The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently... and Why


Richard E. Nisbett - 2003
    As a result, East Asian thought is “holistic”—drawn to the perceptual field as a whole and to relations among objects and events within that field. By contrast, Westerners focus on salient objects or people, use attributes to assign them to categories, and apply rules of formal logic to understand their behavior. From feng shui to metaphysics, from comparative linguistics to economic history, a gulf separates the children of Aristotle from the descendants of Confucius. At a moment in history when the need for cross-cultural understanding and collaboration have never been more important, The Geography of Thought offers both a map to that gulf and a blueprint for a bridge that will span it.

On Writing the College Application Essay: The Key to Acceptance at the College of Your Choice


Harry Bauld - 1987
    Most students worry about what an admissions officer looks for in a writing sample. But that’s the wrong way to approach this vital component, says former college admissions officer Harry Bauld. At Brown and Columbia, he saw what prospective students often did wrong—and now tells you how to do it right.On Writing the College Application Essay is his inside guide to writing a college application essay that will stand out from the pack. Baum advises you on how to avoid platitudes and find your authentic voice, gives you tools and ideas that will spark your imagination, and shows you how to approach themes with originality and panache to make even the most tired topics—the ones most students should stay away from—fresh, such as:The trip (“I had to adjust to a whole new way of life.”)My favorite things (puppy dogs, freedom, and chocolate chip cookies)The pageant contestant (“I think World Peace is the most important issue facing us today.”)The jock (“Through wrestling I have learned to set goals and to work with people.”)The autobiography (“Hello, my name is . . . ”)Tales of my success (“But, finally, when I crossed the finish line . . . ”)Pet death (“As I watched Buttons’s life ebb away, I came to value . . . ”)Getting into the college of your dreams is tough. The competition is fierce. For more than twenty-five years, On Writing the College Application Essay has helped thousands of students improve their chances. Now, let it work for you.

The Human Condition


Hannah Arendt - 1958
    In her study of the state of modern humanity, Hannah Arendt considers humankind from the perspective of the actions of which it is capable. The problems Arendt identified then--diminishing human agency and political freedom; the paradox that as human powers increase through technological and humanistic inquiry, we are less equipped to control the consequences of our actions—continue to confront us today.

School Leadership That Works: From Research to Results


Robert J. Marzano - 2005
    Marzano, Timothy Waters, and Brian A. McNulty provide answers to these and other questions in School Leadership That Works.Based on their analysis of 69 studies conducted since 1970 that met their selection criteria and a recent survey of more than 650 building principals, the authors have developed a list of 21 leadership responsibilities that have a significant effect on student achievement. Readers will learn* the specific behaviors associated with the 21 leadership responsibilities;* the difference between first-order change and second-order change and the leadership responsibilities that are most important for each;* how to work smart by choosing the right work to focus on to improve student achievement;* the advantages and disadvantages of comprehensive school reform models for improving student achievement;* how to develop a site-specific approach to improving student achievement, using a framework of 11 factors and 39 action steps; and* a five-step plan for effective school leadership.Combining rigorous research with practical advice, School Leadership That Works gives school administrators the guidance they need to provide strong leadership for better schools.

English Teacher's Survival Guide: Ready-To-Use Techniques & Materials for Grades 7-12


Mary Lou Brandvik - 1994
    Included are 175 easy-to-use strategies, lessons, and checklists for effective classroom management, and over 50 reproducible samples that you can adopt immediately for planning, evaluation, or assignments. The Guide helps you create a classroom that reflects the excitement for learning that every English teacher desires.

College Unbound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students


Jeffrey J. Selingo - 2013
    Student-loan debt in the United States crossed the $1 trillion mark in 2011. To say that the cost of a four-year college education is inflated on many campuses would be an understatement—and that education bubble is about to burst. Jeffrey J. Selingo, editor at large for The Chronicle for Higher Education and senior fellow at Education Sector, argues that America’s higher education system is broken and that the great credential race has transformed universities into big business. In the wake of the 2008 recession, colleges can no longer sell a degree at any price as the ticket to success in life. Brand-name universities like Harvard, Yale, Cornell, and Stanford will always find students and families willing to pay the sticker price because of their institution’s global prestige, influential alumni networks, and considerable endowments. But the campuses that the vast majority of Americans attend, where some students go into tens of thousands of dollars in debt for degrees with little payoff, will need to adapt fast to the changing job market and new technological breakthroughs. As an industry insider who has covered higher education for more than 15 years, Selingo offers a critical examination of the current state of affairs and the pressing issues faced by students and parents. He also seeks out institutions like Arizona State University and the University of Central Florida that are leading the way into the future. Selingo predicts that the class of 2020 will have a college experience that is radically different from the one their parents had, and the college of the future will be personalized, leaner, and better able to arm students with the hard skills they need to enter the workforce of tomorrow. College (Un)bound will be a great resource for prospective students, but more important, it will change the way you think about higher education.

Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities


John Warner - 2018
    In Why They Can't Write, John Warner, who taught writing at the college level for two decades, argues that the problem isn't caused by a lack of rigor, or smartphones, or some generational character defect. Instead, he asserts, we're teaching writing wrong.Warner blames this on decades of educational reform rooted in standardization, assessments, and accountability. We have done no more, Warner argues, than conditioned students to perform "writing-related simulations," which pass temporary muster but do little to help students develop their writing abilities. This style of teaching has made students passive and disengaged. Worse yet, it hasn't prepared them for writing in the college classroom. Rather than making choices and thinking critically, as writers must, undergraduates simply follow the rules--such as the five-paragraph essay--designed to help them pass these high-stakes assessments.In Why They Can't Write, Warner has crafted both a diagnosis for what ails us and a blueprint for fixing a broken system. Combining current knowledge of what works in teaching and learning with the most enduring philosophies of classical education, this book challenges readers to develop the skills, attitudes, knowledge, and habits of mind of strong writers.

Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning: Teaching Second Language Learners in the Mainstream Classroom


Pauline Gibbons - 2002
    What's more, she shows how in this practical resource book.Gibbons begins with a strong theoretical underpinning for her practice, drawing on a functional model of language, sociocultural theories of learning, and current research on second-language development. After supporting her view that the regular curriculum offers the best language-learning environment for young ESL students, Gibbons demonstrates the ways in which content areas provide a context for the teaching of English, from speaking and listening to reading and writing. These in turn are treated not as discrete skills, but as ones that can also be integrated in the learning of diverse subjects. Gibbons illustrates this with a wide range of teaching and learning activities across the curriculum, supplemented with programming and assessment formats and checklists.Language learning is not a simple linear process, but involves the ongoing development of skills for a range of purposes. Gibbons sees this development as largely the result of the social contexts and interactions in which learning occurs. By focusing on the ways in which teachers can "scaffold" language and learning in the content areas, she takes a holistic approach-one that appreciates the struggle of students learning a new language, while simultaneously developing subject knowledge in it, and the challenge for teachers to address these needs.Given today's culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms, ESL students can no longer be thought of as a group apart from the mainstream-they are. the mainstream. This book describes the ways to ensure that ESL learners become full members of the school community with the language and content skills they need for success.

For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education


Christopher Emdin - 2016
    He begins by taking to task the perception of urban youth of color as unteachable, and he challenges educators to embrace and respect each student’s culture and to reimagine the classroom as a site where roles are reversed and students become the experts in their own learning.Putting forth his theory of Reality Pedagogy, Emdin provides practical tools to unleash the brilliance and eagerness of youth and educators alike—both of whom have been typecast and stymied by outdated modes of thinking about urban education. With this fresh and engaging new pedagogical vision, Emdin demonstrates the importance of creating a family structure and building communities within the classroom, using culturally relevant strategies like hip-hop music and call-and-response, and connecting the experiences of urban youth to indigenous populations globally. Merging real stories with theory, research, and practice, Emdin demonstrates how by implementing the “Seven C’s” of reality pedagogy in their own classrooms, urban youth of color benefit from truly transformative education.Lively, accessible, and revelatory, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood...and the Rest of Y’all Too is the much-needed antidote to traditional top-down pedagogy and promises to radically reframe the landscape of urban education for the better.

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man


Marshall McLuhan - 1964
    Terms and phrases such as "the global village" and "the medium is the message" are now part of the lexicon, and McLuhan's theories continue to challenge our sensibilities and our assumptions about how and what we communicate.There has been a notable resurgence of interest in McLuhan's work in the last few years, fueled by the recent and continuing conjunctions between the cable companies and the regional phone companies, the appearance of magazines such as WiRed, and the development of new media models and information ecologies, many of which were spawned from MIT's Media Lab. In effect, media now begs to be redefined. In a new introduction to this edition of Understanding Media, Harper's editor Lewis Lapham reevaluates McLuhan's work in the light of the technological as well as the political and social changes that have occurred in the last part of this century.

The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory


J.A. Cuddon - 1982
    Geared toward students, teachers, readers, and writers alike, The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory explains critical jargon (intertextuality, aporia), schools of literary theory (structuralism, feminist criticism), literary forms (sonnet, ottava rima), and genres (elegy, pastoral) and examines artifacts, historic locales, archetypes, origins of well-known phrases, and much, much more. Scholarly, straightforward, comprehensive, and even entertaining, this is a resource that no word-lover should be without.

Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America


Saidiya Hartman - 1997
    Scenes of Subjection examines the forms of domination that usually go undetected; in particular, the encroachments of power that take place through notions of humanity, enjoyment, protection, rights, and consent. By looking at slave narratives, plantation diaries, popular theater, slave performance, freedmen's primers, and legal cases, Hartman investigates a wide variety of "scenes" ranging from the auction block and minstrel show to the staging of the self-possessed and rights-bearing individual of freedom.While attentive to the performance of power--the terrible spectacles of slaveholders' dominion and the innocent amusements designed to abase and pacify the enslaved--and the entanglements of pleasure and terror in these displays of mastery, Hartman also examines the possibilities for resistance, redress and transformation embodied in black performance and everyday practice.This important study contends that despite the legal abolition of slavery, emergent notions of individual will and responsibility revealed the tragic continuities between slavery and freedom. Bold and persuasively argued, Scenes of Subjection will engage readers in a broad range of historical, literary, and cultural studies.

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art


Scott McCloud - 1993
    Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics is a seminal examination of comics art: its rich history, surprising technical components, and major cultural significance. Explore the secret world between the panels, through the lines, and within the hidden symbols of a powerful but misunderstood art form.

The Unstoppable Writing Teacher: Real Strategies for the Real Classroom


M. Colleen Cruz - 2015
    Real hard. In The Unstoppable Writing Teacher she takes on the common concerns, struggles, and roadblocks that we all face in writing instruction and helps us engage in the process of problem solving each one.From dealing with writing workshop skeptics to working with students both gifted and challenged, and of course combating that eternal barrier-lack of time-Colleen offers tried-and-true strategies to address and overcome obstacles.For the struggles unique to you, she includes a "Name Your Monster" section that helps you identify your own individual roadblocks and even offers sustainable support through her blog, colleencruz.com. "We can't solve all the problems we're faced with in writing instruction," Colleen promises, "but we can choose how to respond to them. And our responses will make all the difference."What makes you unstoppable, or what's stopping you? Connect with Colleen on her blog at www.colleencruz.com/blog.htm or on Twitter, #unstoppablewritingteacher.

Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership


Lee G. Bolman - 1990
    Their four frames view organizations as factories, families, jungles, and theaters or temples:The Structural Frame how to organize and structure groups and teams to get resultsThe Human Resource Frame how to tailor organizations to satisfy human needs, improve human resource management, and build positive interpersonal and group dynamicsThe Political Frame: how to cope with power and conflict, build coalitions, hone political skills, and deal with internal and external politicsThe Symbolic Frame how to shape a culture that gives purpose and meaning to work, stage organizational drama for internal and external audiences, and build team spirit through ritual, ceremony, and story