It is for teachers who refuse to harden their hearts, because they love learners, learning, and the teaching life." - Parker J. Palmer [from the Introduction] Teachers choose their vocation for reasons of the heart, because they care deeply about their students and about their subject. But the demands of teaching cause too many educators to lose heart. Is it possible to take heart in teaching once more so that we can continue to do what good teachers always do -- give heart to our students?In The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer takes teachers on an inner journey toward reconnecting with their vocation and their students -- and recovering their passion for one of the most difficult and important of human endeavors.

    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.

    Gholdy E. Muhammad presents a four-layered equity framework—one that is grounded in history and restores excellence in literacy education. This framework, which she names, Historically Responsive Literacy, was derived from the study of literacy development within 19th-century Black literacy societies. The framework is essential and universal for all students, especially youth of color, who traditionally have been marginalized in learning standards, school policies, and classroom practices. The equity framework will help educators teach and lead toward the following learning goals or pursuits:  Identity Development—Helping youth to make sense of themselves and othersSkill Development— Developing proficiencies across the academic disciplinesIntellectual Development—Gaining knowledge and becoming smarterCriticality—Learning and developing the ability to read texts (including print and social contexts) to understand power, equity, and anti-oppression When these four learning pursuits are taught together—through the Historically Responsive Literacy Framework, all students receive profound opportunities for personal, intellectual, and academic success. Muhammad provides probing, self-reflective questions for teachers, leaders, and teacher educators as well as sample culturally and historically responsive sample plans and text sets across grades and content areas. In this book, Muhammad presents practical approaches to cultivate the genius in students and within teachers.

    Would you take it? -Debbie Miller and Barbara MossWe know children learn to read by reading. Is independent reading valuable enough to use precious classroom minutes on? Yes, writes Debbie Miller and Barbara Moss, but only if that time is purposeful.DEAR and SSR aren't enough. Research shows that independent reading must be accompanied by intentional instruction and conferring. Debbie and Barbara clear a path for you to take informed action that makes a big difference, with:a rationale for independent reading that's worth finding the time for research evidence on its effectiveness and instructional best practices a framework with 10 teaching tactics for starting and sustaining success. When we set children loose day after day with no focus or support, it can lead to fake reading and disengagement, write Debbie and Barbara. It's our job to equip children with the tools they need when we're not there. Read No More Independent Reading Without Support and find out how.About the Not This, But That Series No More Independent Reading Without Support is part of the Not This, But That series, edited by Nell K. Duke and Ellin Oliver Keene. It helps teachers examine common, ineffective classroom practices and replace them with practices supported by research and professional wisdom. In each book a practicing educator and an education researcher identify an ineffective practice; summarize what the research suggests about why; and detail research-based, proven practices to replace it and improve student learning. Read a sample chapter from No More Independent Reading Without Support.

    When you add in the ever-changing dynamics of technology and current events, the complexity of both students' and teachers' lives grows exponentially. Far too few teachers, however, successfully teach the whole class with the individual student in mind.In Leading and Managing a Differentiated Classroom, Carol Ann Tomlinson and Marcia B. Imbeau tackle the issue of how to address student differences thoughtfully and proactively. The first half of the book focuses on what it means for a teacher to effectively lead a differentiated classroom. Readers will learn how to be more confident and effective leaders for and in student-focused and responsive classrooms.The second half of the book focuses on the mechanics of managing a differentiated classroom. A teacher who has the best intentions, a dynamic curriculum, and plans for differentiation cannot--and will not--move forward unless he or she is at ease with translating those ideas into classroom practice. In other words, teachers who are uncomfortable with flexible classroom management will not differentiate instruction, even if they understand it, accept the need for it, and can plan for it.Tomlinson and Imbeau argue that the inherent interdependence of leading and managing a differentiated classroom is at the very heart of 21st-century education. This essential guide to differentiation also includes a helpful teacher's toolkit of activities and teaching strategies that will help any teacher expand his or her capacity to make room for and work tirelessly on behalf of every student.

    If you are a high school teacher or a kindergarten teacher, the seven steps in The Wild Card will give you the knowledge and the confidence to bring creative teaching strategies into your classroom.You'll learn: Why the deck is not stacked against you, no matter what kind of hand you've been dealt Why you should never listen to the Joker How to identify the "Ace up your sleeve" and use it to create classroom magic How to apply the "Rules of Rigor" in order to fuse creativity with learning How to become the "Wild Card" that changes the game 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.

    Time and again, we make seemingly endless efforts to moderate, punish, and even medicate our children, when we should instead be concerned with transforming the very nature of our institutions, systems, and structures, large and small. Through delicately crafted portraits of these memorable children—Zora, Lucas, Sean, and Marcus—Troublemakers allows us to see school through the eyes of those who know firsthand what it means to be labeled a problem.From Zora’s proud individuality to Marcus’s open willfulness, from Sean’s struggle with authority to Lucas’s tenacious imagination, comes profound insight—for educators and parents alike—into how schools engender, exclude, and then try to erase trouble, right along with the young people accused of making it. And although the harsh disciplining of adolescent behavior has been called out as part of a school-to-prison pipeline, the children we meet in these pages demonstrate how a child’s path to excessive punishment and exclusion in fact begins at a much younger age.Shalaby’s empathetic, discerning, and elegant prose gives us a deeply textured look at what noncompliance signals about the environments we require students to adapt to in our schools. Both urgent and timely, this paradigm-shifting book challenges our typical expectations for young children and with principled affection reveals how these demands—despite good intentions—work to undermine the pursuit of a free and just society.

    In The EduProtocol Field Guide, Jon Corippo and Marlena Hebern outline sixteen classroom-tested protocols to break up clichéd lesson plans, build culture, and deliver content to K–12 students in a supportive, creative environment. Start Smart Smart Start activities set your students up for success by teaching them how to learn, using tools like Frayer Models and Venn Diagrams on fun subjects. In addition to preparing your students to learn, Smart Start activities help build a positive culture in your classroom. Finish Strong EduProtocols are customizable, frames that use your content to create lessons to help students master academic content, think critically, and communicate effectively while creating and working collaboratively. EduProtocols can be used with nearly all subjects and grade levels and are UDL (Universal Design for Learning)-friendly to support all learners. Simplify the process of creating engaging and personalized learning opportunities for every student. The EduProtocol Field Guide shows you how.

    It's like sitting next to a skillful, experienced, focused teacher in a real classroom. Kristi and Christine draw on their years of teaching and their dedication to educating children to help students become more empathic and act more thoughtfully and to prepare them with the essentials for success in an uncertain future."-Arthur Costa, author of Learning and Leading with Habits of MindWe know how to teach content and skills. But can we teach the habits of mind needed for academic success, a love of learning, and agency in the world? We can, and A Mindset for Learning shows us how."We want our students to take on challenges with zeal," write Kristi Mraz and Christine Hertz, "to see themselves not as static test scores but as agents of change." Drawing on the work of Carol Dweck, Daniel Pink, Art Costa, and others, Kristi and Christine show us how to lead students to a growth mindset for school-and life-by focusing on five crucial, research-driven attitudes:optimism-putting aside fear and resistance to learn something newpersistence-keeping at it, even when a task is hardflexibility-trying different ways to find a solutionresilience-bouncing back from setbacks and learning from failureempathy-learning by putting oneself in another person's shoes.A Mindset for Learning pairs research-psychological, neurological, and pedagogical-with practical classroom help, including instructional language, charts and visuals, teaching tips, classroom vignettes, and more."This book holds our dreams for all children," write Kristi and Christine, "that they grow to be brave in the face of risk, kind in the face of challenge, joyful and curious in all things." If you want that for your students, then help them discover A Mindset for Learning.

    Inside, he shows teachers how to overcome their perceived obstacles and shows them how they can make conferring tangible. Conferring lays the groundwork for effective reading instruction. Conferences with students are purposeful conversations that scaffold reading comprehension strategies to guide the reader’s progress. Ultimately, through the gradual release of responsibility, you will create engaged and independent readers. Starting with what conferring isn’t, Allen unpacks the essential components of the process:Intimacy: the social context of conferringRigor: the cognitive context of conferringInquiry: the analytical context of conferring With his guidance, you will be able to set goals for student conferring and elevate student reader conferences from start to finish.

    This book provides a research-based framework and practical strategies for vocabulary development with children from the earliest grades through high school. The authors emphasize instruction that offers rich information about words and their uses and enhances students' language comprehension and production. Teachers are guided in selecting words for instruction; developing student-friendly explanations of new words; creating meaningful learning activities; and getting students involved in thinking about, using, and noticing new words both within and outside the classroom. Many concrete examples, sample classroom dialogues, and exercises for teachers bring the material to life. Helpful appendices include suggestions for trade books that help children enlarge their vocabulary and/or have fun with different aspects of words.