Hey, friends!

Today is a strange little hinge in time.

It is the last Friday of August and the first Friday of the new school year here in Wilmington, North Carolina.

An ending and a beginning.

My brain loves a liminal moment.

THE SUMMER TOUR IS COMPLETE!

Last week, I officially wrapped up the Summer Tour 2026.

The journey began in Grand Junction, Colorado, and carried me through Baldwin County, Alabama; the Utah Gifted Conference; Confratute in Connecticut; Edufest in Boise; Jackson and Parma, Ohio; State College, Pennsylvania; and a final North Carolina stretch through Charlotte and Fayetteville.

By my tally, the Summer Tour involved over 20,000 miles in the air.

That is more than three-quarters of the way around the planet.

It is also a lot of airport floors, tiny cups of coffee, hotel rooms, rental cars, new ideas, old friends, and extraordinary educators doing important work with young people.

I am grateful for every bit of it.

THE SHORTCUT THAT MADE ME MISTY

Throughout the Summer Tour, I demonstrated a collection of GPTs that I have been creating and compiling in a project I am calling GiftedGPT.

Doing a live AI demonstration is always a tiny bit of a high-wire act. You never know exactly what the AI will produce, which is part of the fun.

The less-fun part has always been switching my Mac between presenter mode and mirrored displays.

Every time I needed to show the audience exactly what was happening on my computer, I had to dig through menus, click the correct settings, and quietly pray that everything would work without becoming cumbersome.

At some point on the trip home, I kept thinking:

There has GOT to be an easier way.

So, naturally, I asked ChatGPT.

There was.

COMMAND + F1

That is it.

On my Mac, that beautiful little shortcut toggles between extended and mirrored displays.

I pressed it.

The displays switched.

No menus. No frantic clicking. No interruption.

It just worked.

Maybe it was the exhaustion of touring, but I misted up a little.

Sometimes AI helps you create an entirely new experience.

Sometimes it gives you a keyboard shortcut and restores years to your life.

Both are valuable.

HOME. PHYSICALLY.

I am now home in Wilmington until the final weekend of September.

However, the Fall Tour begins virtually on September 17 at 6:00 PM Eastern with a free NAGC webinar:

Building Brains That Build Things: Engineering Habits of Mind for Gifted Innovators

The webinar is FREE for NAGC members and grows out of the opening chapter I wrote for Engineering Ingenuity, edited by Debbie Dailey and Alicia Cotabish.

We will explore six habits that help curious thinkers become capable builders: persistence, creativity, systems thinking, collaboration, conscientiousness, and optimism.

It is somewhat about engineering.

It is mostly about preparing minds to imagine, design, test, improve, and build things that matter.

BIG NEWS: GTA SEASON FOUR!

On September 28, Andi McNair and I kick off Season Four of the Great Teacher Alliance!

This year’s theme is:

We are bringing together a community of thoughtful educators for four live 90-minute episodes spread across the school year.

Every episode will be recorded. All materials and resources are included. The learning continues between sessions through our online community.

Most importantly, everything this season is 100% BRAND NEW.

Andi and I are ridiculously excited about what we are creating.

The four live episodes take place on:

• September 28

• November 16

• January 11

• March 22

All episodes are from 6:30 to 8:00 PM Eastern.

Space is limited to 150 participants, and registration is $150 for the entire season.

JOIN GTA SEASON FOUR: BUILT DIFFERENT

WHAT STAYS? WHAT GOES? WHAT GROWS?

At the beginning of every school year, I think about what I want to be different.

This year, I have been using a simple three-column framework to guide that thinking:

STAYS · GOES · GROWS

Think of it as part inventory, part clearing-out, and part planting plan.

STAYS

What is already working?
What do you value?
What deserves to be protected, continued, or carried forward?

GOES

What is creating unnecessary friction?
What habit, expectation, commitment, routine, or story about yourself no longer serves you?

GROWS

What is ready for more attention?
What idea, skill, relationship, question, or possibility do you want to cultivate?

You can use this framework for yourself, with a team, or with your learners.

Ask students:

• What from last year should stay?

• What are you ready to let go?

• What part of yourself do you want to grow?

Their responses can remain private, be shared with a partner, or become the foundation for a larger goal.

Then come back to the columns.

Revisit them at the beginning of October, in January, and near the end of the school year.

What stayed?

What actually went?

What grew in ways you never expected?

[DOWNLOAD THE STAYS · GOES · GROWS STUDENT PDF]

A LETTER FROM THE FUTURE

Historically, I have paired this kind of reflection with a Letter to My Future Self.

I ask:

Where am I today?

Where do I hope to be at the beginning of October?

What do I want to be different in January?

Who do I hope to have become by the end of the school year?

I used to do this with my students as well.

There is something incredibly powerful about receiving an artifact created by a past version of yourself. You encounter your earlier hopes, worries, handwriting, priorities, and predictions from a completely different vantage point.

This year, I tried something new.

I asked ChatGPT to write the letter for me.

Let’s just say I was NOT disappointed.

It was powerful.

It was honest.

It reflected patterns I had not fully recognized, and it told me exactly some of what I needed to hear to move boldly into the new year.

It did not predict my future.

It held up a mirror.

If you have spent a lot of time with your AI friend, I encourage you to try it.

You might begin with:

Based on what you know about me, write a letter from my future self at the end of this school year. Reflect on what I need to protect, what I need to release, and what I am ready to grow. Be honest, specific, encouraging, and not generic.

You might be surprised by what comes back.

You might even mist up a little.

SIDE QUESTS ARE HAPPENING

I have also been working on several new side projects.

Here is a sneak peek.

No descriptions.

No explanations.

Just clues.

I would genuinely love to know your thoughts.

THE PHYSICAL FALL TOUR

The physical part of the Fall Tour begins at the end of September:

• September 26: Regional Gifted Parent Teacher Institute in Tucson, Arizona — Keynote

• October 2: Metrolina Regional Scholars Academy in Charlotte, North Carolina — Keynote

• October 7–8: Alabama Association for Gifted Children in Mobile, Alabama — Keynote

• October 9–10: WAETAG in Bellevue, Washington — Keynote

• October 23: Prince William County Public Schools in Manassas, Virginia

• November 5–8: NAGC26 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

• December 2–4: TAGT giftED26 in Houston, Texas

I am officially not booking anything else in 2026.

I am putting that sentence in writing for accountability purposes, and to remind myself to say no. 

However, if you are planning a conference or professional learning experience for 2027, let’s talk.

I can keynote.

I can create a full-day learning adventure.

I can work with a small team over time.

I can help educators tinker with gifted education, AI, curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, technology, or the wonderfully strange intersections among them.

I can do a lot of things.

ONE FINAL THOUGHT

This has also been a hard week.

In just a few days, we lost Dolly Parton, Tim Curry, and Yayoi Kusama.

Dolly created music, joy, and a literacy legacy that placed millions of books into the hands of children.

Tim Curry brought intelligence, theatricality, and glorious weirdness to every role. Clue remains one of my all-time favorite comedy films.

Yayoi Kusama transformed dots, repetition, pumpkins, and infinity into a universe that could only have come from her imagination.

This summer, I had the opportunity to step into part of that universe at Crystal Bridges.

Together, their work could not have looked more different.

Yet each of them made the world larger by being unmistakably themselves.

Maybe that is the reminder I am carrying into this new school year:

Protect what makes you unmistakably you.

Let what no longer serves you go.

Grow the thing that only you can grow.

So, what belongs in your STAYS, GOES, and GROWS columns?

Thank you for all that you do.

I appreciate you.

Stay curious,

Brian

P.S. The SEED book is STILL mysteriously on sale at Amazon.

As of this morning, it is 28% off, bringing the price down to $30.21.

We do not know why.

We do not know how long it will last.

We do know that this feels like a puzzle that needs to be solved.

Preferably by purchasing a copy.

Our royalty remains the same, and you save money.

I like that for all of us.