Book picks similar to
Why Is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools? by Kathy Emery


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Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism


Fumio Sasaki - 2015
    The effects were remarkable: Sasaki gained true freedom, new focus, and a real sense of gratitude for everything around him. In Goodbye, Things Sasaki modestly shares his personal minimalist experience, offering specific tips on the minimizing process and revealing how the new minimalist movement can not only transform your space but truly enrich your life. The benefits of a minimalist life can be realized by anyone, and Sasaki’s humble vision of true happiness will open your eyes to minimalism’s potential.

Learning from Lincoln: Leadership Practices for School Success


Harvey B. Alvy - 2010
    The authors identify 10 qualities, attributes, and skills that help to explain Lincoln's effectiveness, despite seemingly insurmountable odds:1. Implementing and sustaining a mission and vision with focused and profound clarity2. Communicating ideas effectively with precise and straightforward language3. Building a diverse and competent team to successfully address the mission4. Engendering trust, loyalty, and respect through humility, humor, and personal example5. Leading and serving with emotional intelligence and empathy6. Exercising situational competence and responding appropriately to implement effective change7. Rising beyond personal and professional trials through tenacity, persistence, resilience, and courage8. Exercising purposeful visibility9. Demonstrating personal growth and enhanced competence as a lifetime learner, willing to reflect on and expand ideas10. Believing that hope can become a realityChapters devoted to each element explore the historical record of Lincoln's life and actions, then discuss the implications for modern educators. End-of-chapter exercises provide a structure for reflection, analysis of current behaviors, and guidance for future work, so that readers can create their own path to success--inspired by the example of one of the greatest leaders of all time.

Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time


Jeff Speck - 2012
    And he has boiled it down to one key factor: walkability. The very idea of a modern metropolis evokes visions of bustling sidewalks, vital mass transit, and a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly urban core. But in the typical American city, the car is still king, and downtown is a place that's easy to drive to but often not worth arriving at. Making walkability happen is relatively easy and cheap; seeing exactly what needs to be done is the trick. In this essential new book, Speck reveals the invisible workings of the city, how simple decisions have cascading effects, and how we can all make the right choices for our communities. Bursting with sharp observations and real-world examples, giving key insight into what urban planners actually do and how places can and do change, Walkable City lays out a practical, necessary, and eminently achievable vision of how to make our normal American cities great again.

Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster


Dana Thomas - 2007
    Thomas, the style and cultural reporter for Newsweek, takes a hard-hitting look at the world of new luxury, and argues that globalization and corporate greed have ensured that old-time manufacturing has bowed to sweatshops and wild profits to produce mediocre merchandise.

How Bad Are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything


Mike Berners-Lee - 2010
    By talking through a hundred or so items, Mike Berners-Lee sets out to give us a carbon instinct for the footprint of literally anything we do, buy and think about. He helps us pick our battles by laying out the orders of magnitude. The book ranges from the everyday (foods, books, plastic bags, bikes, flights, baths...) and the global (deforestation, data centres, rice production, the World Cup, volcanoes, ...) Be warned, some of the things you thought you knew about green living may be about to be turned on their head. Never preachy but packed full of information and always entertaining.

The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools


E.D. Hirsch Jr. - 2009
    D. Hirsch, Jr. offers a masterful analysis of how American ideas about education have veered off course, what we must do to right them, and most importantly why. He argues that the core problem with American education is that educational theorists, especially in the early grades, have for the past sixty years rejected academic content in favor of “child-centered” and “how-to” learning theories that are at odds with how children really learn.  The result is failing schools and widening inequality, as only children from content-rich (usually better-off) homes can take advantage of the schools’ educational methods.Hirsch unabashedly confronts the education establishment, arguing that a content-based curriculum is essential to addressing social and economic inequality. A nationwide, specific, grade-by-grade curriculum established in the early school grades can help fulfill one of America’s oldest and most compelling dreams: to give all children, regardless of language, religion, or origins, the opportunity to participate as equals and become competent citizens. Hirsch not only reminds us of these inspiring ideals, he offers an ambitious and specific plan for achieving them.

Models of Teaching


Bruce R. Joyce - 1995
    It covers the rationale and research on the major models of teaching and applies the models by using scenarios and examples of instructional materials. Because it deals with the major psychological and philosophical approaches to teaching and schooling, Models of Teaching provides a direct link between educational foundations and student teaching. Therefore, the book can provide substantial support to programs taking a reflective teaching or constructivist approach.

The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here


Hope Jahren - 2020
    A Vintage Original.Hope Jahren is an award-winning geobiologist, a brilliant writer, and one of the seven billion people with whom we share this earth. The Story of More is her impassioned open letter to humanity as we stand at the crossroads of survival and extinction. Jahren celebrates the long history of our enterprising spirit--which has tamed wild crops, cured diseases, and sent us to the moon--but also shows how that spirit has created excesses that are quickly warming our planet to dangerous levels. In short, highly readable chapters, she takes us through the science behind the key inventions--from electric power to large-scale farming and automobiles--that, even as they help us, release untenable amounts of carbon dioxide. She explains the current and projected consequences of greenhouse gases--from superstorms to rising sea levels--and the science-based tools that could help us fight back. At once an explainer on the mechanisms of warming and a capsule history of human development, The Story of More illuminates the link between our consumption habits and our endangered earth, showing us how we can use less and share more. It is the essential pocket primer on climate change that will leave an indelible impact on everyone who reads it.

Results Now: How We Can Achieve Unprecedented Improvements in Teaching and Learning


Michael J. Schmoker - 2006
    This gap persists despite the hard, often heroic work done by many teachers and administrators. Schmoker believes that teachers and administrators may know what the best practices are, but they aren't using them or reinforcing them consistently. He asserts that our schools are protected by a buffer--a protective barrier that prevents scrutiny of instruction by outsiders. The buffer exists within the school as well. Teachers often know only what is going on in their classrooms--and they may be completely in the dark about what other teachers in the school are doing. Even principals, says Schmoker, don't have a clear view of the daily practices of teaching and learning in their schools.Schmoker suggests that we need to get beyond this buffer to confront the truth about what is happening in classrooms, and to allow teachers to learn from each other and to be supervised properly. He outlines a plan that focuses on the importance of consistent curriculum, authentic literacy education, and professional learning communities for teachers.What will students get out of this new approach? Learning for life. Schmoker argues passionately that students become learners for life when they have more opportunities to engage in strategic reading, writing with explicit guidance, and argument and discussion.Through strong teamwork, true leadership, and authentic learning, schools and their students can reach new heights. Results Now is a rally cry for educators to focus on what counts. If they do, Schmoker promises, the entire school community can count on unprecedented achievements.

Naming the World: A Year of Poems and Lessons [With "A Poem a Day" Book]


Nancie Atwell - 2005
    "Naming the World"'s 200+ poems and accompanying five-to-ten-minute lessons are used by Nancie every day to jumpstart her reading and writing workshops. Poetry is the foundation upon which her students build excellences as writers in every genre. This is your chance to make the first few minutes of your Language Arts class really countThe 200+ Poems: are compiled from contemporary poets were nominated by Nancie's students as their favorites speak to adolescent interests and issues include poems by Nancie's kids to teach and inspire yours. The 150 Lessons: are used daily by Nancie to jumpstart her reading-writing workshop apply a range of interactive and independent learning strategies present the language Nancie uses with her students.

Teaching Effectively with Zoom: A practical guide to engage your students and help them learn


Dan Levy - 2020
    

Low Tox Life: A handbook for a healthy you and happy planet


Alexx Stuart - 2018
    Ever stopped to read the list of ingredients in the products you use every day? Or maybe you’re confused by what those ingredients actually are and whether they are good for you? Low Tox Life, by activist and educator Alexx Stuart, gently clears a path through the maze of mass-market ingredient cocktails, providing simple alternatives to the unknown nasties found in everyday products. Focusing on four key areas: Body, Home, Food and Mind, Low Tox Life, is your non-judgmental handbook to limiting the toxic load, for you, your family and the planet. At the forefront of the low tox movement, Alexx shares the latest science and advice from experts in each area, and tackles everything from endocrine-disruptors in beauty products to going low plastic in a high-plastic world, and how to clean without a hint of harmful toxins and avoid the products that are masquerading as non-toxic. To get you started, Low Tox Life shows you how to create low tox household and personal products, like dry shampoo, oven cleaner and even a head lice treatment; recipes for delicious low tox family feasts; and tips for navigating ‘greenwashing’, ethical shopping, reducing food waste and low toxing your mind. Alexx also shares her story of the health crisis that inspired her dramatic shift to a low tox life. You don't need to be a full-time homesteader with a cupboard full of organic linens to go low tox. Start small, switching or ditching one nasty at a time, and enjoy the process as a positive one for you and the planet.

The Behaviour Guru: Behaviour Management Solutions for Teachers


Tom Bennett - 2010
    Controlling a class isn't something that comes naturally to everyone - but it can be learned.This no-nonsense guide tells teachers what the teacher training didn't, and offers instant strategies for dealing with the most common, and extreme, classroom scenarios.Using his experiences of teaching in inner-city schools, as Behaviour Guru on the TES advice forum and working as a nightclub bouncer, Tom Bennett helps teachers, old and new, to assert their authority in the classroom.

The Growth Mindset Coach: A Teacher's Month-by-Month Handbook for Empowering Students to Achieve


Annie Brock - 2016
    The Growth Mindset Coach provides all you need to foster a growth mindset classroom, including:A Month-by-Month ProgramResearch-Based ActivitiesHands-On Lesson PlansReal-Life Educator StoriesConstructive FeedbackSample Parent LettersStudies show that growth mindsets result in higher test scores, improved grades and more in-class involvement. When your students understand that their intelligence is not limited, they succeed like never before. With the tools in this book, you can motivate your students to believe in themselves and achieve anything.

Silent Spring


Rachel Carson - 1962
    The book documents the adverse environmental effects caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides. Carson accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation, and public officials of accepting the industry's marketing claims unquestioningly.The book appeared in September 1962 and the outcry that followed its publication forced the banning of DDT and spurred revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. Carson’s book was instrumental in launching the environmental movement.