Very few will return to the country they barely remember. Who are they, and what America do they know?Based on an extraordinary interdisciplinary study that followed 400 newly arrived children from the Caribbean, China, Central America, and Mexico for five years, this book provides a compelling account of the lives, dreams, and frustrations of these youngest immigrants. Richly told portraits of high and low achievers are packed with unexpected ironies. When they arrive, most children are full of optimism and a respect for education. But poor neighborhoods and dull--often dangerous--schools can corrode hopes. The vast majority learn English--but it is the English of video games and the neighborhood, not that of standardized tests.For some of these children, those heading off to college, America promises to be a land of dreams. These lucky ones have often benefited from caring mentors, supportive teachers, or savvy parents. For others, the first five years are marked by disappointments, frustrations, and disenchantment. How can we explain their varied academic journeys?The children of immigrants, here to stay, are the future--and how they adapt will determine the nature of America in the twenty-first century.

    Guadalupe Vald�s examines what appears to be a lack of interest in education by Mexican parents and shows, through extensive quotations and numerous anecdotes, that these families are both rich and strong in family values, and that they bring with them clear views of what constitutes success and failure. The book's conclusion questions the merit of typical family intervention programs designed to promote school success and suggests that these interventions--because they do not genuinely respect the values of diverse families--may have long-term negative consequences for children.Con Respeto will be a valuable resource in graduate courses in foundations, ethnographic research, sociology and anthropology of education, multicultural education, and child development; and will be of particular interest to professors and researchers of multicultural education, bilingual education, ethnographic research methods, and sociology and anthropology of education.

    In Building Teachers Capacity for Success, authors Pete Hall (winner of the 2004 ASCD Outstanding Young Educator Award) and Alisa Simeral offer a straightforward plan to help site-based administrators and instructional coaches collaborate to bring out the best in every teacher, build a stronger and more cohesive staff, and achieve greater academic success. Their model of Strength-Based School Improvement is an alternative to a negative, deficit-approach focused on fixing what s wrong. Instead, they show school leaders how to achieve their goals by working together to maximize what s right. Filled with clear, proven strategies and organized around two easy-to-use tools the innovative Continuum of Self-Reflection and a feedback-focused walk-through model this book offers a differentiated approach to coaching and supervision centered on identifying and nurturing teachers individual strengths and helping them reach new levels of professional success and satisfaction. Here, you ll find front-line advice from the authors, one a principal and the other an instructional coach, on just what to look for, do, and say in order to start seeing positive results right now.

    The clarity of discussion and tight organization of material simplify the study of this broad and diverse subject. Covers all aspects of the introductory course.

    All it takes are a few moments of peace and a little focus. If you're like many teachers, your day is busy, demanding, even chaotic. But just because you live in a fast-paced, always-on world, doesn't mean your life has to feel rushed and crazy. In The Zen Teacher, educator, blogger, and speaker Dan Tricarico provides practical, easy-to-use techniques to help teachers slow down and create a sense of focus, simplicity, and tranquility in the classroom - and in life. As a teacher, you have incredible power to influence, even improve, the future. By being at your best - unrushed and fully focused - you ensure that every interaction with your students is beneficial, for them and for you. If you're new to the concept of Zen, don't worry. In this introductory guide, Dan Tricarico explains what it means to develop a Zen practice - something that has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with your ability ability to thrive in the classroom. The Zen Teacher will help you: Maximize your performance while lowering your stress. Transform your classroom and experience a better quality of life. Focus on things that really matter and let go of things you can't control. Find time to take care of yourself, so you can be at your best!

    Its spring dance is considered to be one of this country's best legacies. Wonderland is the inspiring true story of a dance floor and the kids who fill it: a tale of hope, sex, love, and loss. For one year, the students, parents, and teachers of Pennsbury invited Michael Bamberger, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, into their classrooms, their homes, their parties, and their dreams. He discovered an extraordinary and disparate group of everyday teenagers whose stories were touching, odd, funny, and beautiful.In Wonderland, lives intersect in unpredictable ways and are never what they appear to be. The star quarterback hides the pain of not knowing where his father is. A student with cerebral palsy is desperate to learn to tie Eagle Scout knots, despite a useless left hand. And then there is Bob Costa, who dreams of bringing glory to the school by convincing John Mayer, whose song "Your Body Is a Wonderland" is an anthem for the students, to perform at the prom. Critically acclaimed in hardcover, Wonderland is published in paperback with a new afterword by the author.

    Synthesizing Lynn Erickson's past 15 years of field work with teachers, curriculum developers, teacher educators, and instructional leaders, this resource offers a complete guide for designing curriculum and instruction to foster the continuous growth and development of students' critical, abstract, and creative learning skills. Educators will learn how to:Bring coherence and clarity to high-quality curriculum design and instructional planning Teach the way that students' minds learn best Encourage students' creative and abstract thinking, regardless of level or subject area Gain the support of principals and district administrators

    Spradley also teaches students how to analyze the data they collect, and write an ethnography. The appendices include research questions and writing tasks.

     -Lucy Calkins, Author of Units of Study for Teaching WritingHidden Gems will transform the way we read student work. -Thomas Newkirk, Author of Holding On to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad OnesYou don't get true, fire-in-the-belly energy for writing because you fear getting a bad grade, but because you have something to say and your own way of saying it. -Katherine BomerIf you're like Katherine Bomer, you've grown weary of searching for what's wrong in student writing, and you want better ways to the respond to pieces whose beauty and intelligence doesn't shine on the first read. Now she shares how she learned instead to search-sometimes near the surface, sometimes deep beneath-to find, celebrate, and teach from writers' Hidden Gems.My hope is that as teachers we can respond to all students' writing with astonished, appreciative, awe-struck eyes, writes Katherine. Through protocols, sample assessments, and demonstrations with actual student work, she shows how to bring the brilliant facets of your writers to the surface as you:spot hidden stylistic gems in writing that is unconventional or vernacular uncover content and organizational gems even when you don't find the subject matter engaging or significant respond by naming and celebrating writers' gems instead of hunting for mistakes give lasting compliments using the inspiring language of published writers that motivate students to keep writing, revising, and polishing their gems. Accept Katherine Bomer's invitation to read work by young, unseasoned writers the way we would inquire our way into a poem by Nikki Giovanni, Jimmy Santiago Baca, or Naomi Shihab Nye and to notice the quirky brilliance and humor, the heartbreaking honesty, and surreal beauty in even the slightest bits of writing. You'll soon discover that student writers often perform remarkable feats in the craft of writing, and that you can achieve remarkable results with them when you uncover theirHidden Gems.

    Over more than six decades of studying and working with children, he brilliantly and insightfully charted the stages of a child's intellectual maturation from the first years to adulthood, and in doing so pioneered a new mode of understanding the changing ways in which a child comes to grasp the world.The purpose of A Piaget Primer is to make Piaget's vital work readily accessible to teachers, therapists, students, and of course, parents. Two noted American psychologists distill Piaget's complex findings into wonderfully clear formulations without sacrificing either subtlety or significance. To accomplish this, they employ not only lucid language but such fascinating illuminations of a child's world and vision as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Winnie-the-Pooh, as well as media manifestations like Barney and Sesame Street. This completely revised edition of this classic work is as enjoyable as it is invaluable--an essential guide to comprehending and communicating with children better than we ever have before.

    In Leading Change in Your School, distinguished author and researcher Douglas B. Reeves offers lessons learned through his work with educators in thousands of schools around the world and presents real-life examples of leaders who have met the challenge of change head-on--with impressive results for their schools and districts. Readers will also find practical resources for engaging their colleagues in change initiatives.Expanding on a number of his columns in the journal Educational Leadership, Reeves offers insights ad recommendations in four areas: * Creating conditions for change, including assessments to determine personal and organizational readiness for change; * Planning change, including cautionary notes about strategic planning; * Implementing change, including the importance of moving from rhetoric to day-to-day reality; and * Sustaining change, including the need to reorient priorities and values so that individual convenience gives way to a shared sense of the greater good.The change leaders--both teachers and administrators--whose stories Reeves tells come from varied districts, but they share a passion for creating schools that work for all students. They are, Reeves says, "people like you, sharing similar challenges but perhaps with different results."

    Efforts to define and then assess the key qualities of writing have helped pinpoint what outcomes matter most and how to measure them, yet they threaten to become an end in themselves. Meanwhile, high-quality instruction seeks to create a safe environment that applauds risk taking by supporting students through strategies that are not readily measured. In this landmark book, Vicki Spandel takes on the immeasurable, opening an exciting discussion about the conditions writers need to achieve their full potential and offering practical applications for any writing classroom.In The 9 Rights of Every Writer Spandel invites nine published authors into a discussion of what makes writing work. Well-known novelists, researchers, science writers, and teacher-writers join this dynamic conversation, and together they draw vital conclusions about teaching strategies that both lead to growth in craft and allow good teaching to flourish. Join Spandel and friends in discovering the personal and instructional importance of:reflecting finding personally important topics going off topic personalizing the writing process writing badly to unearth and clarify meaning observing other writers at work assessing constructivelyand well experiencing structural freedom unearthing the power of each writer's voice. As you will discover, The 9 Rights of Every Writer weaves the philosophical into the practical, offering powerful, ready-to-use lessons that jumpstart the progress of the writers in your classroom and help them reach writing standards. Harness your passion for writing instruction, let go of rigid practices, and balance the needs of maturing writers with today's classroom realities. Read The 9 Rights of Every Writer, learn to trust your teaching instincts, and concentrate on what matters most: creating an instructional setting where writers can achieve success that soars beyond what can be measured.

    With four-color photographs straight from the movie, this Step 2 reader retells the magical story of the DVD in the simple language that will help Barbie’s little fans Step into Reading on their own.

    This Seussian bath book complete with squirter—is sure to bring hoorays and a shout: when the whale comes in and he squirts from his spout!