But sometimes what can make or break your learning community are the intangibles--the relationships, identity, and connections that make up its culture. Authors Fisher, Frey, and Pumpian believe that no school improvement effort will be effective unless school culture is addressed. They identify five pillars that are critical to building a culture of achievement:1. Welcome: Imagine if all staff members in your school considered it their job to make every student, parent, and visitor feel noticed, welcomed, and valued.2. Do no harm: Your school rules should be tools for teaching students to become the moral and ethical citizens you expect them to be.3. Choice words: When the language students hear helps them tell a story about themselves that is one of possibility and potential, students perform in ways that are consistent with that belief.4. It's never too late to learn: Can you push students to go beyond the minimum needed to get by, to discover what they are capable of achieving?5. Best school in the universe: Is your school the best place to teach and learn? The best place to work?Drawing on their years of experience in the classroom, the authors explain how these pillars support good teaching and learning. In addition, they provide 19 action research tools that will help you create a culture of achievement, so that your school or classroom is the best it can be. After reading this book, you'll see why culture makes the difference between a school that enables success for all students and a school that merely houses those students during the school day.

    It ties together culture and language in a comprehensive format, providing teachers with a wealth of specific strategies and classroom examples to apply to educational practice.

    When giant timber bamboo grows, it will rocket up an astonishing 90 feet in only 60 days, but not until at least three years of watering. In 21 steps, this timely book helps individuals and teams refocus on their core values and mission to achieve long-term success.

    In this compact guide, Rick Steves covers the best of Madrid and Toledo, including tips on arrival, orientation, and transportation. In Madrid, visit the masterpieces of the Prado Museum, and explore the Royal Palace. Or visit Toledo's vast Cathedral or Alcázar. You'll get Rick's firsthand advice on the best sights, eating, sleeping, and nightlife, and the maps and self-guided tours will ensure you make the most of your experience. More than just reviews and directions, a Rick Steves Snapshot guide is a tour guide in your pocket.Rick Steves Snapshot guides consist of excerpted chapters from Rick Steves European country guidebooks. Snapshot guides are a great choice for travelers visiting a specific city or region, rather than multiple European destinations. These slim guides offer all of Rick's up-to-date advice on what sights are worth your time and money. They include good-value hotel and restaurant recommendations, with no introductory information (such as overall trip planning, when to go, and travel practicalities).

    It is the quality of these, whatever the size of the organisation, which make the difference between organisations which thrive, and those which stagnate.This is not to argue for soft, easy and comfortable options. Instead it considers how top leaders manage to walk the line between the impossible and the possible, between the undoable and the doable, and to create conditions for productive work which transcend the difficulties which come towards us every day. Instead of dodging them, they embrace them. And by navigating high challenge, low threat, they show how others how to do the same.

    It offers a no-nonsense walk through all the steps in the instructional design process and each step is explained in language that is conversational and easy to understand. This new edition addresses such topics as learning analysis, return on investment, and designing asynchronous and synchronous e-learning, as well as a wealth of illustrative examples of storyboards and professional commentary and case studies from professionals in the field.

    Anabel Garza: No school board would have put her forward as a model principal. Pregnant and alone at sixteen, widowed by twenty-five, Anabel got along teaching English to Mexican immigrants, raising her son, and taking night school classes.But then no model candidate would have taken the job at John H. Reagan High School. Once known to sports fans across Texas as the great champion Big Blue, Reagan was collapsing. The kids were failing the standardized tests, failing on the basketball court, failing even to show up. Teenage pregnancy was endemic. If the test scores and attendance did not improve, the school was set to close at the end of the 2009-10 school year.Anabel took the assignment. Her first work was triage. She cruised the malls for dropouts. She fired ten teachers, including one who produced a ruler to bemoan the distance from the parking lot to her classroom door. She listened to angry lectures from union officials and angrier ones from black ministers. She kept going. She tailored each student's tutoring to the standardized tests. The numbers started to come up.But with the state education commissioner threatening to close the school, the real work began. Anabel set out to re-create the high school she remembered, with plays and dances, yearbooks and clubs, teachers who brought books alive and crowded bleachers to cheer on the basketball team. She reached out to the middle schools, the neighborhoods, and the churches. She gave good teachers free rein. She mixed love and expectations.The circumstances facing Reagan High are playing out all over the country. The get-tough crowd of education reformers, led by Obama's secretary of education, are redoubling their efforts to replace public schools with charter companies. But what happens when the centerpiece of a community is threatened? And what happens when one person just won't quit?For the first time, we can tally the costs of rankings and scores. In this powerful rejoinder to the prevailing winds of American education policy, Michael Brick examines the do-or-die year at Reagan High. Compelling, character-driven narrative journalism, Saving the School pays an overdue tribute to the great American high school and to the people inside.

    With these proven, practical coaching-conversation techniques, school leaders can engage their school communities to work collaboratively toward total transformation. This research-based handbook helps school leaders:Develop open, reflective conversations with staff members Motivate staff Adopt new habits for working with teachers, staff, and students Utilize the power of committed listening and non-judgmental feedback Create positive changes in how people think and interact

    It shows how the components of design interact with each other, and provides a strategy for creating coherent and workable relationships among these design components, highlighting key design issues. Written in an informal, jargon-free style, the new Third Edition incorporates examples and hands-on exercises.

    Following a tradition of self-improvement as old as the Republic, the “nontraditional” college student is becoming the norm. Back to School is the first book to look at the schools that serve a growing population of “second-chancers,” exploring what higher education—in the fullest sense of the term—can offer our rapidly changing society and why it is so critical to support the institutions that make it possible for millions of Americans to better their lot in life.In the anecdotal style of his bestselling Possible Lives, Rose crafts rich and moving vignettes of people in tough circumstances who find their way; who get a second . . . or third . . . or even fourth chance; and who, in a surprising number of cases, reinvent themselves as educated, engaged citizens. Rose reminds us that our nation’s economic and civic future rests heavily on the health of the institutions that serve millions of everyday people—not simply the top twenty universities in U.S. News and World Report—and paints a vivid picture of the community colleges and adult education programs that give so many a shot at reaching their aspirations.

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    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    Providing strategies and solutions for the managers of today, this book offers answers for improving employee commitment and profitability by strategically acknowledging employee effort. How is it done? The deceptively simply answer: with carrots.

    It shows how examining test scores and other classroom data can become a catalyst for important schoolwide conversations that will enhance schools’ abilities to capture teachers’ knowledge, foster collaboration, identify obstacles to change, and enhance school culture and climate. This revised and expanded edition captures the learning that has emerged in integrating the Data Wise process into school practice and brings the book up-to-date with recent developments in education and technology including:The shift to the Common Core State Standards.New material on the “ACE Habits of Mind”: practices that prioritize Action, Collaboration, and Evidence as part of transforming school culture.A new chapter on “How We Improve,” based on experiences implementing Data Wise and to address two common questions: “Where do I start?” and “How long will it take?”Other revisions take into account changes in the roles of school data teams and instructional leadership teams in guiding the inquiry process. The authors have also updated exhibits, examples, and terminology throughout and have added new protocols and resources.

    Through the stories and experiences of eight successful teacher-transmitters, The Dreamkeepers keeps hope alive for educating young African Americans. --ReverAnd Jesse L. Jackson, president and founder, National Rainbow Coalition In this beautifully written book Ladson-Billings illustrates the inspiring influence of a select group of teachers who keep the dreams alive for African American students. ?Henry M. Levin, David Jacks professor of Higher Education, Stanford University Ladson-Billing's portraits, interwoven with personal reflections, challenge readers to envision intellectually rigorous and culturally relevant classrooms that have the power to improve the lives of not just African American students but all children.