The Wild Card: 7 Steps to an Educator's Creative Breakthrough


Wade King - 2017
    If you are a high school teacher or a kindergarten teacher, the seven steps in The Wild Card will give you the knowledge and the confidence to bring creative teaching strategies into your classroom.You'll learn: Why the deck is not stacked against you, no matter what kind of hand you've been dealt Why you should never listen to the Joker How to identify the "Ace up your sleeve" and use it to create classroom magic How to apply the "Rules of Rigor" in order to fuse creativity with learning How to become the "Wild Card" that changes the game for your students

Self-Reg: How to Help Your Child (and You) Break the Stress Cycle and Successfully Engage with Life


Stuart Shanker - 2016
    Rooted in decades of clinical practice and research by leading child psychologist Dr. Stuart Shanker, Self-Reg realigns the power of the parent-child relationship for positive change. Self-regulation is the nervous system's way of responding to stress. We are seeing a generation of children and teens with excessively high levels of stress and, as a result, an explosion of emotional, social, learning, behavior, and physical health problems. But few parents recognize the "hidden stressors" that their children are struggling with: physiological as well as social and emotional. An entrenched view of child rearing is seeing our children as lacking self-control or will-power, but the real basis for these problems lies in excessive stress.Self-regulation can dramatically improve a child's mood, attention, and concentration. It can help children to feel empathy and to develop the sorts of virtues that every parent knows are vital for their child's long-term well-being. Self-regulation brings about profound and lasting transformation that continues to mature throughout life. Shanker translates decades of his findings from working with children into practical, prescriptive advice for parents, giving them concrete ways to develop their self-regulation skills and teach their children how to do the same for optimal learning, social, and emotional growth as well as for overall well-being.

Best Practices in Literacy Instruction


Linda B. Gambrell - 1999
    Offering practical guidance for literacy educators, curriculum development specialists, and other education professionals and policy makers, this volume considers how we can most effectively improve the quality and content of reading and writing instruction. Leading researchers and practitioners address the eight principles of best practice, providing the most current information on how to enhance students' ability to construct meaning from text independently, draw upon texts to build conceptual understanding, effectively communicate ideas orally and in writing, and develop an intrinsic desire to read and write. This timely book blends state-of-the-art theory and research with workable suggestions based on extensive hands-on experience in the field.

The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist's Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults


Frances E. Jensen - 2014
    Frances E. Jensen, a mother, teacher, researcher, and internationally known expert in neurology, introduces us to the mystery and magic of the teen brain. One of the first books to focus exclusively on the neurological development of adolescents, The Teenage Brain presents new findings, dispels widespread myths, and provides practical suggestions for negotiating this difficult and dynamic life stage for both adults and adolescents.Interweaving easy-to-follow scientific data with anecdotes drawn from her experiences as a parent, clinician, and public speaker, Dr. Jensen explores adolescent brain functioning and development, including learning and memory, and investigates the impact of influences such as drugs, multitasking, sleep, and stress. The Teenage Brain reveals how: Adolescents may not be as resilient to the effects of drugs as we previously thought. Occasional use of marijuana has been shown to cause lingering memory problems, and long-term use can affect later adulthood I.Q. Multi-tasking causes divided attention and can reduce learning ability. Emotionally stressful situations in adolescence can have permanent effects on mental health, and may lead to higher risk for certain neuropsychiatric disorders such as depression.Rigorous yet accessible, warm yet direct, The Teenage Brain sheds new light on young adults, and provides practical suggestions for how parents, schools, and even the legal system can better help them during this crucial period.

Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning


Peter H. Johnston - 2004
    Teachers create intellectual environments that produce not only technically competent students, but also caring, secure, actively literate human beings.Choice Words shows how teachers accomplish this using their most powerful teaching tool: language. Throughout, Peter Johnston provides examples of apparently ordinary words, phrases, and uses of language that are pivotal in the orchestration of the classroom. Grounded in a study by accomplished literacy teachers, the book demonstrates how the things we say (and don't say) have surprising consequences for what children learn and for who they become as literate people. Through language, children learn how to become strategic thinkers, not merely learning the literacy strategies. In addition, Johnston examines the complex learning that teachers produce in classrooms that is hard to name and thus is not recognized by tests, by policy-makers, by the general public, and often by teachers themselves, yet is vitally important.This book will be enlightening for any teacher who wishes to be more conscious of the many ways their language helps children acquire literacy skills and view the world, their peers, and themselves in new ways.

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know


Adam M. Grant - 2021
    Evidence has shown that creative geniuses are not attached to one identity, but constantly willing to rethink their stances and that leaders who admit they don't know something and seek critical feedback lead more productive and innovative teams.New evidence shows us that as a mindset and a skilllset, rethinking can be taught and Grant explains how to develop the necessary qualities to do it. Section 1 explores why we struggle to think again and how we can learn to do it as individuals, arguing that 'grit' alone can actually be counterproductive. Section 2 discusses how we can help others think again through learning about 'argument literacy'. And the final section 3 looks at how schools, businesses and governments fall short in building cultures that encourage rethinking.In the end, learning to rethink may be the secret skill to give you the edge in a world changing faster than ever.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business


Charles Duhigg - 2012
    Over the past two years, she has transformed almost every aspect of her life. She has quit smoking, run a marathon, and been promoted at work. The patterns inside her brain, neurologists discover, have fundamentally changed.Marketers at Procter & Gamble study videos of people making their beds. They are desperately trying to figure out how to sell a new product called Febreze, on track to be one of the biggest flops in company history. Suddenly, one of them detects a nearly imperceptible pattern—and with a slight shift in advertising, Febreze goes on to earn a billion dollars a year.An untested CEO takes over one of the largest companies in America. His first order of business is attacking a single pattern among his employees—how they approach worker safety—and soon the firm, Alcoa, becomes the top performer in the Dow Jones.What do all these people have in common? They achieved success by focusing on the patterns that shape every aspect of our lives.They succeeded by transforming habits.In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation.Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation’s largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death.At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work.Habits aren’t destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.

Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School


Carla Shalaby - 2017
    Time and again, we make seemingly endless efforts to moderate, punish, and even medicate our children, when we should instead be concerned with transforming the very nature of our institutions, systems, and structures, large and small. Through delicately crafted portraits of these memorable children—Zora, Lucas, Sean, and Marcus—Troublemakers allows us to see school through the eyes of those who know firsthand what it means to be labeled a problem.From Zora’s proud individuality to Marcus’s open willfulness, from Sean’s struggle with authority to Lucas’s tenacious imagination, comes profound insight—for educators and parents alike—into how schools engender, exclude, and then try to erase trouble, right along with the young people accused of making it. And although the harsh disciplining of adolescent behavior has been called out as part of a school-to-prison pipeline, the children we meet in these pages demonstrate how a child’s path to excessive punishment and exclusion in fact begins at a much younger age.Shalaby’s empathetic, discerning, and elegant prose gives us a deeply textured look at what noncompliance signals about the environments we require students to adapt to in our schools. Both urgent and timely, this paradigm-shifting book challenges our typical expectations for young children and with principled affection reveals how these demands—despite good intentions—work to undermine the pursuit of a free and just society.

Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom


Lisa D. Delpit - 1995
    This anniversary paperback edition features a new introduction by Delpit as well as new framing essays by Herbert Kohl and Charles Payne.In a radical analysis of contemporary classrooms, MacArthur Award–winning author Lisa Delpit develops ideas about ways teachers can be better “cultural transmitters” in the classroom, where prejudice, stereotypes, and cultural assumptions breed ineffective education. Delpit suggests that many academic problems attributed to children of color are actually the result of miscommunication, as primarily white teachers and “other people’s children” struggle with the imbalance of power and the dynamics plaguing our system.A new classic among educators, Other People’s Children is a must-read for teachers, administrators, and parents striving to improve the quality of America’s education system.

Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Need of All Learners


Carol Ann Tomlinson - 1998
    She looks to the latest research on learning, education, and change for the theoretical basis of differentiated instruction and why it's so important to today's children. Yet she offers much more than theory, filling the pages with real-life examples of teachers and students using-and benefitting from-differentiated instruction.

The Power of Protocols: An Educator's Guide to Better Practice


Joseph P. McDonald - 2003
    Useful reading for teachers who are eager to find stimulating ways to engage students' interests and boost academic performance, this volume outlines the principles of social emotional learning (SEL) that educators can follow to help all students to achieve in the math and science classroom.

Building Teachers' Capacity for Success: A Collaborative Approach for Coaches and School Leaders


Pete Hall - 2008
    In Building Teachers Capacity for Success, authors Pete Hall (winner of the 2004 ASCD Outstanding Young Educator Award) and Alisa Simeral offer a straightforward plan to help site-based administrators and instructional coaches collaborate to bring out the best in every teacher, build a stronger and more cohesive staff, and achieve greater academic success. Their model of Strength-Based School Improvement is an alternative to a negative, deficit-approach focused on fixing what s wrong. Instead, they show school leaders how to achieve their goals by working together to maximize what s right. Filled with clear, proven strategies and organized around two easy-to-use tools the innovative Continuum of Self-Reflection and a feedback-focused walk-through model this book offers a differentiated approach to coaching and supervision centered on identifying and nurturing teachers individual strengths and helping them reach new levels of professional success and satisfaction. Here, you ll find front-line advice from the authors, one a principal and the other an instructional coach, on just what to look for, do, and say in order to start seeing positive results right now.

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever


Michael Bungay Stanier - 2016
     Drawing on years of experience training more than 10,000 busy managers from around the globe in practical, everyday coaching skills, Bungay Stanier reveals how to unlock your peoples' potential. He unpacks seven essential coaching questions to demonstrate how--by saying less and asking more--you can develop coaching methods that produce great results. – Get straight to the point in any conversation with The Kickstart Question – Stay on track during any interaction with The Awe Question – Save hours of time for yourself with The Lazy Question – and hours of time for others with The Strategic Question – Get to the heart of any interpersonal or external challenge with The Focus Question – and The Foundation Question – Ensure others find your coaching as beneficial as you do with The Learning Question A fresh innovative take on the traditional how-to manual, the book combines insider information with research based in neuroscience and behavioural economics, together with interactive training tools to turn practical advice into practiced habits. Witty and conversational, The Coaching Habit takes your work--and your workplace--from good to great. "Coaching is an art and it's far easier said than done. It takes courage to ask a question rather than offer up advice, provide and answer, or unleash a solution. giving another person the opportunity to find their own way, make their own mistakes, and create their own wisdom is both brave and vulnerable. In this practical and inspiring book, Michael shares seven transformative questions that can make a difference in how we lead and support. And he guides us through the tricky part - how to take this new information and turn it into habits and a daily practice. --Brené Brown, author of Rising Strong and Daring Greatly

From Birth to Five Years: Children's Developmental Progress


Mary D. Sheridan - 1973
    It is widely recognised as an invaluable reference for professionals training or working in health, education and social care.Features of this completely revised edition include:Charts describing key stages in the development of motor, perception, communication, play, independence and social skills, updated in the light of recent research and supported by over 120 illustrationsInformation on what we know about how children develop.A new section on the development of attention and self-regulationGuidelines for the assessment of children through observation and interactionAdvice on when to refer to specialist servicesGuidance is offered on ages at which children typically achieve key stages, whilst recognising individual variation in the rate of development and the influence of the child's environment. Based on an ethos of health promotion and the need for a common assessment framework, the book will be welcomed by all those who work with infants and young children.Dr Ajay Sharma is a Consultant Community Paediatrician in Southwark, LondonHelen Cockerill is a Consultant Speech and Language Therapist, working at the Evelina Children's Hospital in London.

Motivational Interviewing for School Counselors


Reagan North - 2017
    This book is the first training experience ever created to help School Counselors learn to use MI in their unique context. Written by a real-life School Counselor, this work is a powerfully practical explanation of MI ideas and techniques. Loaded with actual examples from the school context, the book is designed to help busy School Counselors learn these tools in a quick and enjoyable way. Students need help accessing their own motivation to improve grades, grow relationships, kick bad habits, and pursue deeply meaningful lives. School Counselors are perfectly positioned to help them do so, and MI is the tool they need.