They did that—and more. In their early twenties, by sheer force of talent and determination never to take no for an answer, they created a wildly successful fifth-grade experience that would grow into the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), which today includes sixty-six schools in nineteen states and the District of Columbia. KIPP schools incorporate what Feinberg and Levin learned from America's best, most charismatic teachers: lessons need to be lively; school days need to be longer (the KIPP day is nine and a half hours); the completion of homework has to be sacrosanct (KIPP teachers are available by telephone day and night). Chants, songs, and slogans such as "Work hard, be nice" energize the program. Illuminating the ups and downs of the KIPP founders and their students, Mathews gives us something quite rare: a hopeful book about education.

    They will free you to love your job, build effortless and influential relationships with your students, and enable you to become a happier, calmer, and more confident teacher. You will learn: -Simple strategies that make classroom management a lot easier. -Exactly (step-by-step) how to handle difficult students. -How to create a classroom your students will love coming to every day. -How to build behavior-changing rapport and influence with even the most difficult students. -How to get your students to treat each other with respect and kindness. -How to praise in a way that inspires, uplifts, and motivates. -How to build maturity and independence. -How you can know your students will behave instead of just hoping they will. -How to become a teacher that fellow teachers, parents, and students respect and admire. -How to love your class, and have them love you right back. -And much more . . .

    And most are finding that the answer is “yes.” If they want their students to learn complex new concepts in different disciplines, they often have to help their students become better readers.Building on the experiences gained in her own language arts classroom as well as those of colleagues in different disciplines, Cris Tovani, author of I Read It, but I Don't Get It, takes on the challenge of helping students apply reading comprehension strategies in any subject. In Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?, Cris shows how teachers can expand on their content expertise to provide instruction students need to understand specific technical and narrative texts. The book includes:examples of how teachers can model their reading process for students;ideas for supplementing and enhancing the use of required textbooks;detailed descriptions of specific strategies taught in context;stories from different high school classrooms to show how reading instruction varies according to content;samples of student work, including both struggling readers and college-bound seniors;a variety of “comprehension constructors”: guides designed to help students recognize and capture their thinking in writing while reading;guidance on assessing students;tips for balancing content and reading instruction.Cris's humor, honesty, and willingness to share her own struggles as a teacher make this a unique take on content reading instruction that will be valuable to reading teachers as well as content specialists.

    This book offers exciting -- and useful -- information about the mind and the brain that provides some answers on how people actually learn.

    Seasoned researchers and educators Gregory G. Colomb and Joseph M. Williams present an updated third edition of their classic handbook, whose first and second editions were written in collaboration with the late Wayne C. Booth. The Craft of Research explains how to build an argument that motivates readers to accept a claim; how to anticipate the reservations of readers and to respond to them appropriately; and how to create introductions and conclusions that answer that most demanding question, “So what?” The third edition includes an expanded discussion of the essential early stages of a research task: planning and drafting a paper. The authors have revised and fully updated their section on electronic research, emphasizing the need to distinguish between trustworthy sources (such as those found in libraries) and less reliable sources found with a quick Web search. A chapter on warrants has also been thoroughly reviewed to make this difficult subject easier for researchers Throughout, the authors have preserved the amiable tone, the reliable voice, and the sense of directness that have made this book indispensable for anyone undertaking a research project.

    If the problem is physical, she takes the child to a doctor. But if the problem is a misunderstanding of her child's mind, where does she turn for help? This is Ben's story. He was a happy, healthy boy -- a mother's dream come true. Yet by the age of three, Ben's development was significantly delayed: He couldn't make sense of the simplest phrases, and he still hadn't started talking. When Karen Foli finally took her son, Ben, to a speech and hearing clinic, she was told that he was "probably retarded and perhaps autistic." But Karen knew that Ben was highly perceptive, even frustrated by his inability to communicate. Trusting her "mother's intuition," Karen set out on a journey to learn the truth about her son's condition....and what she found was APD. A person with auditory processing disorder receives jumbled and distorted sounds. But the ability to hear is usually normal. Even though it affects millions of Americans, APD can be difficult to diagnose and challenging to treat. Through years of research, and personal interviews, Karen Foli learned everything she needed to know about APD in order to help her son achieve the greatest gift of all: communication. Like Sound Through Water is her story -- winning, inspiring, and true.

    Bosses, colleagues, customers—but also family, friends, and in-laws—they all have “suggestions” for our performance, parenting, or appearance. We know that feedback is essential for healthy relationships and professional development—but we dread it and often dismiss it.That’s because receiving feedback sits at the junction of two conflicting human desires. We do want to learn and grow. And we also want to be accepted just as we are right now. Thanks for the Feedback is the first book to address this tension head on. It explains why getting feedback is so crucial yet so challenging, and offers a powerful framework to help us take on life’s blizzard of off-hand comments, annual evaluations, and unsolicited advice with curiosity and grace.The business world spends billions of dollars and millions of hours each year teaching people how to give feedback more effectively. Stone and Heen argue that we’ve got it backwards and show us why the smart money is on educating receivers— in the workplace and in personal relationships as well.Coauthors of the international bestseller Difficult Conversations, Stone and Heen have spent the last ten years working with businesses, nonprofits, governments, and families to determine what helps us learn and what gets in our way. With humor and clarity, they blend the latest insights from neuroscience and psychology with practical, hard-headed advice. The book is destined to become a classic in the world of leadership, organizational behavior, and education.

    They experiment, explore, test, and play, and they learn a great deal about problem-solving through questions and hands-on experiments. They don't see lines between disciplines; rather, they notice interesting materials and ideas that are worth exploring. This book is about creative experiments, in all fields, that help kids explore the world.Children gravitate toward sensory experiences (playing with slime), figuring out how things work (taking toys apart), and testing the limits of materials (mixing a tray of paint together until it makes a solid mass of brown). They're not limited by their imaginations, and a wooden spoon can become a magic wand as quickly as a bag of pom-poms can become a hot bowl of soup. This book is about helping parents and teachers of babies, toddlers, and preschoolers understand and tap into this natural energy with engaging, kid-tested, easy-to-implement projects that value process over product. The creative experiments shared in this book foster curiosity, promote creative and critical thinking, and encourage tinkering--mindsets that are important to children growing up in a world that values independent thinking.In addition to offering a host of activities that parents and teachers can put to use right away, this book also includes a buffet of recipes (magic potions, different kinds of play dough, silly putty, and homemade butter) and a detailed list of materials to include in the art pantry.

    James Paul Gee begins his new book with 'I want to talk about vide games- yes, even violent video games - and say some positive things about them'. With this simple but explosive beginning, one of America's most well-respected professors of education looks seriously at the good that can come from playing video games. Gee is interested in the cognitive development that can occur when someone is trying to escape a maze, find a hidden treasure and, even, blasting away an enemy with a high-powered rifle. Talking about his own video-gaming experience learning and using games as diverse as Lara Croft and Arcanum, Gee looks at major specific cognitive activities: How individuals develop a sense of identity; How one grasps meaning; How one evaluates and follows a command; How one picks a role model; How one perceives the world.

    To truly thrive, students need to develop attributes that aren't typically measured on standardized tests. In this lively, engaging book by veteran school leader Thomas R. Hoerr, educators will learn how to foster the "Formative Five" success skills that today's students need, includingEmpathy: learning to see the world through others' perspectives.Self-control: cultivating the abilities to focus and delay self-gratification.Integrity: recognizing right from wrong and practicing ethical behavior.Embracing diversity: recognizing and appreciating human differences.Grit: persevering in the face of challenge.When educators engage students in understanding and developing these five skills, they change mindsets and raise expectations for student learning. As an added benefit, they see significant improvements in school and classroom culture. With specific suggestions and strategies, The Formative Five will help teachers, principals, and anyone else who has a stake in education prepare their students--and themselves--for a future in which the only constant will be change.

    This highly practical and accessible resource gives special and general education teachers the tools to implement explicit instruction in any grade level or content area. The authors are leading experts who provide clear guidelines for identifying key concepts, skills, and routines to teach; designing and delivering effective lessons; and giving students opportunities to practice and master new material. Sample lesson plans, lively examples, and reproducible checklists and teacher worksheets enhance the utility of the volume. Purchasers can also download and print the reproducible materials for repeated use. Video clips demonstrating the approach in real classrooms are available at the authors' website: www.explicitinstruction.org. See also related DVDs from Anita Archer: Golden Principles of Explicit Instruction; Active Participation: Getting Them All Engaged, Elementary Level; and Active Participation: Getting Them All Engaged, Secondary Level

    They also argue that it should be taught in the simplest way possible. Drawing on twenty years of experience, the authors present the Question Formulation Technique, a concise and powerful protocol that enables learners to produce their own questions, improve their questions, and strategize how to use them.Make Just One Change features the voices and experiences of teachers in classrooms across the country to illustrate the use of the Question Formulation Technique across grade levels and subject areas and with different kinds of learners.

    They get expelled from preschool nearly five times more often than girls; in elementary school, they’re diagnosed with learning disorders four times as often. By eighth grade huge numbers are reading below basic level. And by high school, they’re heavily outnumbered in AP classes and, save for the realm of athletics, show indifference to most extra­curricular activities. Perhaps most alarmingly, boys now account for less than 43 percent of those enrolled in college, and the gap widens every semester!The imbalance in higher education isn’t just a “boy problem,” though. Boys’ decreasing college attendance is bad news for girls, too, because ad­missions officers seeking balanced student bodies pass over girls in favor of boys. The growing gender imbalance in education portends massive shifts for the next generation: how much they make and whom they marry. Interviewing hundreds of parents, kids, teachers, and experts, award-winning journalist Peg Tyre drills below the eye-catching statistics to examine how the educational system is failing our sons. She explores the convergence of culprits, from the emphasis on high-stress academics in preschool and kindergarten, when most boys just can’t tolerate sitting still, to the outright banning of recess, from the demands of No Child Left Behind, with its rigid emphasis on test-taking, to the boy-unfriendly modern curriculum with its focus on writing about “feelings” and its purging of “high-action” reading material, from the rise of video gaming and schools’ unease with technology to the lack of male teachers as role models.But this passionate, clearheaded book isn’t an exercise in finger-pointing. Tyre, the mother of two sons, offers notes from the front lines—the testimony of teachers and other school officials who are trying new techniques to motivate boys to learn again, one classroom at a time. The Trouble with Boys gives parents, educators, and anyone concerned about the state of education a manifesto for change—one we must undertake right away lest school be-come, for millions of boys, unalterably a “girl thing.”From the Hardcover edition.

    Born and raised in China and now a distinguished professor at Michigan State University, Zhao bases many of his observations on firsthand experience as a student in China and as a parent of children attending school in the United States. His unique perspective leads him to conclude that American education is at a crossroads and we need to change course to maintain leadership in a rapidly changing world. To make his case, Zhao explains* What's right with American education; * Why much of the criticism of schools in the United States has been misleading and misinformed;* Why China and other nations in Asia are actually reforming their systems to be more like their American counterparts;* How globalization and the death of distance are affecting jobs and everyday life; and* How the virtual world is transforming the economic and social landscape in ways far more profound than many people realize.Educators, policymakers, parents, and others interested in preparing students to be productive global citizens will gain a clear understanding of what kinds of knowledge and skills constitute digital competence and global competence, and what schools can--and must--do to meet the challenges and opportunities brought about by globalization and technology.

    Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about enabling communication across racial and ethnic divides. These topics have only become more urgent as the national conversation about race is increasingly acrimonious. This fully revised edition is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the dynamics of race in America.