Summer 25 Links and Resources (gift links updated!)

For paid subscribers - it seems not all the gift links were working so I updated what I could! There are two pieces from the Atlantic and one from the NYT with refreshed gift links.

Welcome to the Talking Out of School newsletter! If you were forwarded this email, hit the subscribe button to get weekly insights into applied leadership for your independent school or nonprofit. Thank you for your support!

Here’s more information on program offerings from Julie Faulstich and Stony Creek Strategy. Contact us - always happy to chat!

And note: upgrading to a paid subscription to Talking Out of School is a professional development expense.

The roses here in Stony Creek continue to amaze.

Today, I offer two short Substack shares with clear and actionable advice - one on adjusting t the effectiveness of your admissions funnel (Seth Odell) and the other on simple ways to create “brand advocates,” (Michele Levy) something that all community members, regarless of financial capacity, can do to meaningfully contribute to revenue-generation.

Nuance about AI

Then after the paywall, there are two very nuanced articles about AI. One soberly and realistically assess where we’re at with AI and where it might be going without ending up in either the “savior” or “end of the world” place. It’s basically a call not to sleepwalk into the gen AI era, advice that schools should heed. (gift link)

The other is an example of how a school might go forward, tech free, as a feature - and I think this is a particular opportunity for our boarding school friends! (gift link)

I’m also including the very excellent Clay Shirky article from the Chronicle of Higher Ed I’ve shared a few times before, about how Chat GPT has already upended college education - and what depresses me most is not the mighty power of AI but that upending a college education (and by extension, a high school education) was so easy to do. (free with free Chronicle account)

Have Parents Caught on to the Discounting Sausage Making?

Has college tuition discounting finally jumped the shark? This article features some absolutely wince-inducing quotes from parents such as “colleges have become used car salesmen.” (With apologies to used car salesmen.) (gift link)

Harvard article encore

And because it’s summer, this article is very long and Harvard continues to be in the news, I also re-included the New Yorker article from March on the state of things at Harvard. (I can’t seem to find a gift link option now! You can access a limited number of articles as a non-subscriber. Apologies!)