Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students


Zaretta Lynn Hammond - 2014
    With the introduction of the rigorous Common Core State Standards, diverse classrooms need a proven framework for optimizing student engagement and facilitating deeper learningCulturally responsive pedagogy has shown great promise in meeting this need, but many educators still struggle with its implementation. In this book, Zaretta Hammond draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to offer an innovative approach for designing and implementing brain-compatible culturally responsive instruction.The book includes:*Information on how one’s culture programs the brain to process data and affects learning relationships*Ten “key moves” to build students’ learner operating systems and prepare them to become independent learners*Prompts for action and valuable self-reflectionWith a firm understanding of these techniques and principles, teachers and instructional leaders will confidently reap the benefits of culturally responsive instruction.

The Art of Critical Pedagogy; Possibilities for Moving from Theory to Practice in Urban Schools


Jeffrey M.R. Duncan-Andrade - 2007
    It addresses two looming, yet under-explored questions that have emerged with the ascendancy of critical pedagogy in the educational discourse: (1) What does critical pedagogy look like in work with urban youth? and (2) How can a systematic investigation of critical work enacted in urban contexts simultaneously draw upon and push the core tenets of critical pedagogy? Addressing the tensions inherent in enacting critical pedagogy - between working to disrupt and to successfully navigate oppressive institutionalized structures, and between the practice of critical pedagogy and the current standards-driven climate - The Art of Critical Pedagogy seeks to generate authentic internal and external dialogues among educators in search of texts that offer guidance for teaching for a more socially just world.

With Rigor for All: Meeting Common Core Standards for Reading Literature


Carol Jago - 2011
    Without artful instruction, many students will never acquire the literacy skills they need not only to meet Common Core Standards but also to meet the challenges this brave new world is sure to deal them." -Carol JagoAgain and again the Common Core Standards state that students must read "proficiently and independently" but how do we achieve this when students are groaning about having to read demanding literature and looking for ways to pass the class without turning pages? Carol Jago shows middle and high school teachers how to create English classrooms where students care about living literate lives and develop into proficient independent readers. With 50% new material, With Rigor for All, Second Edition features: integration of the Common Core State Standards as teaching touchstones YA lit pairings with classic texts to aid comprehension for middle and high school students tips to motivate reluctant readers with immersion, encouragement, and small steps a study guide and guidelines for curriculum development. Students need books that mirror their own experiences and if you teach literature that you love, your students will be more likely to love it too. Let Carol show you how to create an individually designed curriculum in which students read literary works of comparable quality, complexity, and range and enjoy doing it!

Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn


John Hattie - 2013
    Not what was fashionable, not what political and educational vested interests wanted to champion, but what actually produced the best results in terms of improving learning and educational outcomes. It became an instant bestseller and was described by the TES as revealing education's 'holy grail'.Now in this latest book, John Hattie has joined forces with cognitive psychologist Greg Yates to build on the original data and legacy of the Visible Learning project, showing how it's underlying ideas and the cutting edge of cognitive science can form a powerful and complimentary framework for shaping learning in the classroom and beyond.Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn explains the major principles and strategies of learning, outlining why it can be so hard sometimes, and yet easy on other occasions. Aimed at teachers and students, it is written in an accessible and engaging style and can be read cover to cover, or used on a chapter-by-chapter basis for essay writing or staff development.The book is structured in three parts - 'learning within classrooms', 'learning foundations', which explains the cognitive building blocks of knowledge acquisition and 'know thyself' which explores, confidence and self-knowledge. It also features extensive interactive appendices containing study guide questions to encourage critical thinking, annotated bibliographic entries with recommendations for further reading, links to relevant websites and YouTube clips. Throughout, the authors draw upon the latest international research into how the learning process works and how to maximise impact on students, covering such topics as:teacher personality;expertise and teacher-student relationships;how knowledge is stored and the impact of cognitive load;thinking fast and thinking slow;the psychology of self-control;the role of conversation at school and at home;invisible gorillas and the IKEA effect;digital native theory;myths and fallacies about how people learn. This fascinating book is aimed at any student, teacher or parent requiring an up-to-date commentary on how research into human learning processes can inform our teaching and what goes on in our schools. It takes a broad sweep through findings stemming mainly from social and cognitive psychology and presents them in a useable format for students and teachers at all levels, from preschool to tertiary training institutes.

The Principal's Guide To School Budgeting


Richard D. Sorenson - 2006
    This unique budgetary survival guide will enhance your instructional, technical, and managerial skills not only as the school′s leader but also as the school′s visionary, planning coordinator, and budgeting manager.

Save the World on Your Own Time


Stanley Fish - 2008
    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.

Teaching for Joy and Justice: Re-Imagining the Language Arts Classroom


Linda Christensen - 2009
    Christensen is recognized as one of the country's finest teachers. Her latest book shows why. Through story upon story, Christensen demonstrates how she draws on students' lives and the world to teach poetry, essay, narrative, and critical literacy skills. Teaching for Joy and Justice reveals what happens when a teacher treats all students as intellectuals, instead of intellectually challenged. Part autobiography, part curriculum guide, part critique of today's numbing standardized mandates, this book sings with hope -- born of Christensen's more than 30 years as a classroom teacher, language arts specialist, and teacher educator. Practical, inspirational, passionate: this is a must-have book for every language arts teacher, whether veteran or novice. In fact, Teaching for Joy and Justice is a must-have book for anyone who wants concrete examples of what it really means to teach for social justice.

Teaching Argument Writing, Grades 6-12: Supporting Claims with Relevant Evidence and Clear Reasoning


George Hillocks Jr. - 2011
    Essential reading for those preparing ALL students to think critically, write well, and succeed academically in both high school and college. Jim Burke, Author of The English Teacher's Companion and What's the Big Idea?Argument writing can be difficult to teach, but it may be the most important set of skills we teach in English. According to the National Common Core Standards, by the end of high school, students should be able to write arguments to support claims with clear reason and relevant evidence-and they should be able to do so well.Designed for middle and high school students, the activities in this book will enable students to write strong arguments and evaluate the arguments of others. When they are through, students will be able, as the Common Core Standards ask, to Delineate and evaluate [an] argument and specific claims...including the validity of the reasoning [and] the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence. Developed by George Hillocks, Jr. and others in diverse inner city classrooms in Chicago, students are easily engaged in the lively problem-solving approach detailed in this book.Teaching Argument Writing begins with how to teach simple arguments and moves onto those that are more complex, showing step-by-step how to teach students to write and evaluate:arguments of fact arguments of judgment arguments of policy Student handouts, activities, and models of classroom discussions are provided to help you bring these methods to your classroom. Among other things, Hillocks guides you through teaching your students:how judgments are made in the real world how to make literary judgments based on criteria how to develop and support criteria for arguments.

Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning


John Larmer - 2015
    It's not enough to just "do projects." Today's projects need to be rigorous, engaging, and in-depth, and they need to have student voice and choice built in. Such projects require careful planning and pedagogical skill. The authors -- leaders at the respected Buck Institute for Education -- take readers through the step-by-step process of how to create, implement, and assess PBL using a classroom-tested framework.

The Arts and the Creation of Mind


Elliot W. Eisner - 2002
    Offering a rich array of examples, he describes different approaches to the teaching of the arts and shows how these refine forms of thinking that are valuable in dealing with our daily life“Not since John Dewey has an American author written about art, education, and the creation of mind with such power and sensitivity.”—Michael Day, International Journal of Arts Education“A primer for the future. . . . This book will serve as an inspiration for those needing the language to convince policy makers and curriculum developers of the value of the arts in education, while also serving as a vehicle for illustrating the educational aspirations the very best education can offer.”—Rita L. Irwin, Journal of Critical Inquiry Into Curriculum and Instruction“[Eisner] has composed a text that is as insightful and inspirational as the educational research he envisions.”—James G. Henderson, International Journal of Education & the Arts

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming


Naomi Oreskes - 2010
    scientific community has long led the world in research on such areas as public health, environmental science, and issues affecting quality of life. Our scientists have produced landmark studies on the dangers of DDT, tobacco smoke, acid rain, and global warming. But at the same time, a small yet potent subset of this community leads the world in vehement denial of these dangers.Merchants of Doubt tells the story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. Remarkably, the same individuals surface repeatedly—some of the same figures who have claimed that the science of global warming is "not settled" denied the truth of studies linking smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. "Doubt is our product," wrote one tobacco executive. These "experts" supplied it.Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, historians of science, roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community, showing how ideology and corporate interests, aided by a too-compliant media, have skewed public understanding of some of the most pressing issues of our era.

Teaching What You Don't Know


Therese Huston - 2009
    You've taught Kant for twenty years, but now you're team-teaching a new course on Ethics and the Internet. The personality theorist retired and wasn't replaced, so now you, the neuroscientist, have to teach the "Sexual Identity" course. Everyone in academia knows it and no one likes to admit it: faculty often have to teach courses in areas they don't know very well. The challenges are even greater when students don't share your cultural background, lifestyle, or assumptions about how to behave in a classroom.In this practical and funny book, an experienced teaching consultant offers many creative strategies for dealing with typical problems. How can you prepare most efficiently for a new course in a new area? How do you look credible? And what do you do when you don't have a clue how to answer a question?Encouraging faculty to think of themselves as learners rather than as experts, Therese Huston points out that authority in the classroom doesn't come only, or even mostly, from perfect knowledge. She offers tips for introducing new topics in a lively style, for gauging students' understanding, for reaching unresponsive students, for maintaining discussions when they seem to stop dead, and -yes- for dealing with those impossible questions.Original, useful, and hopeful, this book reminds you that teaching what you don't know, to students whom you may not understand, is not just a job. It's an adventure."

Teaching with Poverty in Mind: What Being Poor Does to Kids' Brains and What Schools Can Do About It


Eric Jensen - 2009
    A brain that is susceptible to adverse environmental effects is equally susceptible to the positive effects of rich, balanced learning environments and caring relationships that build students' resilience, self-esteem, and character.Drawing from research, experience, and real school success stories, Teaching with Poverty in Mind reveals* What poverty is and how it affects students in school;* What drives change both at the macro level (within schools and districts) and at the micro level (inside a student's brain);* Effective strategies from those who have succeeded and ways to replicate those best practices at your own school; and* How to engage the resources necessary to make change happen.Too often, we talk about change while maintaining a culture of excuses. We can do better. Although no magic bullet can offset the grave challenges faced daily by disadvantaged children, this timely resource shines a spotlight on what matters most, providing an inspiring and practical guide for enriching the minds and lives of all your students.

Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art


Stephen Nachmanovitch - 1990
    It is about where art in the widest sense comes from. It is about why we create and what we learn when we do. It is about the flow of unhindered creative energy: the joy of making art in all its varied forms. Free Play is directed toward people in any field who want to contact, honor, and strengthen their own creative powers. It integrates material from a wide variety of sources among the arts, sciences, and spiritual traditions of humanity. Filled with unusual quotes, amusing and illuminating anecdotes, and original metaphors, it reveals how inspiration arises within us, how that inspiration may be blocked, derailed or obscured by certain unavoidable facts of life, and how finally it can be liberated - how we can be liberated - to speak or sing, write or paint, dance or play, with our own authentic voice. The whole enterprise of improvisation in life and art, of recovering free play and awakening creativity, is about being true to ourselves and our visions. It brings us into direct, active contact with boundless creative energies that we may not even know we had.

Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming: The NIPCC Report on Scientific Consensus


Craig D. Idso - 2015
    This claim is not only false, but its presence in the debate is an insult to science." With these words, the authors begin a detailed analysis of one of the most controversial topics of the day. The authors make a compelling case against claims of a scientific consensus. The purported proof of such a consensus consists of sloppy research by nonscientists, college students, and a highly partisan Australian blogger. Surveys of climate scientists, even those heavily biased in favor of climate alarmism, find extensive disagreement on the underlying science and doubts about its reliability. The authors point to four reasons why scientists disagree about global warming: a conflict among scientists in different and often competing disciplines; fundamental scientific uncertainties concerning how the global climate responds to the human presence; failure of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide objective guidance to the complex science; and bias among researchers. The authors offer a succinct summary of the real science of climate change based on their previously published comprehensive review of climate science in a volume titled Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science. They recommend that policymakers resist pressure from lobby groups to silence scientists who question the authority of the IPCC to claim to speak for climate science. More than 50,000 copies of the first edition were sold or given away in five months to elected officials, civic and business leaders, scientists, and other opinion leaders. The response from the science community and experts on climate change has been overwhelmingly positive. To meet demand for more copies, we have produced this second revised edition. Changes include a foreword by Marita Noon, at the time executive director of Energy Makes America Great, Inc. Some of the discussion in Chapter 1 has been revised and expanded thanks to feedback from readers of the first edition. Graphs in Chapters 4, 5, and 6 are now full color, and new graphs have been added.