Delving deep into the creative process, Bret Lott reveals truths we scarcely realized we needed to know but without which we as writers will soon lose our way. In ten intimate essays based on his own experiences and on the seasoned wisdom of writers including Eudora Welty, E. B. White, Henry David Thoreau, Henry James, and John Gardner, Lott explores such topics as• why write? why keep writing?• the importance of simple words• the finer points of character detail• narrative and the passage of time• the pitfalls of technique• making a plan–and letting it go• risking failure–and reaping the benefits• Accepting rejectionWriters travel alone, but Bret Lott’s book makes the journey less lonely and infinitely more rewarding. Before We Get Started will help you make your work as good as it can be: “Pay attention recklessly. Strain to see through the window of your own artistic consciousness in the exhilarating knowledge that there is no path to the waterfall, and there are a million paths to the waterfall, and there is, too, only one path: yours.”

    Detentions. Suspensions. Expulsions. These are the established tools of school discipline for kids who don't abide by school rules, have a hard time getting along with other kids, don't seem to respect authority, don't seem interested in learning, and are disrupting the learning of their classmates. But there's a big problem with these strategies: They are ineffective for most of the students to whom they are applied.It's time for a change in course.Here, Dr. Ross W. Greene presents an enlightened, clear-cut, and practical alternative. Relying on research from the neurosciences, Dr. Greene offers a new conceptual framework for understanding the difficulties of kids with behavioral challenges and explains why traditional discipline isn't effective at addressing these difficulties. Emphasizing the revolutionarily simple and positive notion that kids do well if they can, he persuasively argues that kids with behavioral challenges are not attention-seeking, manipulative, limit-testing, coercive, or unmotivated, but that they lack the skills to behave adaptively. And when adults recognize the true factors underlying difficult behavior and teach kids the skills in increments they can handle, the results are astounding: The kids overcome their obstacles; the frustration of teachers, parents, and classmates diminishes; and the well-being and learning of all students are enhanced.In Lost at School, Dr. Greene describes how his road-tested, evidence-based approach — called Collaborative Problem Solving — can help challenging kids at school.His lively, compelling narrative includes:• tools to identify the triggers and lagging skills underlying challenging behavior.• explicit guidance on how to radically improve interactions with challenging kids — along with many examples showing how it's done.• dialogues, Q & A's, and the story, which runs through the book, of one child and his teachers, parents, and school.• practical guidance for successful planning and collaboration among teachers, parents, administrations, and kids.Backed by years of experience and research, and written with a powerful sense of hope and achievable change, Lost at School gives teachers and parents the realistic strategies and information to impact the classroom experience of every challenging kid.

    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.

    She wants children to learn how to care for themselves, their fellow students, their environment, and their work. Her book is loaded with practical wisdom. Using Charney's positive approach to classroom management will make the whole school day go better."- Nel Noddings, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University, and author of CaringThis definitive work about classroom management will show teachers how to turn their vision of respectful, friendly, academically rigorous classrooms into reality.The new edition includes:More information on teaching middle-school studentsAdditional strategies for helping children with challenging behaviorUpdated stories and examples from real classrooms."Teaching Children to Care offers educators a practical guide to one of the most effective social and emotional learning programs I know of. The Responsive Classroom approach creates an ideal environment for learning—a pioneering program every teacher should know about."- Daniel Goleman, Author of Emotional Intelligence"I spent one whole summer reading Teaching Children to Care. It was like a rebirth for me. This book helped direct my professional development. After reading it, I had a path to follow. I now look forward to rereading this book each August to refresh and reinforce my ability to effectively manage a social curriculum in my classroom."- Gail Zimmerman, second-grade teacher, Jackson Mann Elementary School, Boston, MA

    The Fundamental Five: The Formula for Quality Instruction, shares with teachers and school leaders the five practices that every teacher can, and should, use to dramatically improve instuctional rigor and relevance, and student performance.

    The book is rooted in Jennifer's belief that teachers know what they need when it comes to professional development in literacy, and the best literacy leaders are those who listen to and respect the educators in their midst. Grounded in research but thoroughly practical, Jennifer shares advice on:organizing a literacy room with resources for classroom teachers, including book lists, bins of children's books tied to craft and strategy lessons, bulletin board ideas, and files with instructional materials;developing intervention classrooms for struggling readers and writers built on collaboration between teachers and literacy specialists;setting up assessment notebooks for teachers, and preparing new and veteran teachers for student assessments across grades;creating model programs for dealing with schoolwide problems like reading fluency, and then moving from the pilot to implementation in many classrooms;coaching new and veteran teachers in the latest literacy practices, without taking on the role of expert;analyzing and using books, videos and journals in professional development programs;infusing routine staff meetings with discussions of new literacy curricula;leading teacher study groups using a variety of formats;finding and budgeting money for professional development programs in literacy;protecting time and scheduling priorities, to ensure the literacy specialist position doesn't become a “catch-all” for the random needs of teachers or administrators.At a time when all administrators are urged to be literacy leaders, this insider's view helps to define what leadership looks like and shows how to create an environment that fosters professional development. Jennifer Allen shares the balance leaders struggle with, as they strive to support and honor the fine practices of teachers, even as they nudge colleagues to improve their literacy instruction. Ultimately, Becoming a Literacy Leader is a hopeful book, an optimistic and realistic portrait of life in schools among teachers committed to doing their jobs well.

    Amazing new tools, materials and skills turn us all into makers. Using technology to make, repair or customize the things we need brings engineering, design and computer science to the masses. Fortunately for educators, this maker movement overlaps with the natural inclinations of children and the power of learning by doing. The active learner is at the center of the learning process, amplifying the best traditions of progressive education. This book helps educators bring the exciting opportunities of the maker movement to every classroom. Children are natural tinkerersTheir seminal learning experiences come through direct experience with materials. Digital fabrication, such as 3D printing and physical computing, including Arduino, MaKey MaKey and Raspberry Pi, expands a child’s toy and toolboxes with new ways to make things and new things to make. For the first time ever, childhood inventions may be printed, programmed or imbued with interactivity. Recycled materials can be brought back to life. While school traditionally separates art and science, theory and practice, such divisions are artificial. The real world just doesn’t work that way! Architects are artists. Craftsmen deal in aesthetics, tradition and mathematical precision. Video game developers rely on computer science. Engineering and industrial design are inseparable. The finest scientists are often accomplished musicians. The maker community brings children, hobbyists and professionals together in a glorious celebration of personal expression with a modern flare. When 3-D printing, precision cutting, microcomputer control, robotics and computer programming become integral to the art studio, auto shop or physics lab, every student needs access to tools, knowledge and problem solving skills. The maker movement not only blurs the artificial boundaries between subject areas, it erases distinctions between art and science while most importantly obliterating the crippling practice of tracking students in academic pursuits or vocational training. There are now multiple pathways to learning what we have always taught and things to do that were unimaginable just a few years ago. Making for every classroom budgetEven if you don’t have access to expensive (but increasingly affordable) hardware, every classroom can become a makerspace where kids and teachers learn together through direct experience with an assortment of high and low-tech materials. The potential range, breadth, power, complexity and beauty of projects has never been greater thanks to the amazing new tools, materials, ingenuity and playfulness you will encounter in this book. In this practical guide, Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager provide K-12 educators with the how, why, and cool stuff that supports classroom making.

    Telling True Stories presents their best advice—covering everything from finding a good topic, to structuring narrative stories, to writing and selling your first book. More than fifty well-known writers offer their most powerful tips, including: • Tom Wolfe on the emotional core of the story • Gay Talese on writing about private lives • Malcolm Gladwell on the limits of profiles • Nora Ephron on narrative writing and screenwriters • Alma Guillermoprieto on telling the story and telling the truth • Dozens of Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists from the Atlantic Monthly, New Yorker, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and more . . .The essays contain important counsel for new and career journalists, as well as for freelance writers, radio producers, and memoirists. Packed with refreshingly candid and insightful recommendations, Telling True Stories will show anyone fascinated by the art of writing nonfiction how to bring people, scenes, and ideas to life on the page.

    Maybe you've already been published, but your latest effort is stuck in mid-list limbo. Whatever the case may be, author and literary agent Donald Maass can show you how to take your prose to the next level and write a breakout novel - one that rises out of obscurity and hits the best-seller lists.Maass details the elements that all breakout novels share - regardless of genre - then shows you writing techniques that can make your own books stand out and succeed in a crowded marketplace.You'll learn to:- establish a powerful and sweeping sense of time and place - weave subplots into the main action for a complex, engrossing story - create larger-than-life characters that step right off the page - explore universal themes that will interest a broad audience of readers - sustain a high degree of narrative tension from start to finish - develop an inspired premise that sets your novel apart from the competitionThen, using examples from the recent works of several best-selling authors - including novelist Anne Perry - Maass illustrates methods for upping the ante in every aspect of your novel writing. You'll capture the eye of an agent, generate publisher interest and lay the foundation for a promising career.

    She shows how you, too, can get terrific ideas for stories, invent great beginnings and endings, write sparkling dialogue, develop memorable characters—and much, much more. She advises you about what to do when you feel stuck—and how to use helpful criticism. Best of all, she offers writing exercises that will set your imagination on fire.With humor, honesty, and wisdom, Gail Carson Levine shows you that you, too, can make magic with your writing.

    Fresh-mouthed and free-spirited, the irrepressible Madame Esmé—as she prefers to be called—does the cha-cha during multiplication tables, roller-skates down the hallways, and puts on rousing performances with at-risk students in the library. Her diary opens a window into a real-life classroom from a teacher’s perspective. While battling bureaucrats, gang members, abusive parents, and her own insecurities, this gifted young woman reveals what it takes to be an exceptional teacher.  Heroine to thousands of parents and educators, Esmé now shares more of her ingenious and yet down-to-earth approaches to the classroom in a supplementary guide to help new teachers hit the ground running. As relevant and iconoclastic as when it was first published, Educating Esmé is a classic, as is Madame Esmé herself.

    Students are encouraged to just cover the curriculum and the power of purpose and meaningful contribution are absent. Furthermore this old way of doing things doesn't credit students' natural curiosity to direct their own learning. In Who Owns the Learning?, author Alan November uses his Digital Learning Farm education model to show teachers how technology allows students to take ownership of their learning, create their own learning tools, and participate in work that has meaning to them and others. In this model, every student is a teacher and a global publisher.In chapter one, readers will learn what a Digital Learning Farm is and how it can optimize learning. Chapters two through five each focus on a specific job for students in the digital learning farm and provide examples of students working through them. November also offers a story about how the job is being utilized in classrooms, techniques for educators to leverage the work in their classrooms, and questions for discussion in each chapter. Finally, November offers an example of students owning their learning through technology in chapter six. This book is a guide to teachers who want to move teaching and learning into the 21st century incorporating technology and opportunities for students to direct their own learning into instruction.

    A bestseller through six editions, Writing Fiction by novelists Janet Burroway and Elizabeth Stuckey-French explores the elements of fiction, providing practical writing techniques and concrete examples. Written in a tone that is personal and non-prescriptive, the text encourages students to develop proficiency through each step of the writing process, offering an abundance of exercises designed to spur writing and creativity. The text also integrates diverse, contemporary short stories in every chapter in the belief that the reading of inspiring fiction goes hand-in-hand with the writing of fresh and exciting stories.

    Guilt mounts. Students want to know when their papers will come back. Grading begins consuming all your energy, your weekends, your life.Grading papers is a fact of life, especially in English classrooms, and the paper load is a leading cause of teacher burnout. Fortunately, Carl Jago's here to help, and in Papers, Papers, Papers, she offers you advice honed from thirty-one years in the English classroom and forty-five thousand papers worth of grading. You'll not only get through stacks of papers, but you'll do so accurately, completely, and with the time you need to give each and every student in your classes the attention they deserve.Ever practical and always professional, Jago suggests techniques that can be implemented right away to turn your mountain of essays into a foothill. She covers every aspect of attentive grading, including:responding to student drafts commenting rather than correcting using scoring guides and rubrics for common expectations fostering improvement from one paper to the next effective peer- and self-editing suggestions for alternatives to essays. With all this and her Ten Tips for Handling the Paper Load, Carol Jago gives you everything you need to keep on top of student papers.

    Expertly designed in a vibrant, full-color format, this streamlined text not only serves as a valuable resource by providing the most current reference lists and examples from which to select texts from all genres, but it also emphasizes the critical skills needed to search for and select literature--researching, evaluating, and implementing quality books in the pre-K-to-8 classroom--to give readers the tools they need to evaluate books, create curriculum, and share the love of literature. It includes unique features that spur critical thinking and direct application in the classroom and curriculum.