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.

Subjects Matter: Exceeding Standards Through Powerful Content-Area Reading


Harvey Daniels - 2014
    This book is about making those encounters as compelling as we can make them." -Harvey "Smokey" Daniels and Steven ZemelmanWe are specialists to the bone-in science, math, social studies, art, music, business, and foreign language. But now, the Common Core and state standards require us to help our students better understand the distinctive texts in our subject areas. "Nobody's making us into reading teachers," write Smokey Daniels and Steve Zemelman, "but we must become teachers of disciplinary thinking through our students' reading."If this shift sounds like a tough one, Subjects Matter, Second Edition is your solution. Smokey and Steve, two of America's most popular educators, share exactly what you need to help students read your nonfiction content closely and strategically: 27 proven teaching strategies that help meet-and exceed-the standards how-to suggestions for engaging kids with content through wide, real-world reading a lively look at using "boring" textbooks motivating instruction that's powered by student collaboration specifics for helping struggling readers succeed.Subjects Matter, Second Edition enables deep, thoughtful learning for your students, while keeping the irreverent, inspiring heart that's made the first edition indispensable. You'll discover fresh and re-energized lessons, completely updated research, and vibrant vignettes from new colleagues and old friends who have as much passion for their subjects as you do."We'll be using methods particular to our fields as well as engaging reading materials that help students understand and remember our content better," write Smokey and Steve. "We can realize that vision of the light going on in kids' heads and maybe fill them with enthusiasm about the amazing subject matter that we have to offer. Sound good? Let's get to work." Read a sample chapter from Subjects Matter, Second Edition.

Give me liberty!: an American history, volume 1


Eric Foner - 2005
    Give Me Liberty! examines the changing meanings of freedom, the social conditions that make freedom possible and its shifting boundaries from colonial times to the early twenty-first century.

What America Was Really Like in 1776


Thomas Fleming - 2012
    New York Times bestselling historian and novelist Thomas Fleming takes us back to the days of the founders, detailing the surprising facts of American life in 1776 - including its resemblance to today.

Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America


Paul Tough - 2008
    What would it take to change the lives of poor children—not one by one, through heroic interventions and occasional miracles, but in big numbers, and in a way that could be replicated nationwide? The question led him to create the Harlem Children’s Zone, a ninety-seven-block laboratory in central Harlem where he is testing new and sometimes controversial ideas about poverty in America. His conclusion: if you want poor kids to be able to compete with their middle-class peers, you need to change everything in their lives—their schools, their neighborhoods, even the child-rearing practices of their parents.Whatever It Takes is a tour de force of reporting, an inspired portrait not only of Geoffrey Canada but of the parents and children in Harlem who are struggling to better their lives, often against great odds. Carefully researched and deeply affecting, this is a dispatch from inside the most daring and potentially transformative social experiment of our time.

Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940


George Chauncey - 1994
    Drawing on a rich trove of diaries, legal records, and other unpublished documents, George Chauncey constructs a fascinating portrait of a vibrant, cohesive gay world that is not supposed to have existed. Called "monumental" (Washington Post), "unassailable" (Boston Globe), "brilliant" (The Nation), and "a first-rate book of history" (The New York Times), Gay New Yorkforever changed how we think about the history of gay life in New York City, and beyond.

Socratic Circles: Fostering Critical and Creative Thinking in Middle and High School


Matt Copeland - 2005
    In Socratic Circles: Fostering Critical and Creative Thinking in Middle and High School , author Matt Copeland provides real-world examples and straightforward answers to frequent questions. He creates a coaching guide for both the teacher new to Socratic seminars and the experienced teacher seeking to optimize the benefits of this powerful strategy. Socratic Circles also shows teachers who are familiar with literature circles the many ways in which these two practices complement and extend each other.Effectively implemented, Socratic seminars enhance reading comprehension, listening and speaking skills, and build better classroom community and conflict resolution skills. By giving students ownership over the classroom discussion around texts, they become more independent and motivated learners. Ultimately, because there is a direct relationship between the level of participation and the richness of the experience, Socratic seminars teach students to take responsibility for the quality of their own learning.Filled with examples to help readers visualize the application of these concepts in practice, Socratic Circles includes transcripts of student dialogue and work samples of preparation and follow-up activities. The helpful appendices offer ready-to-copy handouts and examples, and suggested selections of text that connect to major literary works.As our classrooms and our schools grow increasingly focused on meeting high standards and differentiating instruction for a wide variety of student needs and learning styles, Socratic seminars offer an essential classroom tool for meeting these goals. Socratic Circles is a complete and practical guide to Socratic seminars for the busy classroom teacher.

Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class


Jefferson R. Cowie - 2010
    Jefferson Cowie’s edgy and incisive book—part political intrigue, part labor history, with large doses of American musical, film, and TV lore—makes new sense of the 1970s as a crucial and poorly understood transition from New Deal America (with its large, optimistic middle class) to the widening economic inequalities, poverty, and dampened expectations of the 1980s and into the present.Stayin’ Alive takes us from the factory floors of Ohio, Pittsburgh, and Detroit, to the Washington of Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Cowie also connects politics to culture, showing how the big screen and the jukebox can help us understand how America turned away from the radicalism of the 1960s and toward the patriotic promise of Ronald Reagan. Cowie makes unexpected connections between the secrets of the Nixon White House and the failings of George McGovern campaign; radicalism and the blue-collar backlash; the earthy twang of Merle Haggard’s country music and the falsetto highs of Saturday Night Fever. Like Jeff Perlstein’s acclaimed Nixonland, Stayin’ Alive moves beyond conventional understandings of the period and brilliantly plumbs it for insights into our current way of life.

Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis


Robert D. Putnam - 2015
    This is the America we believe in a nation of opportunity, constrained only by ability and effort. But during the last twenty-five years we have seen a disturbing opportunity gap emerge. Americans have always believed in equality of opportunity, the idea that all kids, regardless of their family background, should have a decent chance to improve their lot in life. Now, this central tenet of the American dream seems no longer true or at the least, much less true than it was. Robert Putnam about whom The Economist said, "His scholarship is wide-ranging, his intelligence luminous, his tone modest, his prose unpretentious and frequently funny," offers a personal but also authoritative look at this new American crisis. Putnam begins with his high school class of 1959 in Port Clinton, Ohio. By and large the vast majority of those students "our kids" went on to lives better than those of their parents. But their children and grandchildren have had harder lives amid diminishing prospects. Putnam tells the tale of lessening opportunity through poignant life stories of rich and poor kids from cities and suburbs across the country, drawing on a formidable body of research done especially for this book. Our Kids is a rare combination of individual testimony and rigorous evidence. Putnam provides a disturbing account of the American dream that should initiate a deep examination of the future of our country.

50 Instructional Routines to Develop Content Literacy


Douglas Fisher - 2010
    Every teacher needs to use instructional routines that allow students to engage in all of these literacy processes. Classroom examples from science, social studies, English, math, visual and performing arts, and core electives ensure that all middle and high school teachers will find useful ideas that they can implement immediately. This book provides readers with examples of fifty evidence-based instructional routines that can be used across content areas to ensure that reading and writing occur in all classes. Evidence-based-a clear research base is presented with every instructional routine, helping you further understand when and why a particular approach should be used. Practical examples-for each instructional routine presented, a practical example is provided that illustrates ways this routine has been used in today's classrooms. Quick reference -- instructional routines are arranged alphabetically, and an index on the inside front cover specifies the literacy focus for each strategy and whether the strategy is meant to be used before, during, or after reading. Instructional routines- recommended actions a teacher can take to foster comprehension, such as thinking aloud, using Question-Answer Relationships, and teaching with word walls.

The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future


Linda Darling-Hammond - 2009
    students continue to slip behind in the worlds rankings in science and math. Yet, at the same time, state prison budgets are increasing nearly three times as fast as budgets for education. In her new book, Linda Darling-Hammond, a chief education advisor to President Barack Obama, a bestselling author, and a nationally recognized leader in education reform, explores how America's performance globally is linked to the minority-majority achievement gap at home.

The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life


Parker J. Palmer - 1997
    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.

The Federalist Papers


Alexander Hamilton - 1788
    Ideal for anyone who wants to read a great work for the first time or revisit an old favorite, these new editions open the door to the stories and ideas that have shaped our world.

Instructional Technology and Media for Learning


Sharon E. Smaldino - 1999
    This unique case-based text places the reader squarely in the classroom while providing a framework that teaches readers to apply in-depth coverage of current and future computer, multimedia, Internet/intranet, distance learning, and audio/visual technologies to classroom instruction. Don't just read about technology integration - experience it! In addition to its' unique case-based approach the new edition now includes a new ASSURE Learning in Action DVD. This dvd, located in every copy of the text, provides current video of today's teachers using technology and media to improve learning for students across grade levels and content areas, rubric templates, a lesson plan builder, and skill-builder activites.

The New Deal: A Modern History


Michael A. Hiltzik - 2011
    More than an economic recovery plan, it was a reordering of the political system that continues to define America to this day. With The New Deal: A Modern History, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Michael Hiltzik offers fresh insights into this inflection point in the American experience. Here is an intimate look at the alchemy that allowed FDR to mold his multifaceted and contentious inner circle into a formidable political team. The New Deal: A Modern History shows how Roosevelt, through the force of his personality, commanded the loyalty of the rock-ribbed fiscal conservative Lewis Douglas and the radical agrarian Rexford Tugwell alike; of Harold Ickes and Harry Hopkins, one a curmudgeonly miser, the other a spendthrift idealist; of Henry Morgenthau, gentleman farmer of upstate New York; and of Frances Perkins, a prim social activist with her roots in Brahmin New England. Yet the same character traits that made him so supple and self-confident a leader would sow the seeds of the New Deal’s end, with a shocking surge of Rooseveltian misjudgments. Understanding the New Deal may be more important today than at any time in the last eight decades. Conceived in response to a devastating financial crisis very similar to America’s most recent downturn—born of excessive speculation, indifferent regulation of banks and investment houses, and disproportionate corporate influence over the White House and Congress—the New Deal remade the country’s economic and political environment in six years of intensive experimentation. FDR had no effective model for fighting the worst economic downturn in his generation’s experience; but the New Deal has provided a model for subsequent presidents who faced challenging economic conditions, right up to the present. Hiltzik tells the story of how the New Deal was made, demonstrating that its precepts did not spring fully conceived from the mind of FDR—before or after he took office. From first to last the New Deal was a work in progress, a patchwork of often contradictory ideas. Far from reflecting solely progressive principles, the New Deal also accommodated such conservative goals as a balanced budget and the suspension of antitrust enforcement. Some programs that became part of the New Deal were borrowed from the Republican administration of Herbert Hoover; indeed, some of its most successful elements were enacted over FDR’s opposition. In this bold reevaluation of a decisive moment in American history, Michael Hiltzik dispels decades of accumulated myths and misconceptions about the New Deal to capture with clarity and immediacy its origins, its legacy, and its genius.