The Purpose Promise


Book Description

Do you sense there is a greater purpose designed for your life and work? Good news! You were designed on purpose for a purpose. John McCarthy is here to guide you on a practical journey to gain purpose, freedom, and a life of joy! The Renewal Journey is a 10-day, 45-minute per day retreat to gain awareness of your purpose and map out a plan to obtain it through your career search. A career of richer purpose and joy will result from your 450-minute investment in the Renewal Journey. This is the Purpose Promise. "I will make you this promise: If you trust this simple and effective process and pour your efforts into the details, the clarity that will come will not only point you to purposeful employment but also a sustained level of immeasurable joy that will radically change your life." —John McCarthy




The Power and Promise of Pathways


Book Description

High school students are more fully engaged in their education and postsecondary decision-making when they understand the "real life" connections between education and future careers. The Power and Promise of Pathways: How to Prepare All American Students for Career and Life Success, written by the National Center for College and Career Transitions (NC3T) founder Hans Meeder, offers educators a comprehensive look at secondary pathways from the early planning stage to full implementation along with key issues relating to the transformation a pathways initiative brings to an entire community. Topics are presented with current research and best practice examples: Defining career and life readiness and why this is important. Developing a comprehensive pathways system that addresses six key components. Building a career development system that deeply impacts how students and their parents plan for postsecondary education and careers. Integrating college, career, and life readiness into exciting and engaging pathway programs that also address critical workforce needs and opportunities. Collaborating meaningfully with employer and community organizations in order to form mutually beneficial partnerships that offer opportunities for students to experience the world beyond school. Integrating dynamic teaching and learning approaches into pathway programs so that students also learn important life and employability skills.Hans Meeder is president of the National Center for College and Career Transitions, an organization that provides coaching and technical assistance for schools and communities involved in launching a college and career pathways system. Hans, former Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Education, is an internationally recognized speaker and author with expertise in pathways, school reform, career and technical education, and STEM education.




The Promise of a Pencil


Book Description

This the story of how a young man turned $25 into more than 200 schools around the world and the guiding steps anyone can take to lead a successful and significant life. The author began working summers at hedge funds when he was just sixteen years old, sprinting down the path to a successful Wall Street career. But while traveling he met a young boy begging on the streets of India, who after being asked what he wanted most in the world, simply answered, "A pencil." This small request led to a staggering series of events that took the author backpacking through dozens of countries before eventually leaving one of the world's most prestigious jobs at Bain & Company to found Pencils of Promise, the organization he started with just $25 that has since built more than 200 schools around the world. This book chronicles the author's journey to find his calling, as each chapter explains one clear step that every person can take to turn your biggest ambitions into reality, even if you start with as little as $25. His story takes readers behind the scenes with business moguls and village chiefs, world-famous celebrities and hometown heroes. It is filled with compelling stories and shareable insights. All proceeds from this book support Pencils of Promise.




Improving Research-Based Knowledge of College Promise Programs


Book Description

Also known as “free tuition” and “free college” programs, college promise programs are an emerging approach for increasing higher education attainment of people in particular places. To maximize the effectiveness of their efforts and investments, program leaders and policymakers need research-based evidence to inform program design, implementation, and evaluation. With the goal of addressing this knowledge need, this volume presents a collection of research studies that examine several categories and variations of college promise programs. These theoretically grounded empirical investigations use varied data sources and analytic techniques to examine the effects of college promise programs that have different design features and operate in different places. Individually and collectively, the results of these studies have implications for the design and implementation of promise programs if these programs are to create meaningful improvements in attainment for people from underserved groups. The authors’ efforts also provide a useful foundation for the next generation of college promise research.




When Grit Isn't Enough


Book Description

Examines major myths informing American education and explores how educators can better serve students, increase college retention rates, and develop alternatives to college that don’t disadvantage students on the basis of race or income Each year, as the founding headmaster of the Boston Arts Academy (BAA), an urban high school that boasts a 94 percent college acceptance rate, Linda Nathan made a promise to the incoming freshmen: “All of you will graduate from high school and go on to college or a career.” After fourteen years at the helm, Nathan stepped down and took stock of her alumni: of those who went to college, a third dropped out. Feeling like she failed to fulfill her promise, Nathan reflected on ideas she and others have perpetuated about education: that college is for all, that hard work and determination are enough to get you through, that America is a land of equality. In When Grit Isn’t Enough, Nathan investigates five assumptions that inform our ideas about education today, revealing how these beliefs mask systemic inequity. Seeing a rift between these false promises and the lived experiences of her students, she argues that it is time for educators to face these uncomfortable issues head-on and explores how educators can better serve all students, increase college retention rates, and develop alternatives to college that don’t disadvantage students on the basis of race or income. Drawing on the voices of BAA alumni whose stories provide a window through which to view urban education today, When Grit Isn’t Enough helps imagine greater purposes for schooling.




Fulfilling the Promise


Book Description




Diversity's Promise for Higher Education


Book Description

"Daryl G. Smith's career has been devoted to studying and fostering diversity in higher education. She has witnessed and encouraged the evolution of diversity from an issue addressed sporadically on college campuses to an imperative if institutions want to succeed. In this second edition of Diversity's Promise for Higher Education, Smith emphasizes a transdisciplinary approach to the topic of diversity, drawing on an updated list of sources from a wealth of literatures and fields. She claims with optimism, "when the conclusions from a wide variety of studies, using different methodologies, begin to converge, we may apply the results with some confidence." Smith responds to recent criticism of diversity efforts on campuses as a convoluted list of grievances without focus on the historic issue of inequity by making explicit the central relationship between diversity and equity. To become more relevant to society, the nation, and the world while remaining true to their core mission, higher education institutions must begin to see diversity as central to teaching and research. She argues that institutions can pursue diversity efforts that are inclusive of the varied - and growing - issues apparent on campuses without losing focus. This thoughtful volume draws on 50 years of diversity studies. It offers students, researchers, and administrators an innovative approach to developing and instituting effective and sustainable diversity strategies"--




The Fallacy in the Promise


Book Description

Taking his readers through a grueling, eighteen-year-long psycho-legal odyssey, Jabari Gravy recounts the failures of our legal justice system, from legal training to jurisprudence. He also offers a breathtaking portrayal of borderline personality disorder through his relationship with his wife. His story reveals the legal scandal of their divorce and the exploitation of mental illness by his wife and a state court system. In stunning detail, Gravy dissects, exposes, and gives a definitive and vividly dramatic account of furtive judicial abuse of authority, painting a disturbing tableau of what actually happens in our courtrooms: their underlying design, organizational values, and daily operationsillustrating how the clandestine and undocumented come to deny directly and categorically the compelling public court record. Through a revealing window on how innocent people are railroaded to injustice with loss of livelihood, liberty, and life, he inextricably entwines the African-American experience with his other material, demonstrates the ominous secret cracks in our justice system, unveils a monolithic legal culture represented by gladiatorial back-scratching court functionaries who marginalize non-dominate cultures and inflict real casualtiesboth at the micro level, on the lives of ordinary people, and at the national level as our democracy is secretively eroded. Gravy concludes that pretty paper is not justice, and demands change.




Just Work


Book Description

This elegant essay on the justice of work focuses on the fit between who we are and the kind of work we do. Russell Muirhead shows how the common hope for work that fulfills us involves more than personal interest; it also points to larger understandings of a just society. We are defined in part by the jobs we hold, and Muirhead has something important to say about the partial satisfactions of the working life, and the increasingly urgent need to balance the claims of work against those of family and community. Against the tendency to think of work exclusively in contractual terms, Muirhead focuses on the importance of work to our sense of a life well lived. Our notions of freedom and fairness are incomplete, he argues, without due consideration of how we fit the work we do. Muirhead weaves his argument out of sociological, economic, and philosophical analysis. He shows, among other things, how modern feminism's effort to reform domestic work and extend the promise of careers has contributed to more democratic understandings of what it means to have work that fits. His account of individual and social fit as twin standards of assessment is original and convincing--it points both to the unavoidable problem of distributing bad work in society and to the personal importance of finding fulfilling work. These themes are pursued through a wide-ranging discussion that engages thinkers from Plato to John Stuart Mill to Betty Friedan. Just Work shows what it would mean for work to make good on the high promise so often invested in it and suggests what we--both as a society and as individuals--might do when it falls short.




The Transformation Promise


Book Description

Awaken Your Inner ButterflyThis book is about the transformation process. It is about changing your life. It is about becoming. We all experience pain at least at some points in our life and we all wish to improve our life, to grow and to heal. But how can you heal?Transformation happens whether you are consciously aware of it or not. If you are aware and feel the desire for change, you are at the starting point of a conscious shift in your life. Perhaps you have become aware of something that could improve or you have a general sense of discontent. Perhaps you are in pain. Perhaps you feel that something is missing in your life. Whatever the feeling, you have realized that something could be better. With this belief, you have opened up a space to grow into. It is as if you have suddenly discovered a window, and become aware of the life outside, where new possibilities and adventures await. Whether you are grappling with physical, mental-emotional or spiritual issues, this book will guide you through steps to examine your life, heal wounds and transform situations. And with this you will discover an increase in love and joy in your life experiences.In this book you will find tools to help you expand in to better life experiences and therefore into a better life. This expansion into new life experiences is called transformation. And whether we want it or not, transformation is part of our life. We cannot remain in any set form, because life is always changing. Life moves on and there is always a next step, a new door to open, food to digest, oxygen to breathe, the cocoon to leave, the wings to grow and then take flight as we soar to new heights... Just like the caterpillar, that thought his life was over before he became a butterfly, we often look upon our impending transformations with fear. This book offers tools to help you through life's many transformations, and to consciously take the next step. The Transformation Promise presents you with the understanding and the tools you need to shift, to heal and to transform.Even without doing the exercises this book will guide you to connect consciously with life-force-energy and a continuously increasing love within. It will show you how to use forgiveness and gratitude so you can heal and transform everything you encounter or have encountered.The Transformation Promise will help you to awaken your inner butterfly!