In this groundbreaking book, education experts Steve Gruenert and Todd Whitaker offer tools, strategies, and advice for defining, assessing, and ultimately transforming your school's culture into one that is positive, forward-looking, and actively working to enrich students’ lives. Drawing from decades of research on organizational cultures and school leadership, the authors provide everything you need to optimize both the culture and climate of your school, including:"Culture-busting" strategies to help teachers adopt positive attitudes, outlooks, and behaviors;A framework for pinpointing the type of culture you have, the type that you want, and the actions you need to take to bridge the two;Tips for hiring, training, and retaining teachers who will actively work to improve your school's culture; andInstructions on how to create and implement a successful School Culture Rewiring Team.Though often invisible to the naked eye, a school's culture influences everything that takes place under its roof. Whether your school is urban or rural, prosperous or struggling, School Culture Rewired is the ultimate guide to making sure that the culture in your school is guided first and foremost by what's best for your students

    The goal is clear. The pathway is not. -Lucy Calkins, Mary Ehrenworth, and Christopher Lehman The Common Core is written, but the plan for implementing the Common Core is not.Lucy Calkins and her colleagues at the Reading and Writing Project have helped thousands of educators design their own pathways to the Common Core. Now, with Pathways to the Common Core, they are ready to help you find your way.Designed for teachers, school leaders, and professional learning communities looking to navigate the gap between their current literacy practices and the ideals of the Common Core, Pathways to the Common Core will help you: * understand what the standards say, suggest, and what they don't say; * recognize the guiding principles that underpin the reading and writing standards; * identify how the Common Core's infrastructure supports a spiraling K-12 literacy curriculum; and * scrutinize the context in which the CCSS were written and are being unrolled.In addition to offering an analytical study of the standards, this guide will also help you and your colleagues implement the standards in ways that lift the level of teaching and learning throughout your school. Specifically, it will help you: * become a more critical consumer of the standards-based mandates that are flooding your desk; * craft instruction that supports students in reading more complex texts, developing higher level comprehension skills, and writing at the ambitious levels of the CCSS; * develop performance assessments and other tools to propel Common Core reforms; and * create systems of continuous improvement that are transparent, collegial, and accountable.Above all, this book will help you interpret the Common Core as a rallying cry that ignites deep, wide and lasting reforms and, most importantly, accelerates student achievement.For more information, visit UnitsofStudy.com.

    This completely updated 3rd edition offers practical solutions that emphasize relationship building, curriculum relevance, and academic success. The emphasis is on preventing problems by helping students to understand each other, work well together, and develop responsibility for their own actions, but the authors also include intervention strategies for handling common and severe problems in dignified ways.Filled with real-life examples and authentic teacher-student dialogues, Discipline with Dignity is a comprehensive and flexible system of prevention and intervention tools that shows how educators at all levels can --Be fair without necessarily treating every student the same way.--Customize the classroom to reflect today's highly diverse and inclusive student population.--Seek students' help in creating values-based rules and appropriate consequences. --Use humor appropriately and effectively to respond to abusive language.--Fine-tune strategies to resolve issues with chronically misbehaving students and "ringleaders" or bullies.This book is not simply a compendium of strategies for dealing with bad behavior. It is a guide to helping students see themselves in a different way, to changing the way they interact with the world. The strategies innate to this approach help students make informed choices to behave well. When they do, they become more attuned to learning and to understanding how to use what they learn to improve their lives and the lives of others--with dignity.

    The problem wasn't one of the usual scapegoats: lazy teachers, shoddy facilities, lack of accountability. It was something no one was talking about: the elementary school curriculum's intense focus on decontextualized reading comprehension skills at the expense of actual knowledge. In the tradition of Dale Russakoff's The Prize and Dana Goldstein's The Teacher Wars, Wexler brings together history, research, and compelling characters to pull back the curtain on this fundamental flaw in our education system--one that fellow reformers, journalists, and policymakers have long overlooked, and of which the general public, including many parents, remains unaware.But The Knowledge Gap isn't just a story of what schools have gotten so wrong--it also follows innovative educators who are in the process of shedding their deeply ingrained habits, and describes the rewards that have come along: students who are not only excited to learn but are also acquiring the knowledge and vocabulary that will enable them to succeed. If we truly want to fix our education system and unlock the potential of our neediest children, we have no choice but to pay attention.

    His well is deep; he draws from it the best tools from practitioners, the wisdom of experience, and research-based insights. And he never loses sight of the bigger picture: the point of all this is to have more impact in this life we're lucky enough to live." --MICHAEL BUNGAY STANIER, Author of The Coaching Habit "Coaching done well may be the most effective intervention designed for human performance. Jim Knight's work has helped me understand the details of how effective coaching can and should be done." --DR. ATUL GAWANDE, surgeon, public health researcher, and author of The Checklist Manifesto Identify . . . Learn . . . Improve When it comes to improving practice, few professional texts can rival the impact felt by Jim Knight's Instructional Coaching. For hundreds of thousands of educators, Jim bridged the long-standing divide between staff room and classroom offering up a much a more collaborative, respectful, and efficient PD model for achieving instructional excellence. Now, one decade of research and hundreds of in-services later, Jim takes that work a significant step further with The Impact Cycle an all-new instructional coaching cycle to help teachers and, in turn, their students improve in clear, measurable ways. Quintessential Jim, The Impact Cycle comes loaded with every possible tool to help you reach your coaching goals, starting with a comprehensive video program, robust checklists, and a model Instructional Playbook. Quickly, you'll learn how to Interact and dialogue with teachers as partners Guide teachers to identify emotionally compelling, measurable, and student-focused goals Set coaching goals, plan strategies, and monitor progress for optimal impact Use documentary-style video and text-based case studies as models to promote maximum teacher clarity and proactive problem solving Streamline teacher enrollment, data collection, and deep listening Jim writes, "When we grow, improve, and learn, when we strive to become a better version of ourselves, we tap into something deep in ourselves that craves that kind of growth." Read The Impact Cycle and soon you'll discover how you can continually refine your practice to help teachers and students realize their fullest potential. View Jim Knight's Impact Cycle video trailer:

    This anniversary paperback edition features a new introduction by Delpit as well as new framing essays by Herbert Kohl and Charles Payne.In a radical analysis of contemporary classrooms, MacArthur Award–winning author Lisa Delpit develops ideas about ways teachers can be better “cultural transmitters” in the classroom, where prejudice, stereotypes, and cultural assumptions breed ineffective education. Delpit suggests that many academic problems attributed to children of color are actually the result of miscommunication, as primarily white teachers and “other people’s children” struggle with the imbalance of power and the dynamics plaguing our system.A new classic among educators, Other People’s Children is a must-read for teachers, administrators, and parents striving to improve the quality of America’s education system.

    Teachers create intellectual environments that produce not only technically competent students, but also caring, secure, actively literate human beings.Choice Words shows how teachers accomplish this using their most powerful teaching tool: language. Throughout, Peter Johnston provides examples of apparently ordinary words, phrases, and uses of language that are pivotal in the orchestration of the classroom. Grounded in a study by accomplished literacy teachers, the book demonstrates how the things we say (and don't say) have surprising consequences for what children learn and for who they become as literate people. Through language, children learn how to become strategic thinkers, not merely learning the literacy strategies. In addition, Johnston examines the complex learning that teachers produce in classrooms that is hard to name and thus is not recognized by tests, by policy-makers, by the general public, and often by teachers themselves, yet is vitally important.This book will be enlightening for any teacher who wishes to be more conscious of the many ways their language helps children acquire literacy skills and view the world, their peers, and themselves in new ways.

    Then, open these pages.Welcome to Debbie Miller's real classroom where real students are learning to love to read, to write, and are together creating a collaborative and caring environment. In this book, Debbie focuses on how best to teach children strategies for comprehending text. She leads the reader through the course of a year showing how her students learn to become thoughtful, independent, and strategic readers. Through explicit instruction, modeling, classroom discussion, and, most important, by gradually releasing responsibility to her students, Debbie provides a model for creating a climate and culture of thinking and learning.Here you will learn:techniques for modeling thinking;specific examples of modeled strategy lessons for inferring, asking questions, making connections, determining importance in text, creating mental images, and synthesizing information;how to help children make their thinking visible through oral, written, artistic, and dramatic responses to literature;how to successfully develop book clubs as a way for children to share their thinking.Reading with Meaning shows you how to bring your imagined classroom to life. You will emerge with new tools for teaching comprehension strategies and a firm appreciation that a rigorous classroom can also be nurturing and joyful.

    She argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color. Instead of trying to repair a flawed system, educational reformers offer survival tactics in the forms of test-taking skills, acronyms, grit labs, and character education, which Love calls the educational survival complex.To dismantle the educational survival complex and to achieve educational freedom--not merely reform--teachers, parents, and community leaders must approach education with the imagination, determination, boldness, and urgency of an abolitionist. Following in the tradition of activists like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer, We Want to Do More Than Survive introduces an alternative to traditional modes of educational reform and expands our ideas of civic engagement and intersectional justice.

    Covering the entire English curriculum, from basic reading and writing to digital literacy, media literacy, and integrated instruction, it proved to be a revolutionary guide for preservice and inservice teachers alike. And with it author Jim Burke became one of the most trusted names in secondary English.Now, in this new edition, "ETC"2, Jim incorporates his current thinking. He also shows how teachers can address standards and assessment issues while maintaining their commitment to meaningful, engaging curriculum. With all this, plus updated revisions and 40 percent completely new material, his "ETC2" is a must-have addition to every English teacher's bookshelf.Written for the way most teachers read-on the run, in search of a particular solution-the second edition retains the original's highly structured format with a new more open design for ease of use. Chapters are clearly subdivided; lessons are presented step-by-step; and assessment is integrated throughout. Outstanding new features include: increased emphasis on theoretical foundations completely revised major curriculum areas, especially reading and writing changes that reflect the latest use of technology in the classroom updated recommendations for the latest resources improved alignment with the latest standards and assessments sample instructional sequences to show how a complete unit looks new instructional design and planning tools expanded strategies for helping English Language Learners. Discover-or rediscover-a valued colleague who challenges you to reexamine your own classroom practice. Read "ETC2," reference it, share it, but most of all USE it-as your primary source of information about classroom management, curriculum content, professional development, and more.

    In Hack Learning Series Book 22, you learn to: Reduce repeated negative behaviors Build student self-regulation and empathy Enhance communication and collaboration Identify the true cause of negative behaviors Use restorative circles to reflect on behaviors and discuss impactful change "Maynard and Weinstein provide practical tips and strategies in the context of real-world examples, guided by the imperatives of changing the behavior and preserving the relationship. An important read for teachers and administrators." -Danny Steele, award-winning principal and co-author of Essential Truths for Principals and Essential Truths for Teachers Before you suspend another student ... read Hacking School Discipline, and build a school environment that promotes responsible learners, who never need to be punished. Then watch learning soar, teachers smile, and your entire community rejoice.

    This book will empower you to develop the resilient, flexible, positive mindset you need to:-Consciously challenge the negative thoughts that discourage you-Raise your tolerance for frustration so you become less 'disturbable'-Live beyond your feelings to stay motivated when you don't see results-Change your perception of setbacks so they feel less stressful-Let go of unrealistic expectations, standards, and comparisons-Realize a sense of accomplishment in a job that's truly never doneAwakened provides simple steps to help you feel peaceful and energized, no matter what's happening around you. Drawing upon principles of stress management, cognitive behavioral therapy, spiritual truths, and personal experiences, Awakened helps you develop thought habits that produce an unshakeable sense of contentment, motivation, and purpose. Learn how to renew your mind and take a fresh approach to the challenges of teaching!

    Seriously. If that sounds blasphemous in a book for concerned parents and educators (and anyone, really, who worries about “kids these days”), then I am so glad you’re here. If you own a kid, work with a kid, or love a kid, you will find something inspiring in these pages. Dare I say game-changing. These words were born from the hundreds of stories of kids, their families, and their support systems I was lucky to meet as I worked across Canada and the USA. Regardless of who I met or where I met them, the message was always the same: our kids are okay ONLY if those of us holding them are okay.During the developmental years, schools—and educators—are the most significant connection point to most every child on this continent. But are the educators okay? I believe that most of the great educators want to make a difference. Many tell me, however, that they are finding it more and more difficult “these days” to love what they do. I think it’s time we did a better job of looking after them. First. Plain and simple. This book is for the educators: our teachers, bus drivers, administrators, educational assistants, librarians, administrative assistants, and custodians. And anyone who leads, loves, and supports them. If that’s you, I am so grateful you are here. Read on. xoOrder the book now directly through my Shopify site: https://shop.drjodycarrington.com/pro...

    The reality of being poor brings out a survival mentality, and turns attention away from opportunities taken for granted by everyone else. If you work with people from poverty, some understanding of how different their world is from yours will be invaluable. Whether you're an educator--or a social, health, or legal services professional--this breakthrough book gives you practical, real-world support and guidance to improve your effectiveness in working with people from all socioeconomic backgrounds. Since 1995 A Framework for Understanding Poverty has guided hundreds of thousands of educators and other professionals through the pitfalls and barriers faced by all classes, especially the poor. Carefully researched and packed with charts, tables, and questionnaires, Framework not only documents the facts of poverty, it provides practical yet compassionate strategies for addressing its impact on people's lives.

    (Just think about all those New Year’s resolutions that revert to status quo by January 5th!) But real change is possible, sustainable, and even easy when it happens little by little. In Shift This! educator and speaker Joy Kirr identifies how to make gradual shifts—in your thinking, teaching, and approach to classroom design—that will have a massive impact in your classroom. You’ll learn how to… Shift learning to make it authentic and student-led. Shift the classroom environment to make it a space in which students thrive. Shift conversations and classwork to get kids thinking rather than repeating. Shift away from homework and grades to keep the focus on learning. Shift the way you spend your time at school so you have more time to enjoy life at home. You can create the kind of classroom you’ve always dreamed of. Make the first shift today!