Nearly half of all children have been exposed to at least one adverse childhood experience such as poverty, divorce, neglect, substance abuse or parent incarceration. This book uses trauma-informed strategies to show how to make a whole-school change to establish a healthy social-emotional climate for students and the staff who support them.
Integrating Resiliency Into What You Already Know and Do
Kate Thomsen has written a practical, easy-to-read book full of activities, concrete applications, and real-life examples that teach resiliency and how it can be applied in creating resilient students. Resiliency is the process of identifying strengths instead of deficits in students and then building on these strengths. Simply put, resiliency is ......
How can we partner with our communities to improve school programs and increase students' success? This current era of high stakes testing, accountability, and shrinking educational budgets demands that schools seek bold and innovative ways to build strong learning environments for all students. Community involvement is a powerful tool in generating resources that are essential for educational excellence. Building School-Community Partnerships: Collaboration for Student Success emphasizes the importance of community involvement for effective school functioning, student support and well-being, and community health and development. This sharp, insightful book serves as an excellent resource for educators seeking to establish school-community partnerships to achieve goals for their schools and the students, families, and communities they serve. Schools can collaborate with a wide variety of community partners to obtain the resources they need to achieve important goals for students' learning. Some of these partners may include: Businesses and corporations Universities and other institutions of higher learning National and local volunteer organizations Social service agencies and health partners Faith-based organizations and institutions Work successfully with community partners to improve school programs and curricula, strengthen families, and expand your students' learning experiences!
"Standing on the back of their groundbreaking research on school culture, Kruse and Seashore Louis provide an insightful and very practical guide that should be a must-read for anyone preparing to become a school leader." -Kenneth Leithwood, Professor OISE/University of Toronto "A manageable, well-rehearsed plan for discussion, research, and lots of reflective thought for any school leader willing to develop their own leadership and the culture in which they desire to lead." -Teresa P. Cunningham, Principal Laurel Elementary School, TN Develop an integrated school culture that engages educators with their colleagues and communities! As a principal, you realize that effecting positive, long-lasting change requires support both within your school and in the wider community. This practical handbook shows school leaders how to build a climate of collaboration with staff, teachers, and parents as well as how to develop connections with foundations, business groups, social service providers, and government agencies. Sharon D. Kruse and Karen Seashore Louis call on principals to create a viable, sustainable school culture using organizational learning and trust to involve the professional community and to affect teaching and learning. This addition to the Leadership for Learning series presents a leadership approach that integrates teachers, parents, and community members into a coherent team. The authors examine schools that have achieved lasting cultural change and present practical strategies for: Diagnosing and shaping a school culture Revising leadership functions to broaden decision-making processes Rethinking organizational structures Supporting continuous improvement while ensuring stability Building Strong School Cultures draws from business and psychology research on motivating and organizing people to provide school leaders with the skills they need to promote effective change.
"Standing on the back of their groundbreaking research on school culture, Kruse and Seashore Louis provide an insightful and very practical guide that should be a must-read for anyone preparing to become a school leader." -Kenneth Leithwood, Professor OISE/University of Toronto "A manageable, well-rehearsed plan for discussion, research, and lots of reflective thought for any school leader willing to develop their own leadership and the culture in which they desire to lead." -Teresa P. Cunningham, Principal Laurel Elementary School, TN Develop an integrated school culture that engages educators with their colleagues and communities! As a principal, you realize that effecting positive, long-lasting change requires support both within your school and in the wider community. This practical handbook shows school leaders how to build a climate of collaboration with staff, teachers, and parents as well as how to develop connections with foundations, business groups, social service providers, and government agencies. Sharon D. Kruse and Karen Seashore Louis call on principals to create a viable, sustainable school culture using organizational learning and trust to involve the professional community and to affect teaching and learning. This addition to the Leadership for Learning series presents a leadership approach that integrates teachers, parents, and community members into a coherent team. The authors examine schools that have achieved lasting cultural change and present practical strategies for: Diagnosing and shaping a school culture Revising leadership functions to broaden decision-making processes Rethinking organizational structures Supporting continuous improvement while ensuring stability Building Strong School Cultures draws from business and psychology research on motivating and organizing people to provide school leaders with the skills they need to promote effective change.
Proven strategies for helping students rebound from risk One of the hazards we face in our focus on test preparation and results-driven schooling is neglecting the needs of our most disenfranchised students. This important book was written to help counter this trend and offer new hope. If, as Gabe Simon suggests, we forge strong relationships and provide scaffolded supports, then we may just make school the transformative experience it should be. An experienced teacher and principal of a Title I school, Simon provides classroom practitioners, support team specialists, and all levels of schools leaders with numerous strategies for helping students rebound from risk. Included are: Compelling descriptions of research on the link between resiliency and academic achievement The most important steps educators can take to build students' resiliency Game plans for creating caring school-wide teams and classroom structures that engage students, including positive peer influences Comments and perspectives from students considered to be at risk Discover how creating the will to change-combined with the dedication of caring, supportive adults-can support students in reaching their full potential and close the achievement gap once and for all. "The reader is compelled to engage in what Gabe Simon calls 'tenacious caring,' not because it raises test scores, but because it is the moral imperative of our profession." -Douglas Reeves, Founder, The Leadership and Learning Center "Students will be more successful if they have the benefit of caring relationships and high levels of engagement. The challenge, of course, is creating these conditions for every student. This book provides the answer to that challenge." -Richard DuFour, Educational Author and Consultant "This is a wonderful, well-researched book, full of statistics and practical strategies that work for at-risk youths and those from high-poverty environments." -Ruby Payne, Author of A Framework for Understanding Poverty
Meet the challenges of today's changing schools through shared leadership! Today's rapidly changing schools and educational trends present administrators and school leaders with unique challenges. This fifth volume in the Soul of Educational Leadership series offers inspiring articles that examine how to sustain the achievements of school communities while building shared leadership to carry on the work of school improvement, even when facing tight budgets or a change in leadership. Bringing together a powerful group of leading educational thinkers such as Michael Fullan, Dennis Sparks, Linda Lambert, Dean Fink, Alma Harris, and many others, this volume explores a variety of timely topics for reflection, discussion, and practice, including: The characteristics and nature of effective leadership Sustainable leadership built on shared vision Improving classroom teaching and student learning Large-scale reforms that benefit the entire school community Recruiting and developing new leaders, and much more! This book is an ideal reference for busy administrators dedicated to continued educational excellence.
A practical guide to teaching the way a child's brain learns best In this update of a bestselling classic, you will learn how to develop children's capacity and will to read. Each sequential chapter is practical, eye-opening, and exactly what you need to engage young learners, plan lessons, partner with parents, and align your PreK-3 classrooms to the science of learning and the science of reading. Gain the latest insights on: Brain development from birth to age eight, plus the skills to nourish it, age by age and grade by grade What the latest neuroscientific research now says about oral language acquisition The evidence base for practices such as read alouds, inventive spelling, and sustained silent reading Why vocabulary building must happen concurrently with phonological processing, decoding, fluency, spelling, and writing How to artfully combine explicit teaching of skills with playful, multi-sensory routines every day All aspects of memory are needed to develop successful readers. When we engage children's brains and build our teaching practices around what we know about how the human brain makes meaning, literacy learning makes more sense for children... and for us.
Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K-12 helps teachers implement 14 optimal practices for thinking that create an ideal setting for deep mathematics learning to occur.
