From one of America s most celebrated educators, an inspiring guide to transforming every child s education In a Los Angeles neighborhood plagued by guns, gangs, and drugs, there is an exceptional classroom known as Room 56. The fifth graders inside are first-generation immigrants who live in poverty and speak English as a second language. They also play Vivaldi, perform Shakespeare, score in the top 1 percent on standardized tests, and go on to attend Ivy League universities. Rafe Esquith is the teacher responsible for these accomplishments. From the man whom The New York Times calls a genius and a saint comes a revelatory program for educating today s youth. In Teach Like Your Hair s on Fire!, Rafe Esquith reveals the techniques that have made him one of the most acclaimed educators of our time. The two mottoes in Esquith s classroom are Be Nice, Work Hard, and There Are No Shortcuts. His students voluntarily come to school at 6:30 in the morning and work until 5:00 in the afternoon. They learn to handle money responsibly, tackle algebra, and travel the country to study history. They pair Hamlet with rock and roll, and read the American classics. Teach Like Your Hair s on Fire! is a brilliant and inspiring road map for parents, teachers, and anyone who cares about the future success of our nation s children. "

    This book will teach you all you need to know about public relations, from
 what to do on your first day at your desk to how to start your own PR 
agency. You’ll learn the core skill of the business: pitching. It’ll also 
tell you how to avoid becoming a buzzword-spitting automaton that the media 
will hate. Written by a PR veteran who has done it all – and made every mistake along the way – This Is How You Pitch is an honest, direct guidebook to Public Relations and how to survive your first years in the business and how to turn it into a prosperous, fulfilling career.

    Did you know that games can be a terrifically effective way to build team spirit, communication, and trust among people who work together day in and day out? Now you can spark morale in any work group by choosing from 70 stimulating games and activities specifically designed for the manager who's looking to raise sagging morale in a department, liven up boring staff meetings, enable team members to collaborate smoothly and effectively, and much more!

    Former Pixar and The Simpsons Animator and Story Artist Matthew Luhn translates his two and half decades of storytelling techniques and concepts to the CEOs, advertisers, marketers, and creatives in the business world and beyond. A combination of Luhn’s personal stories and storytelling insights, The Best Story Wins retells the “Hero’s Journey” story building methods through the lens of the Pixar films to help business minds embrace the power of storytelling for themselves!

    The meaning of the business process diagram is the same, regardless of the tool used to create it. But creating models that are correct, complete, and clear demands more than a dictionary of BPMN shapes and symbols. It also requires a methodology for translating process logic consistently into the diagram. And it requires a measure of modeling style as well, conventions that ensure that the process logic is unambiguous from the diagram by itself. In short, "good BPMN" requires a disciplined approach called "method and style."In this book, Bruce Silver explains which BPMN elements process modelers need to understand, in two levels, including exactly where and how to use each element. Level 1 (the Descriptive modeling subclass of BPMN 2.0) is a palette of shapes and symbols largely carried over from traditional flowcharting. Level 2 (the Analytic subclass) expands the palette to be able to describe event-triggered behavior, critical to modeling exception handling.The book explains the real meaning of BPMN's most basic concepts - like activity, process, and end state - essential to using the language correctly, and provides a step-by-step methodology for going from a blank page to a complete end-to-end BPMN model, developed from the top down in a hierarchical structure. From the top-level diagram you can see on a single page exactly how the process starts, its possible end states, what the instance represents, and communications with the Customer, service providers, and other processes. From there you can drill down to see the details of any part of the process. Thie popular first edition of this book was published in 2009 based on the draft BPMN 2.0 specification. This second edition is based on the final BPMN 2.0 specification. Although the diagram elements have changed little since the first edition, both the methodology and style sections have been completely rewritten.The second half of the book, the BPMN Implementer's Guide, is completely new. It puts the focus on the XML serialization of the diagram, for both non-executable and executable process models. It details the BPMN 2.0 metamodel and XML Schema, and describes the BPMN-I Profile, a set of serialization rules that facilitate interchange of BPMN models in the Analytic subclass between tools. It also explains how BPMN 2.0 describes execution-related details, such as process data and data mapping, services, messages, and human task assignment, illustrated with an example executable process created in Bonita Open Solution. It concludes with guidelines for implementers on how to align executable design with business-oriented top-down process modeling.The book is lavishly illustrated with over 100 BPMN diagrams, and the BPMN Implementer's Guide section contains many XML examples as well.Bruce Silver is the leading provider of BPMN training and certification. He has been providing BPMN training since early 2007 and is regarded as an authority in the field.

    His goal was to help shift the focus in Japanese education from memorization to critical thinking, by adapting some of the techniques he had learned as an elite McKinsey consultant.He was amazed to discover that adults were hungry for his fun and easy guide to problem solving and decision making. The book became a surprise Japanese bestseller, with more than 370,000 in print after six months. Now American businesspeople can also use it to master some powerful skills.Watanabe uses sample scenarios to illustrate his techniques, which include logic trees and matrixes. A rock band figures out how to drive up concert attendance. An aspiring animator budgets for a new computer purchase. Students decide which high school they will attend.Illustrated with diagrams and quirky drawings, the book is simple enough for a middleschooler to understand but sophisticated enough for business leaders to apply to their most challenging problems.

    It discusses cloud concepts and highlights various design patterns and best practices. This documentation is offered for free here as a Kindle book, or you can read it in PDF format at https://aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/.

    Others have broken rules, missed deadlines, failed to live up to commitments, or just plain behaved badly—and nobody steps up to the issue. Or they do, but do a lousy job and create a whole new set of problems. Accountability suffers and new problems spring up. New research demonstrates that these disappointments aren't just irritating, they're costly—sapping organizational performance by twenty to fifty percent and accounting for up to ninety percent of divorces.Crucial Confrontations teaches skills drawn from 10,000 hours of real-life observations to increase confidence in facing issues like:- An employee speaks to you in an insulting tone that crosses the line between sarcasm and insubordination. Now what?- Your boss just committed you to a deadline you know you can't meet—and not-so-subtly hinted he doesn't want to hear complaints about it.- Your son walks through the door sporting colorful new body art that raises your blood pressure by forty points. Speak now, pay later.- An accountant wonders how to step up to a client who is violating the law. Can you spell unemployment?- Family members fret over how to tell granddad that he should no longer drive his car. This is going to get ugly.- A nurse worries about what to say to an abusive physician. She quickly remembers "how things work around here" and decides not to say anything.Everyone knows how to run for cover, or if adequately provoked, step up to these confrontations in a way that causes a real ruckus. That we have down pat. Crucial Confrontations teaches you how to deal with violated expectations in a way that solves the problem at hand, and doesn't harm the relationship—and in fact, even strengthens it.Crucial Confrontations borrows from twenty years of research involving two groups. More than 25,000 people helped the authors identify those who were most influential during crucial confrontations. They spent 10,000 hours watching these people, documented what they saw, and then trained and tested with more than 300,000 people. Second, they measured the impact of crucial confrontations improvements on organizational and team performance—the results were immediate and sustainable: twenty to fifty percent improvements in measurable performance.

    

    In an instructive and conversational tone, Cody clearly explains how to program SAS, illustrating with one or more real-life examples and giving a detailed description of how the program works.

    There always seemed to be a new system to learn, a new surefire method or cutting-edge technique for entrepreneurs to master.In an effort to teach her team members a better and easier way, Dana Wilde created Train Your Brain, a tested and proven system combining elements of both mindset and action ... or as Dana likes to call it, Intentional Action.What Dana discovered by using Train Your Brain is that mindset can be "taught" and that learning simple mindset strategies not only allows you to understand how the brain works but also shows you how easy it is to change your thinking and, as a result, change your outcomes.In Train Your Brain, Dana breaks down the Cycle of Perpetual Sameness--the number one reason why most people only experience incremental change in their lives. More importantly, she also provides the much-needed blueprint to help you get off this counterproductive cycle quickly.Train Your Brain, with its twenty easy-to-implement "Mindware Experiments," gives you all the necessary tools needed to get off ... and stay off ... the Cycle of Perpetual Sameness, so you can transform your life and grow your business in record time!

    This reassuring book debunks the generally-accepted claims about necessary savings rates, which can cause paranoia among those beginning to contemplate retirement. The authors offer greater insight into planning approaches that are not widely understood, demystifies retirement targets (age, savings, income), and outlines concrete approaches to maximizing retirement savings.Offers practical advice for dealing with the changes to Canada's retirement system Includes advice for calculating your Neutral Retirement Income Target Contains solid financial advice in accessible language Written by the Executive Chairman and Chief Actuary of Morneau Shepell Canada's national actuarial consulting firm The Real Retirement offers a down-to-earth guide for preparing for comfortable retirement and shows what it takes to achieve it.

    This paperback edition has been fully revised and updated to include Vince Cable’s latest assessment of the recession.

    It embraces a range of disciplines, from Technology to Human Resources, from Legal to Risk. Yet, unlike other senior executive roles, there is no established framework or body of knowledge to support the COO. This book de-mystifies the COO role and breaks it into 16 core elements; the three fundamental pillars of Culture, Strategy and Change, plus 13 technical areas. It outlines responsibilities, warning signs, and how to boost performance. It equips you with the questions you need to ask to gain early insight, diagnose the issues and move into execution. Drawing on industry standards and enriched with expert insight and real-life current examples, it condenses a vast range of knowledge and experience into one accessible read. This book, which can be consumed in one sitting, will make you a more effective leader, faster. This is the book that current COOs wish they had at the outset of their journey. It is the book that your CEO, Board and team need you to read. ‘A must-read guide for all aspiring COOs. Packed with practical insights and based on real life experiences, it gives a clear and powerful road map for this transformational organizational role.’ Justin Forsyth, Deputy Executive Director, UNICEF ‘It is rare for a single book to command such breadth of expertise, practical insight and advice that is so easy to put into action. This is a consequence of the superb clarity of Jennifer’s writing, and the fact that she has earned her expertise – and the scars that come with it – from working on the business end of the stick for over twenty years.’ Mark Waddington, CEO, Hope and Homes for Children ‘Crisply written, clear and to the point.’ Ben Brabyn, CEO, Level 39 ‘An impressive read. De-codes the very tricky role of COO and inspires you on how to be a great one.’ Niamh O’Keeffe, Author of “Your First 100 days” and “Your Next Role” ‘The defining text on the role of the COO and its component parts. This is an informative and useful read for existing COOs. It is a must read for new COOs, aspiring COOs and most importantly CEOs and Heads of HR in hiring COOs for their organisations.' Paul Ford, CEO, Anchura Partners ‘The role of COO is a balancing act, and requires multiple hard and soft skills. This nifty handbook provides a shortcut to understand the critical skills required, and is filled with nuggets of practical and accessible advice.’ Sinead Mahon, Banking COO ‘This book takes one of the most frameless and unstructured roles in business today, and using personal experiences seeks to help others to demystify the role and deliver insight on how to be effective and successful. Insightful and extensive, a book I would have loved to have access to when I was starting out in my career.’ Pam Murphy, COO, Infor

    Now this classic book has been fully updated and revised with leading-edge practices--and hundreds of new code samples--illustrating the art and science of software construction. Capturing the body of knowledge available from research, academia, and everyday commercial practice, McConnell synthesizes the most effective techniques and must-know principles into clear, pragmatic guidance. No matter what your experience level, development environment, or project size, this book will inform and stimulate your thinking--and help you build the highest quality code. Discover the timeless techniques and strategies that help you: Design for minimum complexity and maximum creativity Reap the benefits of collaborative development Apply defensive programming techniques to reduce and flush out errors Exploit opportunities to refactor--or evolve--code, and do it safely Use construction practices that are right-weight for your project Debug problems quickly and effectively Resolve critical construction issues early and correctly Build quality into the beginning, middle, and end of your project