This book provides the framework for understanding dynamic relationships within a school culture and ensuring a positive environment that supports the changes necessary to improve learning for all students. The author explores many aspects of human behavior, social conditions, and history to reveal best practices for building healthy school cultures.

    A down-to-earth book, it aims to help practitioners develop insights and skills for successfully educating diverse student bodies.  The book centers on case studies that exemplify the challenges, pitfalls, and opportunities facing teachers in diverse classrooms. These case studies—of white and African American teachers working (and preparing to work) in urban and suburban settings—are presented amid more general discussions about race and teaching in contemporary schools. Informing these discussions and the cases themselves is their persistent attention to opportunity gaps that need to be fully grasped by teachers who aim to understand and promote the success of students of greatly varying backgrounds.Start Where You Are, But Don’t StayThere arises out of recent scholarship about race and education, but it is more directly inspired by the pressing need for useful and credible guidance for professional educators in diverse classrooms. It will prove indispensable to teachers, administrators, and scholars alike.

    The field's leading authorities present accessible recommendations for best practices that can be tailored to fit specific classroom circumstances and student populations. Provided are strategies for helping all students succeed—including struggling readers and English language learners—and for teaching each of the major components of literacy. The book also addresses ways to organize instruction and innovative uses of technology. Chapters include concrete examples, Engagement Activities, and resources for further learning. New to This Edition*Incorporates the latest research findings and instructional practices.*Chapters on motivation, content-area teaching, new literacies, and family literacy.*Addresses timely topics such as response to intervention, the new common core standards, English language learning, and policy issues.

    Bruce Lesh believes that this is due to the way we teach history—lecture and memorization. Over the last fifteen years, Bruce has refined a method of teaching history that mirrors the process used by historians, where students are taught to ask questions of evidence and develop historical explanations. And now in his new book “Why Won’t You Just Tell Us the Answer?” he shows teachers how to successfully implement his methods in the classroom.Students may think they want to be given the answer. Yet, when they are actively engaged in investigating the past—the way professional historians do—they find that history class is not about the boring memorization of names, dates, and facts. Instead, it’s challenging fun. Historical study that centers on a question, where students gather a variety of historical sources and then develop and defend their answers to that question, allows students to become actual historians immersed in an interpretive study of the past.Each chapter focuses on a key concept in understanding history and then offers a sample unit on how the concept can be taught. Readers will learn about the following: • Exploring Text, Subtext, and Context: President Theodore Roosevelt and the Panama Canal • Chronological Thinking and Causality: The Rail Strike of 1877 • Multiple Perspectives: The Bonus March of 1932 • Continuity and Change Over Time: Custer’s Last Stand • Historical Significance: The Civil Rights Movement • Historical Empathy: The Truman-MacArthur DebateBy the end of the book, teachers will have learned how to teach history via a lens of interpretive questions and interrogative evidence that allows both student and teacher to develop evidence-based answers to history’s greatest questions.

    The result is a comprehensive and accessible guide for improving student learning based on the best the research world has to offer.Willis takes a reader-friendly approach to neuroscience, describing how the brain processes, stores, and retrieves material and which instructional strategies help students learn most effectively and joyfully. You will discover how to captivate and hold the attention of your students and how to enhance their memory and test-taking success. You will learn how to know when students are ready for learning and when their brains need a rest. You will also learn how stress and emotion affect learning and how to improve student engagement. And you will find innovative techniques for designing assessments and adjusting teaching practices to ensure that all students reach their potential.No matter what grade or subject you teach, Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning will enrich your repertoire of teaching strategies so you can help students reach their full academic potential.

    As they go through school, something happens to many of our students, and they begin to play the game of school, eager to be compliant and follow a path instead of making their own. As teachers, leaders, and parents, we have the opportunity to be the guide in our kids' education and unleash the creative potential of each and every student. In a world that is ever changing, our job is not to prepare students for something; instead, our role is to help students prepare themselves for anything. In Empower, A.J. Juliani and John Spencer provide teachers, coaches, and administrators with a roadmap that will inspire innovation, authentic learning experiences, and practical ways to empower students to pursue their passions while in school. Compliance is expecting students to pay attention. Engagement is getting students excited about our topics, interests, and curriculum. But when we empower students, they crave learning that is both meaningful and relevant to their life, now and in the future. Empower is for you if ...You are a teacher eager to get students making, designing, and creating their own learning path in (and out of) the classroomYou are a superintendent, district administrator, or principal who is leading change and working to help your staff thrive in a twenty-first-century learning environmentYou are a coach, staff developer, or teacher leader who is crafting professional learning experiences and wants to encourage colleagues to be the guide on the rideEmpower is focused not only on what happens when students own their learning but also on how to reach a place where that is possible in the midst of standards, set curriculum paths, and realities of school that we all have to deal with. Written by real educators who are still working in schools and with teachers, Empower will provide ways to overcome these challenges and turn them into opportunities for our learners to be unabashedly different and remarkable. Join the conversation online using the hashtag #EmpowerBook and learn more at EmpowerBook.co.

    Efforts to define and then assess the key qualities of writing have helped pinpoint what outcomes matter most and how to measure them, yet they threaten to become an end in themselves. Meanwhile, high-quality instruction seeks to create a safe environment that applauds risk taking by supporting students through strategies that are not readily measured. In this landmark book, Vicki Spandel takes on the immeasurable, opening an exciting discussion about the conditions writers need to achieve their full potential and offering practical applications for any writing classroom.In The 9 Rights of Every Writer Spandel invites nine published authors into a discussion of what makes writing work. Well-known novelists, researchers, science writers, and teacher-writers join this dynamic conversation, and together they draw vital conclusions about teaching strategies that both lead to growth in craft and allow good teaching to flourish. Join Spandel and friends in discovering the personal and instructional importance of:reflecting finding personally important topics going off topic personalizing the writing process writing badly to unearth and clarify meaning observing other writers at work assessing constructivelyand well experiencing structural freedom unearthing the power of each writer's voice. As you will discover, The 9 Rights of Every Writer weaves the philosophical into the practical, offering powerful, ready-to-use lessons that jumpstart the progress of the writers in your classroom and help them reach writing standards. Harness your passion for writing instruction, let go of rigid practices, and balance the needs of maturing writers with today's classroom realities. Read The 9 Rights of Every Writer, learn to trust your teaching instincts, and concentrate on what matters most: creating an instructional setting where writers can achieve success that soars beyond what can be measured.

    . . It’s Complicated will update your mind.”—Alissa Quart, New York Times Book Review  “A fascinating, well-researched and (mostly) reassuring look at how today's tech-savvy teenagers are using social media.”—People  “The briefest possible summary? The kids are all right, but society isn’t.”—Andrew Leonard, Salon   What is new about how teenagers communicate through services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram? Do social media affect the quality of teens’ lives? In this eye-opening book, youth culture and technology expert danah boyd uncovers some of the major myths regarding teens' use of social media. She explores tropes about identity, privacy, safety, danger, and bullying. Ultimately, boyd argues that society fails young people when paternalism and protectionism hinder teenagers’ ability to become informed, thoughtful, and engaged citizens through their online interactions. Yet despite an environment of rampant fear-mongering, boyd finds that teens often find ways to engage and to develop a sense of identity. Boyd’s conclusions are essential reading not only for parents, teachers, and others who work with teens but also for anyone interested in the impact of emerging technologies on society, culture, and commerce in years to come. Offering insights gleaned from more than a decade of original fieldwork interviewing teenagers across the United States, boyd concludes reassuringly that the kids are all right. At the same time, she acknowledges that coming to terms with life in a networked era is not easy or obvious. In a technologically mediated world, life is bound to be complicated.

    This gap persists despite the hard, often heroic work done by many teachers and administrators. Schmoker believes that teachers and administrators may know what the best practices are, but they aren't using them or reinforcing them consistently. He asserts that our schools are protected by a buffer--a protective barrier that prevents scrutiny of instruction by outsiders. The buffer exists within the school as well. Teachers often know only what is going on in their classrooms--and they may be completely in the dark about what other teachers in the school are doing. Even principals, says Schmoker, don't have a clear view of the daily practices of teaching and learning in their schools.Schmoker suggests that we need to get beyond this buffer to confront the truth about what is happening in classrooms, and to allow teachers to learn from each other and to be supervised properly. He outlines a plan that focuses on the importance of consistent curriculum, authentic literacy education, and professional learning communities for teachers.What will students get out of this new approach? Learning for life. Schmoker argues passionately that students become learners for life when they have more opportunities to engage in strategic reading, writing with explicit guidance, and argument and discussion.Through strong teamwork, true leadership, and authentic learning, schools and their students can reach new heights. Results Now is a rally cry for educators to focus on what counts. If they do, Schmoker promises, the entire school community can count on unprecedented achievements.

    . . . This must-have book will help teachers learn to implement improved, equity-focused grading for impact." --Zaretta Hammond, Author of Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain Crack open the grading conversation Here at last--and none too soon--is a resource that delivers the research base, tools, and courage to tackle one of the most challenging and emotionally charged conversations in today's schools: our inconsistent grading practices and the ways they can inadvertently perpetuate the achievement and opportunity gaps among our students.With Grading for Equity, Joe Feldman cuts to the core of the conversation, revealing how grading practices that are accurate, bias-resistant, and motivational will improve learning, minimize grade inflation, reduce failure rates, and become a lever for creating stronger teacher-student relationships and more caring classrooms. Essential reading for schoolwide and individual book study or for student advocates, Grading for Equity providesA critical historical backdrop, describing how our inherited system of grading was originally set up as a sorting mechanism to provide or deny opportunity, control students, and endorse a "fixed mindset" about students' academic potential--practices that are still in place a century later A summary of the research on motivation and equitable teaching and learning, establishing a rock-solid foundation and a "true north" orientation toward equitable grading practices Specific grading practices that are more equitable, along with teacher examples, strategies to solve common hiccups and concerns, and evidence of effectiveness Reflection tools for facilitating individual or group engagement and understanding As Joe writes, "Grading practices are a mirror not just for students, but for us as their teachers." Each one of us should start by asking, "What do my grading practices say about who I am and what I believe?" Then, let's make the choice to do things differently . . . with Grading for Equity as a dog-eared reference.