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.

    A rich design, replete with infographics and special features, guides you quickly from learning to teaching with:Jen's moves and language 9 videos of her teaching in K-8 classrooms 13 conference note-taking forms-one for each reading goal from the hierarchy in her Reading Strategies BookSuggestions for connecting emergent bilingual learners' language goals and reading goals. With Jen's support, you'll discover the true magic of conferring-the joyous, aha moments you'll see in growing readers.

    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.

    This book goes well beyond the noise on learning space design that focuses on pretty Pinterest classrooms and moves towards a more sophisticated conversation about how learning spaces support and drive brain-friendly learning. SPACE is a beautifully designed book that respects that reading and learning can happen in a visually appealing way. Hare and Dillon walk educators through a series of questions and ideas on how learning spaces can support collaboration, creation, showcasing learning, and a learner's need for quiet. In addition to nudging thinking forward, SPACE provides practical design tips and uses images and testimonials for hacking learning spaces on a realistic budget. This book is designed to motivate, grow capacity, and energize educators to begin shifting their learning spaces to support modern learning for all students.

    When teachers offer themselves as moralists, political activists, or agents of social change rather than as credentialed experts in a particular subject and the methods used to analyze it, they abdicate their true purpose. And yet professors now routinely bring their political views into the classroom and seek to influence the political views of their students. Those who do this will often invoke academic freedom, but Fish argues that academic freedom, correctly understood, is the freedom to do the academic job, not the freedom to do any job that comes into the professor's mind. He insists that a professor's only obligation is "to present the material in the syllabus and introduce students to state-of-the-art methods of analysis. Not to practice politics, but to study it; not to proselytize for or against religious doctrines, but to describe them; not to affirm or condemn Intelligent Design, but to explain what it is and analyze its appeal."Given that hot-button issues such as Holocaust denial, free speech, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are regularly debated in classrooms across the nation, Save the World On Your Own Time is certain to spark fresh debate—and to incense both liberals and conservatives—about the true purpose of higher education in America.

    

    At the center of this prospect are the children of immigrants, who make up one fifth of America's youth. This book, written by the codirectors of the largest ongoing longitudinal study of immigrant children and their families, offers a clear, broad, interdisciplinary view of who these children are and what their future might hold.For immigrant children, the authors write, it is the best of times and the worst. These children are more likely than any previous generation of immigrants to end up in Ivy League universities--or unschooled, on parole, or in prison. Most arrive as motivated students, respectful of authority and quick to learn English. Yet, at the same time, many face huge obstacles to success, such as poverty, prejudice, the trauma of immigration itself, and exposure to the materialistic, hedonistic world of their native-born peers.The authors vividly describe how forces within and outside the family shape these children's developing sense of identity and their ambivalent relationship with their adopted country. Their book demonstrates how Americanization, long an immigrant ideal, has, in a nation so diverse and full of contradictions, become ever harder to define, let alone achieve.

    Each chapter starts out with a chapter focus that contains CEC Knowledge and Skills Standards that show you what you are expected to master in the chapter. Concepts are presented in a step-by-step manner followed by exercises that help you understand each step. Portions of assessment instruments, protocols, and scoring tables are provided to help you with the practice exercises. Additionally, you will participate in the educational decision-making process using data from classroom observations, curriculum-based assessment, functional behavior assessment, and norm-referenced assessment. New to the seventh edition: An emphasis on progress monitoring, including progress monitoring applied to the acquisition of knowledge and skills presented in this text The assessment process according to the regulations of IDEA 2004 A separate chapter on transition issues and assessment A separate chapter on assessment in infancy and early childhood A new chapter on the measurement aspects of Response to Intervention Increased consideration of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in the assessment process

    Called to Adoption offers tips, and up-to-date, relevant information every parent considering adoption should know. Readers will identify with author Mardie Caldwell s personal and professional experiences, making this resource a vital handbook as parents take steps to adopt. This book allows hopeful adoptive parents to discover: -The single most important decision to make before beginning any path to adoption. -How to select the right adoption professional. -Creative ideas to fund your adoption. -The proven formula for adoption success. -The shocking need for Christian Adoption. -Encouragement from God s word throughout the adoption process. -How to quickly get started toward adoption. Called to Adoption also outlines the differences between types of adoption and offers step-by-step guidance to adopt safely and successfully. Featuring stories from Caldwell s own adoption experience, as well as from other adoptive parents, this book will prepare adopting parents for the logistic and emotional sides of adoption. This book is recommended for Christians interested in becoming adoptive parents, or who may support those facing an adoption journey, as well as for those who want to understand the need for Christian adoption. As founder and CEO of Lifetime Adoption Center, Caldwell has assisted thousands of families find answers to questions regarding the decision to adopt. This book also includes a special section for families considering the decision about moving from fertility treatments to adoption."

    (International Dyslexia Association- New York branch) Dr. Robert Frank, whose own dyslexia didnít stop him from becoming an educator, psychologist, and award-winning author, takes the reader inside the emotions and frustrations of the dyslexic child to help parents coach their child to:- Improve academic achievement- Get support from friends and family- Establish solid work and study habits- Focus on abilities and strengths- Set and meet personal goalsAbove all, Dr. Frank tells parents the simple steps they can take to help their child build self-esteem and confidence and create a life of success.

    This is for the mothers out there that want to run the home and raise the children in a stress-free and affordable way. This is for the wife that would like to be the hostess with the mostess, but not toil and fret all day and has no talents in making radishes into roses. This is for the real housewive's that are a little funky, want to be frugal, want the adorable home, maybe a little farm in their Urban backyard, purposely don't match their sheets, like fun accent walls in each room, want to homeschool their children, need to do a major household budget, and downsize, but won't compromise on a good life. This is for the families that want to cut the grocery bill big time and still have their organics and non-GMO popcorn. This is also for the families happy to ditch the car and walk to save money and the environment but won't give up their entertaining and gatherings. This book is loaded with great advice and tips on everything from a household budget, making your own cleaners, going a little country in the city, throwing parties with a few dollars, and having a good life on very little.

    This book defines what rubrics are, and how to construct and use them. It provides an introduction for those starting out to integrate rubrics in their teaching.

    Becoming a Student-Ready College flips the college readiness conversation to provide a new perspective on creating institutional value and facilitating student success. Instead of focusing on student preparedness for college (or lack thereof), this book asks the more pragmatic question of what are colleges and universities doing to prepare for the students who are entering their institutions? What must change in an institution's policies, practices, and culture in order to be student-ready?Clear and concise, this book is packed with insightful discussion and practical strategies for achieving your ambitious student success goals. These ideas for redesigning practices and policies provide more than food for thought--they offer a real-world framework for real institutional change. You'll learn:How educators can acknowledge their own biases and assumptions about underserved students in order to allow for change New ways to advance student learning and success How to develop and value student assets and social capital Strategies and approaches for creating a new student-focused culture of leadership at every level To truly become student-ready, educators must make difficult decisions, face the pressures of accountability, and address their preconceived notions about student success head-on. Becoming a Student-Ready College provides a reality check based on today's higher education environment.

     Combining robust evidence from a range of fields with the practical wisdom of experienced, effective classroom teachers, this is a must-read for trainee and experienced teachers wishing to enhance their skills in teaching English.

    Politicians and businesspeople, determined to get tough with students and teachers, have increased the pressure to raise standardized test scores. Unfortunately, the effort to do so typically comes at the expense of more meaningful forms of learning. That disturbing conclusion emerges from Alfie Kohn's devastating new indictment of standardized testing. Drawing from the latest research, he concisely explains just how little test results really tell us and just how harmful a test-driven curriculum can be. Written in a highly readable question-and-answer format, The Case Against Standardized Testing will help readers respond to common questions and challenges-showing, for example, that:- high scores often signify relatively superficial thinking- many of the leading tests were never intended to measure teaching or learning- a school that improves its test results may well have lowered its standards to do so- far from helping to "close the gap," the use of standardized testing is most damaging for low-income and minority students- as much as 90 percent of the variations in test scores among schools or states have nothing to do with the quality of instruction- far more meaningful measures of student learning - or school quality - are availableKohn's central message is that standardized tests are "not like the weather, something to which we must resign ourselves . . . They are not a force of nature but a force of politics - and political decisions can be questioned, challenged, and ultimately reversed." The final section demonstrates how teachers, parents, and students can turn their frustration into action and successfully turn back the testing juggernaut in order to create classrooms that focus on learning.Also available on Audiotape: The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools, read by Alfie Kohn.