While some of these products are rooted in solid science, the research behind many others is grossly exaggerated. This new book, written by a top thought leader, helps everyday teachers, administrators, and family members--who don't have years of statistics courses under their belts--separate the wheat from the chaff and determine which new educational approaches are scientifically supported and worth adopting.Author's first book, Why Don't Students Like School?, catapulted him to superstar status in the field of education Willingham's work has been hailed as brilliant analysis by The Wall Street Journal and a triumph by The Washington PostAuthor blogs for The Washington Post and Brittanica.com, and writes a column for American EducatorIn this insightful book, thought leader and bestselling author Dan Willingham offers an easy, reliable way to discern which programs are scientifically supported and which are the equivalent of educational snake oil.

    But the way we've been taught often excludes all sorts of practical ways of finding out about ideas, knowledge and culture - anything from cooking to fixing loo cisterns, from dance to model making, from collecting leaves to playing 'Who am I?'. The great thing is that you really can use everything around you to learn more.Learning should be much more fun and former children's laureate, million-selling author, broadcaster, father of five and all-round national treasure, Michael Rosen wants to show you how. Forget lists, passing tests and ticking boxes, the world outside the classroom can't be contained within the limits of any kind of curriculum - and it's all the better for it. Long car journeys, poems about farting, cake baking, even shouting at the TV can teach lessons that will last a lifetime. Packed with enough practical tips, stories and games to inspire a legion of anxious parents and bored children, Good Ideas shows that the best kind of education really does start at home.

    For others, it's a boring, stressful, and frustrating waste of time. If your child is in the second category, why keep tormenting them? Instead, why not help them find an educational environment where they feel genuinely motivated, excited, and empowered?In this eye-opening book, Blake Boles makes the case for leaving conventional school and taking one of the many alternative paths through K-12 that exist today. He addresses parents' major concerns about unconventional education—Can my kids still go to college? Will they still be employable? How will they learn to work hard?—while highlighting the hidden benefits of self-directed learning, such as improved parent-child relationships, a more balanced decision-making process regarding college, and a heightened sense of autonomy and connection.Drawing upon 15 years of work as a mentor and guide for adolescents in alternative and experiential learning environments—as well as his own unconventional life path—Boles weaves together narrative, theory, and research to build a powerful argument for granting children unusual levels of freedom and responsibility.

    This detachment is hard to repair and highly detrimental to a child's development-most children who feel they cannot rely on their parents grow up to become more emotionally insecure and less self-assured than their peers.The Attachment Connection sorts out the facts from the fiction about parent-child attachment and shows how paying attention to the emotional needs of your child, particularly during the first five years of development, can help him or her grow up happy, secure, and confident. You'll discover how your child's brain is developing at each stage of growth and learn to use reasonable, easy-to-implement guidelines based on sound science to foster secure attachment, healthy social skills, and emotional regulation in your child.

    Beyond the Bake Sale shows how to form these essential partnerships and how to make them work.Packed with tips from principals and teachers, checklists, and an invaluable resource section, Beyond the Bake Sale reveals how to build strong collaborative relationships and offers practical advice for improving interactions between parents and teachers, from insuring that PTA groups are constructive and inclusive to navigating the complex issues surrounding diversity in the classroom.Written with candor, clarity, and humor, Beyond the Bake Sale is essential reading for teachers, parents on the front lines in public schools, and administrators and policy makers at all levels.

    Wendy Mogel shows parents how to navigate the challenging teenage years.When a child becomes a teenager, her sense of entitlement and independence grows, the pressure to compete skyrockets, and communication becomes fraught with obstacles. Dr. Wendy Mogel emphasizes empathy, and offers guidance over micromanaging teens’ lives and overreacting to missteps. She reveals that emotional outbursts, rudeness, rule-breaking, staying up late, and other worrisome teen behaviors are in fact normal and necessary steps in psychological growth and character development. With her signature wit and warmth, Mogel gives parents the tools to meet these behaviors with thoughtful care, offering reassuring advice on: · why influence is more effective than control · teenage narcissism · living graciously with rudeness · the surprising value of ordinary work · why risk is essential preparation for the post–high school years · when to step in and when to step back The Blessing of a B Minus is an important and inspiring book that fortifies parents through the teenage years.

    And yet, it is parents’ lack of self-awareness and confused priorities that are dangerously undermining children’s development.Through the author’s own original field research, including hundreds of rich, revealing conversations with children, parents, teachers, and coaches, a surprising picture emerges.Parents’ intense focus on their children’s happiness is turning many children into self-involved, fragile conformists.The suddenly widespread desire of parents to be closer to their children—a heartening trend in many ways—often undercuts kids’morality.Our fixation with being great parents—and our need for our children to reflect that greatness—can actually make them feel ashamed for failing to measure up. Finally, parents’ interactions with coaches and teachers—and coaches’ and teachers’ interactions with children—are critical arenas for nurturing, or eroding, children’s moral lives.Weissbourd’s ultimately compassionate message—based on compelling new research—is that the intense, crisis-filled, and profoundly joyous process of raising a child can be a powerful force for our own moral development.

    In this indispensable book for parents, Borba has created a new break-through in conceptualizing and teaching virtue, character and values under the auspices of a measurable capacity -- Moral Intelligence. This book confronts the front-page crisis we now face in our country regarding youth violence, alienation, self-destructive behavior, cold-heartedness, lack of compassion, insensitivity, intolerance and the break down of values. The author provides a new way to understand, evaluate and inspire our kids with the seven essential virtues which comprise moral intelligence.

    And so do children - if they have the skills to do it. That's why award-winning psychologist Dr. Myrna Shure decided to create a program to give them those skills. It's called I Can Problem Solve (ICPS) and for twenty-five years it has benefited thousands nationwide. Raising a Thinking Child, a book that will change your family dynamics forever - and help your child develop in ways you never thought possible - brings this positive parenting program directly into your home. Unlike other methods of child rearing, the ICPS approach teaches youngsters as young as four not what to think or do, but how to think - and the results are astounding. Through the program's specially designed and fun-to-do dialogues, games, and activities - easily incorporated into everyday family life - a young child learns how to solve problems and resolve conflicts with friends, teachers, and family; explore alternative solutions and their consequences; and understand the feelings of others. With ICPS, shy children become more assertive and impulsive children are less likely to act out when things don't go their way. Most important the ICPS-competent child is better equipped to avoid early destructive behaviors that later can lead to delinquency, substance abuse, violence, and depression. Helping your child become a thinking, feeling individual and grow up to be a socially adjusted, self-confident adult is what Raising a Thinking Child is all about. Based on years of research and evaluation, clinically proven, and child-tested, it may be the most important gift you can share with your child today...for tomorrow.

    With hard-hitting information and a touch of comic relief, Berliner, Glass, and their Associates separate fact from fiction in this comprehensive look at modern education reform. They explain how the mythical failure of public education has been created and perpetuated in large part by political and economic interests that stand to gain from its destruction. They also expose a rapidly expanding variety of organizations and media that intentionally misrepresent facts. Many of these organizations suggest that their goal is unbiased service in the public interest when, in fact, they represent narrow political and financial interests. Where appropriate, the authors name the promoters of these deceptions and point out how they are served by encouraging false beliefs.This provocative book features short essays on important topics to provide every elected representative, school administrator, school board member, teacher, parent, and concerned citizen with much food for thought, as well as reliable knowledge from authoritative sources.

    John Medina showed us how our brains really work—and why we ought to redesign our workplaces and schools. Now, in Brain Rules for Baby, he shares what the latest science says about how to raise smart and happy children from zero to 5. This book is destined to revolutionize parenting. Just one of the surprises: The best way to get your children into the college of their choice? Teach them impulse control.Brain Rules for Baby bridges the gap between what scientists know and what parents practice. Through fascinating and funny stories, Medina, a developmental molecular biologist and dad, unravels how a child’s brain develops--and what you can do to optimize it.You will view your children—and how to raise them—in a whole new light. You’ll learn:Where nature ends and nurture beginsWhy men should do more household choresWhat you do when emotions run hot affects how your child turns outTV is harmful for children under 2Your child’s ability to relate to others predicts her future math performanceSmart and happy are inseparable. Pursuing your child’s intellectual success at the expense of his happiness achieves neitherPraising effort is better than praising intelligenceThe best predictor of academic performance is not IQ. It’s self controlWhat you do right now—before pregnancy, during pregnancy, and through the first five years—will affect your children for the rest of their lives. Brain Rules for Baby is an indispensable guide.

    Family psychologist, best-selling author, and parenting expert John Rosemond uses his thirty-six years of professional experience working with families to develop the quintessential "how to" book for parents. Rosemond's step-by-step program, based on biblical principles, traditional parenting approaches, and common sense, covers a wide range of discipline problems applicable to children from toddler to teen.Sections include:Essential Discipline Principles Essential Discipline Tools Perplexing Problems and Simple Solutions Not Your Everyday Problems General Questions and Answers (Troubleshooting)Filled with real-life examples that anyone who's ever been around children can relate to, this book is sure to be one of the most valuable, helpful resources parents have ever stumbled across.

    These objects and spaces encode decades, even centuries of changing ideas about what makes for good child-rearing--and what does not. Do you choose wooden toys, or plastic, or, increasingly, digital? What do youngsters lose when seesaws are deemed too dangerous and slides are designed primarily for safety? How can the built environment help children cultivate self-reliance? In these debates, parents, educators, and kids themselves are often caught in the middle.Now, prominent design critic Alexandra Lange reveals the surprising histories behind the human-made elements of our children's pint-size landscape. Her fascinating investigation shows how the seemingly innocuous universe of stuff affects kids' behavior, values, and health, often in subtle ways. And she reveals how years of decisions by toymakers, architects, and urban planners have helped--and hindered--American youngsters' journeys toward independence. Seen through Lange's eyes, everything from the sandbox to the street becomes vibrant with buried meaning. The Design of Childhood will change the way you view your children's world--and your own.

    Never before in history have children been so plugged in—and so out of touch with the natural world. In this groundbreaking new work, child advocacy expert Richard Louv directly links the lack of nature in the lives of today's wired generation—he calls it nature deficit—to some of the most disturbing childhood trends, such as rises in obesity, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), and depression. Some startling facts: By the 1990s the radius around the home where children were allowed to roam on their own had shrunk to a ninth of what it had been in 1970. Today, average eight-year-olds are better able to identify cartoon characters than native species, such as beetles and oak trees, in their own community. The rate at which doctors prescribe antidepressants to children has doubled in the last five years, and recent studies show that too much computer use spells trouble for the developing mind. Nature-deficit disorder is not a medical condition; it is a description of the human costs of alienation from nature. This alienation damages children and shapes adults, families, and communities. There are solutions, though, and they're right in our own backyards. Last child in the Woods is the first book to bring together cutting-edge research showing that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development—physical, emotional, and spiritual. What's more, nature is a potent therapy for depression, obesity, and ADD. Environment-based education dramatically improves standardized test scores and grade point averages and develops skills in problem solving, critical thinking, and decision making. Even creativity is stimulated by childhood experiences in nature. Yet sending kids outside to play is increasingly difficult. Computers, television, and video games compete for their time, of course, but it's also our fears of traffic, strangers, even virus-carrying mosquitoes—fears the media exploit—that keep children indoors. Meanwhile, schools assign more and more homework, and there is less and less access to natural areas. Parents have the power to ensure that their daughter or son will not be the "last child in the woods," and this book is the first step toward that nature-child reunion.