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As students and parents scramble to ensure that those summer reading lists are complete, Phi Delta Kappan offers up its own must-reads for school leaders. From among the year’s selections by the magazine, check out “Sounding the Charge for Change” by Ed Trust artist-in-residence Brooke Haycock. In this article, Haycock draws on Shakespeare’s Henry V to issue a call to leaders — the “tone-setters and meaning-makers in their buildings” — on the importance of words in communicating with staff and leading school change efforts.

See page 14 of Phi Delta Kappan’s must-reads, “Step Up! Meeting the Leadership Challenges of the Coming Year.”

To select articles for inclusion in the summer publication, Joan Richardson, Kappan magazine’s editor-in-chief, keeps track over the publishing year of what speaks most to readers. She tracks comments by readers and bloggers, polls top Phi Delta Kappan staff, and makes her final choice from among articles that present a new idea or an unconventional “twist to an old idea.” For Richardson, that’s what Haycock’s piece did. “Brooke’s article fell into that category,” Richardson said. “It was a fresh perspective on a topic — leadership — that we know is quite important to the Kappan audience. … Words matter and how leaders use them matters too.”

This summer’s compilation, Must-Reads From Kappan, 2011-12, is the magazine’s third such effort.

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