human interactivity back to learning
- Why we should be very optimistic about the future of learning.
Parents and politicians routinely bemoan the state of our education system. Statistics suggest we’ve fallen behind the rest of the world in literacy, math, and sciences. With a shrewd reading of history, Khan explains how this crisis presented itself, and why a return to “mastery learning,” abandoned in the twentieth century and ingeniously revived by tools like the Khan Academy, could offer the best opportunity to level the playing field, and to give all of our children a world-class education now.
More than just a solution, The One World Schoolhouse serves as a call for free, universal, global education, and an explanation of how Khan’s simple yet revolutionary thinking can help achieve this inspiring goal.
Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing)
Whether we like it or not, the AI revolution is coming to education. In Brave New Words, Salman Khan, the visionary behind Khan Academy, explores how artificial intelligence and GPT technology will transform learning, and offers a road map for teachers, parents, and students to navigate this exciting (and sometimes intimidating) new world.
A pioneer in the field of education technology, Khan examines the ins and outs of these cutting-edge tools and how they will revolutionize the way we learn and teach. For parents concerned about their children’s success, Khan illustrates how AI can personalize learning by adapting to each student’s individual pace and style, identifying strengths and areas for improvement, and offering tailored support and feedback to complement traditional classroom instruction. Khan emphasizes that embracing AI in education is not about replacing human interaction but enhancing it with customized and accessible learning tools that encourage creative problem-solving skills and prepare students for an increasingly digital world.
But Brave New Words is not just about technology—it’s about what this technology means for our society, and the practical implications for administrators, guidance counselors, and hiring managers who can harness the power of AI in education and the workplace. Khan also delves into the ethical and social implications of AI and large language models, offering thoughtful insights into how we can use these tools to build a more accessible education system for students around the world.