Engaging All Families


Book Description

Families are a child's first and best teachers. A significant amount of research exists that strongly links the engagement of families in the educational lives of their children as a strong foundation to the successful achievement of all students. Educators cannot expect total engagement and high standards from students if both families and schools cannot form powerful alliances to guide those students to academic and lifelong success. Putting research into practice remains one of the most significant barriers to engaging families with schools. School leaders, already stretched thin, struggle to carve out the time and energy necessary to pour through research and create programs to promote family engagement within their school and community. As principal of a large, comprehensive, and diverse high school, Constantino solves this dilemma by providing a step-by-step process for practitioners to create family engagement programs at all levels. Engaging All Families provides a summary of research that acts as a foundation upon which the practitioner's tools are crafted. Readers are given the resources necessary to assess their present level of family engagement and the ideas, strategies, suggestions, programs, practices, policies, and procedures to implement a wide variety of customized family engagement programs. Numerous resources and references are also included. As a successful school administrator and nationally known expert in the field of family and community engagement, Steven Constantino builds the bridge from research to practice with Engaging All Families, and provides the information that allows all schools to become family friendly.




Transforming School Culture


Book Description

Busy administrators will appreciate this quick read packed with immediate, accessible strategies. This book provides the framework for understanding dynamic relationships within a school culture and ensuring a positive environment that supports the changes necessary to improve learning for all students. The author explores many aspects of human behavior, social conditions, and history to reveal best practices for building healthy school cultures.




Shaping School Culture


Book Description

The most trusted guide to school culture, updated with current challenges and new solutions Shaping School Culture is the classic guide to exceptional school leadership, featuring concrete guidance on influencing the subtle symbolic features of schools that provide meaning, belief, and faith. Written by renowned experts in the area of school culture, this book tackles the increasing challenges facing public schools and provides clear, candid suggestions for more effective symbolic leadership. This new third edition has been revised to reflect the reality of schools today, including the increased emphasis on high-stakes testing, federal reforms such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), state sponsored improvement programs, and other major issues that impact organizational culture and the role of school leaders. Each chapter features new examples and cases that illustrate persistent problems, spelling out key cultural implications and offering concrete examples of overcoming the challenges while maintaining a meaningful learning environment. The chapter on toxic schools continues to provide the field's most trusted advice on navigating this rocky terrain, and the discussion's focus on how to manage negativity remains especially integral to besieged school administrators across the U.S. Recent years have jolted the nation's school system with a number of new developments that spell problems for the cultural tapestry of schools. This book provides expert perspective and sage, doable advice for administrators tending to external pressures while sustainingor evolvinga more positive school culture. Navigate new challenges including Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and waning confidence and faith Turn around a toxic school culture with confidence and success Foster a culture of passion, purpose, and meaning Adopt a more active form of symbolic leadership to support students, faculty, staff, parents, and community Test scores as the primary metric, relentless reforms, waning public support, and timid initiatives wrapped in bureaucratic packaging: while among the most prominent issues administrators face are only the tip of the iceberg. Shaping School Culture charts a route through competing pressures to help educational leaders hew a positive learning environment for schools.




How to Create a Culture of Achievement in Your School and Classroom


Book Description

No school improvement effort can be effective without addressing school culture, and in this book you'll learn how to put in place the five pillars essential to building a culture of achievement.




Leveraging the Impact of Culture and Climate


Book Description

Together, culture and climate can make or break your school improvement efforts. Authors Todd Whitaker and Steve Gruenert help educators understand how to leverage culture and climate to drive deep and lasting change. Learn how to assess current culture, address climate issues, combat challenges, and work toward a collaborative school community dedicated to achieving high levels of learning for all. Rely on this book's effective school improvement strategies for creating a collaborative culture in schools: Understand the commonalities and differences between school climate and school culture. Identify the characteristics of specific types of classroom cultures for self-assessment and improvement in creating a positive classroom climate. Learn how to assess the values and beliefs of educators at the classroom and school levels. Discover your school's capacity for culture change using a step-by-step process. Consider how the elements of climate and culture influence school effectiveness and school improvement efforts. Contents: Introduction: How Culture and Climate Can Improve Schools Chapter 1: How to Define School Culture Chapter 2: Differences Between Culture and Climate Chapter 3: Elements of Climate Chapter 4: Classroom Cultures Chapter 5: The Culture Scorecard Chapter 6: The Capacity to Change Chapter 7: How to Assess School Culture Chapter 8: The Necessity of Culture Change Chapter 9: A Closer Look at Values Chapter 10: Not the Perfect Culture, the Right Culture Epilogue References and Resources Index




Promoting Positive Learning Experiences in Middle School Education


Book Description

Declining academic performance, along with a growing apathy of students toward the value of education, demonstrates that students in the United States public education system do not recognize the value of a positive experience in middle schools. A plethora of research and writing has been done on elementary schools and secondary schools, but middle school education, as a whole, has been left behind. For this reason, there is the need for current research on all aspects and topics that may contribute to middle school student success. Promoting Positive Learning Experiences in Middle School Education focuses on the ideal conditions for maximizing student success and engagement in middle school education. The chapters take a deeper look into the modern tools, technologies, methods, and theories driving current research on middle school students, their teachers, their classroom environment, and their learning. Highlighting topics such as curriculum reform, instructional strategies and practices, effective teaching, and technology in the modern classroom, this book is ideally intended for middle school teachers, middle school administrators, and school district administrators, along with practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students interested in middle school education and student success.




Cultures Built to Last


Book Description

Take your professional learning community to the next level! Discover a systemwide approach for re-envisioning your PLC while sustaining growth and continuing momentum on your journey. You’ll move beyond isolated pockets of excellence while allowing every person in your school system—from teachers and administrators to students—the opportunity to be an instrument of lasting cultural change.




Committing to the Culture


Book Description

In their follow-up to School Culture Recharged and the best-selling School Culture Rewired, Steve Gruenert and Todd Whitaker go deep into the roots of culture change and explore how school leaders can positively shift their cultures in a sustainable way. Drawing from the authors' extensive experience and research, Committing to the Culture - Unpacks questions around the nature of culture, including the importance of vision and climate and how the tension between the past and the future can keep a culture stagnant. - Explains how toxic cultures come about, why they can be so resistant to lasting change, and how not to change those cultures. - Describes how to build a positive culture based on trust, collaboration, and commitment rather than fear, competition, and compliance. - Offers advice to help leaders ensure that positive change endures, withstanding fads, toxic mindsets, and other threats. The authors provide real-world scenarios to illustrate how their ideas and approaches work in practice. Leaders will gain profound insight into how to create meaningful change, with the goal not just to "transform" their school but also to get all members of the school community to commit to culture change—and make sure that change sticks.




Leverage Leadership


Book Description

Paul Bambrick-Santoyo (Managing Director of Uncommon Schools) shows leaders how they can raise their schools to greatness by following a core set of principles. These seven principles, or "levers," allow for consistent, transformational, and replicable growth. With intentional focus on these areas, leaders will leverage much more learning from the same amount of time investment. Fundamentally, each of these seven levers answers the core questions of school leadership: What should an effective leader do, and how and when should they do it. Aimed at all levels of school leadership, the book is for any principal, superintendent, or educator who wants to be a transformational leader. The book includes 30 video clips of top-tier leaders in action. These videos bring great schools to you, and support a deeper understanding of both the components of success and how it looks as a whole. There are also many helpful rubrics, extensive professional development tools, calendars, and templates. Explores the core principles of effective leadership Author's charter school, North Star Academy in Newark, New Jersey, received the highest possible award given by the U.S. Department of Education; the National Blue Ribbon Print version includes an instructive DVD with 30 video clips to show how it looks in real life. E-book customers: please note that details on how to access the content from the DVD may be found in the e-book Table of Contents. Please see the section: "How to Access DVD Contents" Bambrick-Santoyo has trained more than 1,800 school leaders nationwide in his work at Uncommon Schools and is a recognized expert on transforming schools to achieve extraordinary results.




Working With Difficult & Resistant Staff


Book Description

To move forward in the school improvement process, school leaders must address the behaviors of difficult and resistant staff members while sending the message that a few people cannot halt change. This book will help school leaders understand how to prevent and address negative behaviors to ensure positive school change.