Book picks similar to
Open a World of Possible by Lois Bridges


professional
non-fiction
nonfiction
education

Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen


Mary Norris - 2015
    Now she brings her vast experience, good cheer, and finely sharpened pencils to help the rest of us in a boisterous language book as full of life as it is of practical advice.Between You & Me features Norris's laugh-out-loud descriptions of some of the most common and vexing problems in spelling, punctuation, and usage—comma faults, danglers, "who" vs. "whom," "that" vs. "which," compound words, gender-neutral language—and her clear explanations of how to handle them. Down-to-earth and always open-minded, she draws on examples from Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, and the Lord's Prayer, as well as from The Honeymooners, The Simpsons, David Foster Wallace, and Gillian Flynn. She takes us to see a copy of Noah Webster's groundbreaking Blue-Back Speller, on a quest to find out who put the hyphen in Moby-Dick, on a pilgrimage to the world's only pencil-sharpener museum, and inside the hallowed halls of The New Yorker and her work with such celebrated writers as Pauline Kael, Philip Roth, and George Saunders.Readers—and writers—will find in Norris neither a scold nor a softie but a wise and witty new friend in love with language and alive to the glories of its use in America, even in the age of autocorrect and spell-check. As Norris writes, "The dictionary is a wonderful thing, but you can't let it push you around."

Dangerous Minds


LouAnne Johnson - 1992
    They're dangerous."But LouAnne Johnson had a different idea. Where the school system saw thirty-four unreachable kids, she saw young men and women with intelligence and dreams. When others gave up on them, she broke the rules to give them the best things a teacher can give-hope and belief in themselves. When statistics showed the chances were they'd never graduate, she fought to beat the odds.This is her remarkable story-and theirs. If you loved Stand and Deliver, you'll stand up and cheer for LouAnne Johnson and Dangerous Minds.

Pure Genius: Building a Culture of Innovation and Taking 20% Time to the Next Level


Don Wettrick - 2014
    You've heard the complaints too many times: When am I ever going to use this in the real world? Why are we learning this? When are we going to learn about something interesting? But what if your students came to class excited? What if they were passionate about their projects? What if they grasped the connection between today's work and tomorrow's careers? In classrooms across the nation, innovative teachers are employing passion-based, open-source learning to improve their student's education. In Pure Genius, Don Wettrick encourages teachers and administrators to collaborate--with experts, students, and one another--to create interesting, and even life-changing opportunities for learning. You'll discover: Innovation brings a fresh approach to solving real problems Creative ways to work within the constraints your current budget and system Courses that offer relevant content can inspire students to learn beyond the classroom Collaborating with experts and mentors improves the learning experience for students and teachers Students must be taught and entrusted to appropriately use social media Social media is an incredible resource for inspiration and professional development Innovation is the key to equipping today's students for tomorrow's marketplace. By incorporating the concepts Don explains in Pure Genius, you can empower the next generation to be free thinkers who can create new concepts and products that can change the way we live.

Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why


Paul Tough - 2016
          Now, in Helping Children Succeed, Tough takes on a new set of pressing questions: What does growing up with economic and other stress do to children’s mental and physical development? How does adversity at home affect their success in the classroom, from preschool to high school? And what practical steps can the adults who are responsible for them take to improve their chances for a positive future?       Tough once again encourages us to think in a new way about the challenges of childhood. Mining the latest research in psychology and neuroscience, he provides us with insights and strategies for a new approach to childhood adversity, one designed to help many more children succeed.

Yardsticks: Children in the Classroom Ages 4-14


Chip Wood - 1994
    This comprehensive, user-friendly reference helps teachers and administrators use knowledge of child development to shape classrooms and schools where all children can succeed.For each age, this book includes:Narrative description of developmental traitsCharts summarizing physical, social, language, and cognitive growth patternsSuggestions for curricular areas: reading, writing, mathematics, and thematic unitsFavorite books for different ages.What's new in the third edition:A new, brief overview of issues in the development of bilingualism and biliteracy among Latino/Hispanic childrenA new appendix on the "birthday cluster exercise" for applying the information in the book to working with a whole class of studentsAn updated list of recommended children's booksAn updated list of recommended resources for teachers and parents.

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life


Anne Lamott - 1994
    [It] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said. 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'"With this basic instruction always in mind, Anne Lamott returns to offer us a new gift: a step-by-step guide on how to write and on how to manage the writer's life. From "Getting Started,' with "Short Assignments," through "Shitty First Drafts," "Character," "Plot," "Dialogue." all the way from "False Starts" to "How Do You Know When You're Done?" Lamott encourages, instructs, and inspires. She discusses "Writers Block," "Writing Groups," and "Publication." Bracingly honest, she is also one of the funniest people alive.If you have ever wondered what it takes to be a writer, what it means to be a writer, what the contents of your school lunches said about what your parents were really like, this book is for you. From faith, love, and grace to pain, jealousy, and fear, Lamott insists that you keep your eyes open, and then shows you how to survive. And always, from the life of the artist she turns to the art of life.

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World


Adam M. Grant - 2016
    How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?   Using surprising studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment, Grant explores how to recognize a good idea, speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt; how parents and teachers can nurture originality in children; and how leaders can build cultures that welcome dissent. Learn from an entrepreneur who pitches his start-ups by highlighting the reasons not to invest, a woman at Apple who challenged Steve Jobs from three levels below, an analyst who overturned the rule of secrecy at the CIA, a billionaire financial wizard who fires employees for failing to criticize him, and a TV executive who didn’t even work in comedy but saved Seinfeld from the cutting-room floor. The payoff is a set of groundbreaking insights about rejecting conformity and improving the status quo.

Reading Picture Books With Children: How to Shake Up Storytime and Get Kids Talking about What They See


Megan Dowd Lambert - 2015
    Using classic examples, Megan asks kids to think about why the trim size of Ludwig Bemelman's Madeline is so generous, or why the typeset in David Wiesner's Caldecott winner,The Three Pigs, appears to twist around the page, or why books like Chris Van Allsburg's The Polar Express and Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar are printed landscape instead of portrait. The dynamic discussions that result from this shared reading style range from the profound to the hilarious and will inspire adults to make children's responses to text, art, and design an essential part of storytime.

Catching Readers Before They Fall: Supporting Readers Who Struggle, K-4


Pat Johnson - 2010
    They describe classroom environments that support all students and touch upon comprehension strategies and how to help children integrate them.This book is essential reading for all who work with struggling readers in any context and contains a wealth of resources, including a thorough explanation of all the sources of information readers use to solve words, examples and scenarios of teacher/student interactions, prompts to use with struggling readers, lessons on modeling, and assessment guidelines.

The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction


Meghan Cox Gurdon - 2019
    Grounded in the latest neuroscience and behavioral research, and drawing widely from literature, The Enchanted Hour explains the dazzling cognitive and social-emotional benefits that await children, whatever their class, nationality or family background. But it’s not just about bedtime stories for little kids: Reading aloud consoles, uplifts and invigorates at every age, deepening the intellectual lives and emotional well-being of teenagers and adults, too.Meghan Cox Gurdon argues that this ancient practice is a fast-working antidote to the fractured attention spans, atomized families and unfulfilling ephemera of the tech era, helping to replenish what our devices are leaching away. For everyone, reading aloud engages the mind in complex narratives; for children, it’s an irreplaceable gift that builds vocabulary, fosters imagination, and kindles a lifelong appreciation of language, stories and pictures.Bringing together the latest scientific research, practical tips, and reading recommendations, The Enchanted Hour will both charm and galvanize, inspiring readers to share this invaluable, life-altering tradition with the people they love most.

I Would Leave Me If I Could: A Collection of Poetry


Halsey - 2020
    In I Would Leave Me If I Could, she reveals never-before-seen poetry of longing, love, and the nuances of bipolar disorder.

The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way


Amanda Ripley - 2013
    Through their adventures, Ripley discovers startling truths about how attitudes, parenting, and rigorous teaching have revolutionized these countries’ education results.In The Smartest Kids in the World, Ripley’s astonishing new insights reveal that top-performing countries have achieved greatness only in the past several decades; that the kids who live there are learning to think for themselves, partly through failing early and often; and that persistence, hard work, and resilience matter more to our children’s life chances than self-esteem or sports.Ripley’s investigative work seamlessly weaves narrative and research, providing in-depth analysis and gripping details that will keep you turning the pages. Written in a clear and engaging style, The Smartest Kids in the World will enliven public as well as dinner table debates over what makes for brighter and better students.

Cherry


Nico Walker - 2018
    A young man is just a college freshman when he meets Emily. They share a passion for Edward Albee and ecstasy and fall hard and fast in love. But soon Emily has to move home to Elba, New York, and he flunks out of school and joins the army. Desperate to keep their relationship alive, they marry before he ships out to Iraq. But as an army medic, he is unprepared for the grisly reality that awaits him. His fellow soldiers smoke; they huff computer duster; they take painkillers; they watch porn. And many of them die. He and Emily try to make their long-distance marriage work, but when he returns from Iraq, his PTSD is profound, and the drugs on the street have changed. The opioid crisis is beginning to swallow up the Midwest. Soon he is hooked on heroin, and so is Emily. They attempt a normal life, but with their money drying up, he turns to the one thing he thinks he could be really good at – robbing banks.Hammered out on a prison typewriter, Cherry marks the arrival of a raw, bleakly hilarious, and surprisingly poignant voice straight from the dark heart of America.

The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything


Stephen M.R. Covey - 2006
    Covey's eldest son comes a revolutionary new path towards productivity and satisfaction. Trust, says Stephen M.R. Covey, is the very basis of the new global economy, and he shows how trust—and the speed at which it is established with clients, employees and constituents —is the essential ingredient for any high–performance, successful organization. For business leaders and public figures in any arena, The Speed of Trust offers an unprecedented and eminently practical look at exactly how trust functions in our every transaction and relationship—from the most personal to the broadest, most indirect interaction—and how to establish trust immediately so that you and your organization can forego the time–killing, bureaucratic check–and–balance processes so often deployed in lieu of actual trust.

Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You'd Had: Ideas and Strategies from Vibrant Classrooms


Tracy Zager - 2017
    Pose the same question to students and many will use words like "boring", "useless", and even "humiliating". In  Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You'd Had , author Tracy Zager helps teachers close this gap by making math class more like mathematics. Tracy has spent years working with highly skilled math teachers in a diverse range of settings and grades. You'll find this book jam-packed with new ideas from these vibrant classrooms.  How to Teach Student-Centered Mathematics: Zager outlines a problem-solving approach to mathematics for elementary and middle school educators looking for new ways to inspire student learningBig Ideas, Practical Application: This math book contains dozens of practical and accessible teaching techniques that focus on fundamental math concepts, including strategies that simulate connection of big ideas; rich tasks that encourage students to wonder, generalize, hypothesize, and persevere; and routines to teach students how to collaborateKey Topics for Elementary and Middle School Teachers:  Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You'd Had  offers fresh perspectives on common challenges, from formative assessment to classroom management for elementary and middle school teachersAll teachers can move towards increasingly authentic and delightful mathematics teaching and learning. This important book helps develop instructional techniques that will make the math classes we teach so much better than the math classes we took.