“Regardless of the amount of effort, time, and resources education leaders put into improving the academic achievement of students of color,” the authors write, “if unconscious racial bias is overlooked, improvement efforts may never achieve their highest potential.” In order to address this bias, the authors argue, educators must first be aware of the racialized context in which we live. Through personal anecdotes and real-life scenarios, Unconscious Bias in Schools provides education leaders with an essential roadmap for addressing these issues directly. The authors draw on the literature on change management, leadership, critical race theory, and racial identity development, as well as the growing research on unconscious bias in a variety of fields, to provide guidance for creating the conditions necessary to do this work—awareness, trust, and a “learner’s stance.” Benson and Fiarman also outline specific steps toward normalizing conversations about race; reducing the influence of bias on decision-making; building empathic relationships; and developing a system of accountability. All too often, conversations about race become mired in questions of attitude or intention–“But I’m not a racist!” This book shows how information about unconscious bias can help shift conversations among educators to a more productive, collegial approach that has the potential to disrupt the patterns of perception that perpetuate racism and institutional injustice.Tracey A. Benson is an assistant professor of educational leadership at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Sarah E. Fiarman is the director of leadership development for EL Education, and a former public school teacher, principal, and lecturer at Harvard Graduate School of Education.

    What would it take to change the lives of poor children—not one by one, through heroic interventions and occasional miracles, but in big numbers, and in a way that could be replicated nationwide? The question led him to create the Harlem Children’s Zone, a ninety-seven-block laboratory in central Harlem where he is testing new and sometimes controversial ideas about poverty in America. His conclusion: if you want poor kids to be able to compete with their middle-class peers, you need to change everything in their lives—their schools, their neighborhoods, even the child-rearing practices of their parents.Whatever It Takes is a tour de force of reporting, an inspired portrait not only of Geoffrey Canada but of the parents and children in Harlem who are struggling to better their lives, often against great odds. Carefully researched and deeply affecting, this is a dispatch from inside the most daring and potentially transformative social experiment of our time.

    While all learning requires effort, better learning does not require more effort, but rather effectively aligning how the brain naturally learns with the demands of your studies. This book shows you what is involved in learning new material, how the human brain processes new information, and what it takes for that information to stick with you even after the test.Taking a small amount of time to read and act upon the material in this book will prove to be one of the best decisions you can make as a learner. What you discover will change the way you learn in college and be helpful in your personal and professional life. You live in a world where you will have to be a lifelong learner, constantly updating your skills and changing jobs to compete in the global marketplace. Most college students today will have as many as 10-14 different jobs by age 38. Learning how to learn in harmony with your brain is crucial to your long-term success.This succinct book explains straightforward strategies for changing how you prepare to learn, engage with your course material, and set about improving recall of newly learned material whenever you need it. This is not another book about study skills and time management strategies, but instead an easy to read description of the research about how the human brain learns in a way that you can put into practice right away. Did you know neuroscientists have shown that memories are made while you sleep, and by studying right before sleeping you can make stronger memories for your information? In this book the authors explain the role that sleep, exercise and your senses play in learning; how memory works and what makes the brain pay attention; the importance of your mindset towards learning and pattern recognition; as well as new breakthroughs in brain science that can enhance your ability to learn new information and make later recall (for tests or everyday life) easier.This book will put you on the path to reaching your full learning potential.

    Although verbal learning offers a powerful tool for humans, this book explores ways of going beyond the purely verbal. An alternative to purely verbal presentations is to use multimedia presentations in which people learn from both words and pictures--a situation the author calls multimedia learning. Multimedia encyclopedias have become the latest addition to students' reference tools, and the world wide web is full of messages that combine words and pictures. This book summarizes ten years of research aimed at realizing the promise of multimedia learning.

    Topics range from using racial incidents as teachable moments and responding to the "n-word" to valuing students' home worlds, dealing daily with achievement gaps, and helping parents fight ethnic and racial misconceptions about their children. Questions following each essay prompt readers to examine and discuss everyday issues of race and opportunity in their own classrooms and schools.For educators and parents determined to move beyond frustrations about race, Everyday Antiracism is an essential tool.

    How College Works reveals the decisive role that personal relationships play in determining a student's success, and puts forward a set of small, inexpensive interventions that yield substantial improvements in educational outcomes.At a liberal arts college in New York, the authors followed nearly one hundred students over eight years. The curricular and technological innovations beloved by administrators mattered much less than did professors and peers, especially early on. At every turning point in undergraduate lives, it was the people, not the programs, that proved critical. Great teachers were more important than the topics studied, and just two or three good friendships made a significant difference academically as well as socially.For most students, college works best when it provides the daily motivation to learn, not just access to information. Improving higher education means focusing on the quality of relationships with mentors and classmates, for when students form the right bonds, they make the most of their education.

    White people generally fail to understand that they have a racial identity -- whether they are willing to recognize it or not -- and that having it doesn't have to be a negative. Designed specifically for Whites, but useful for others, this easy-to-read paperback includes examples and activities that enhance the reader's understanding of the part race plays in the lives of each of us. This book is being used in various programs and classes at universities, school districts and businesses across the country, as well as by individuals across the world.Who needs a color-blind society? --I'm not colored --But what color am I? --Recognizing racism --A model of white racial identity development --Contact : "I'm an innocent" --Disintegration : "How can I be white?" --Reintegration : "We have the best because we are the best!" --Pseudo-independent : "Let's help them become more like whites" --Immersion/emersion : "I'm white!" --Autonomy : "I see color and like it!"

    Jackson, author of the best-selling Never Work Harder Than Your Students and Other Principles of Great Teaching.In this book for school leaders, Jackson presents a new model for understanding teaching as a combination of skill and will and explains the best ways to support individual teachers' ongoing professional development. Here, you'll learn how to meet your teachers where they are and help every one of them--from the raw novice to the savvy veteran, from the initiative-weary to the change-challenged to the already outstanding--develop the mindset and habits of master teachers. Real-life examples, practical tools, and strategies for managing time and energy demands will help you build your leadership capacity as you raise the level of instructional excellence throughout your school.To move your school forward, you must move the people in it. If you want a master teacher every classroom, you must commit to helping every teacher be a master teacher. That work begins here.

    Five actual journal articles are reproduced in the appendix as examples of the different research designs.

    With the introduction of the rigorous Common Core State Standards, diverse classrooms need a proven framework for optimizing student engagement and facilitating deeper learningCulturally responsive pedagogy has shown great promise in meeting this need, but many educators still struggle with its implementation. In this book, Zaretta Hammond draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to offer an innovative approach for designing and implementing brain-compatible culturally responsive instruction.The book includes:*Information on how one’s culture programs the brain to process data and affects learning relationships*Ten “key moves” to build students’ learner operating systems and prepare them to become independent learners*Prompts for action and valuable self-reflectionWith a firm understanding of these techniques and principles, teachers and instructional leaders will confidently reap the benefits of culturally responsive instruction.

    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.

    Over the last few decades, Americans have turned college admissions into a terrifying and occasionally devastating process, preceded by test prep, tutors, all sorts of stratagems, all kinds of rankings, and a conviction among too many young people that their futures will be determined and their worth established by which schools say yes and which say no. In Where You Go is Not Who You'll Be, Frank Bruni explains why this mindset is wrong, giving students and their parents a new perspective on this brutal, deeply flawed competition and a path out of the anxiety that it provokes. Bruni, a bestselling author and a columnist for the New York Times, shows that the Ivy League has no monopoly on corner offices, governors' mansions, or the most prestigious academic and scientific grants. Through statistics, surveys, and the stories of hugely successful people, he demonstrates that many kinds of colleges serve as ideal springboards. And he illuminates how to make the most of them. What matters in the end are students' efforts in and out of the classroom, not the name on their diploma. Where you go isn't who you'll be. Americans need to hear that--and this indispensable manifesto says it with eloquence and respect for the real promise of higher education.

    Locked-down drug treatment centers. House arrest. Mandated psychiatric treatment. Data-driven surveillance. Extended probation. These are some of the key alternatives held up as cost-effective substitutes for jails and prisons. But many of these so-called reforms actually widen the net, weaving in new strands of punishment and control, and bringing new populations, who would not otherwise have been subject to imprisonment, under physical control by the state.As mainstream public opinion has begun to turn against mass incarceration, political figures on both sides of the spectrum are pushing for reform. But—though they’re promoted as steps to confront high rates of imprisonment—many of these measures are transforming our homes and communities into prisons instead.In Prison by Any Other Name, activist journalists Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law reveal the way the kinder, gentler narrative of reform can obscure agendas of social control and challenge us to question the ways we replicate the status quo when pursuing change. A foreword by Michelle Alexander situates the book in the context of criminal justice reform conversations. Finally, the book offers a bolder vision for truly alternative justice practices.

    Issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ability often complicate this question for youth, affecting their schoolwork and their relationships with teachers, administrators, and peers.Adolescents at School gives educators, administrators, community leaders, counselors, social workers, health-care professionals, and parents a glimpse into the complex "identities" adolescents negotiate as they manage the challenges of school. The book contains the perspectives of teachers, researchers, and administrators and adolescents themselves who explore what it means to be a middle or high school student in the United States today. Practical and jargon-free, the book suggests ways to foster the success of every student in our schools and classrooms.

    In Not Light, But Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classroom, Kay realizes we often never graduate to the harder conversations so in this text he offers a method for getting them right, providing candid guidance on:How to  recognize  the difference between meaningful and inconsequential race conversations.How to  build  conversational “safe spaces,” not merely declare them.How to  infuse  race conversations with urgency and purpose.How to  thrive  in the face of unexpected challenges.How administrators might  equip  teachers to thoughtfully engage in these conversations. With the right blend of reflection and humility, Kay asserts, teachers can make school one of the best venues for young people to discuss race.