Facilitating Youth-Led Book Clubs As Transformative and Inclusive Spaces


Book Description

Learn how to integrate book clubs into secondary school communities for transformation and inclusion so as to enhance and nurture students' literacies along with their social and emotional development. Using her extensive experiences with culturally, neurologically, and linguistically diverse students, the author provides a rich resource that demonstrates how book clubs serve as critical places where adolescents can develop as readers while simultaneously working to build authentic relationships with their peers. Polleck offers research and theories grounded in culturally sustaining pedagogies and healing-centered engagements along with practical strategies for book club facilitators--from developing specific student-centered pedagogical approaches to embodying critical and humanizing dispositions. Book Features: Guidance based on the author's 25 years of experience as a facilitator and researcher of book clubs. A focus on encouraging meaningful participation, identity and community building, and social justice. An approach that prioritizes collaboration among teachers, social workers, counselors, administrators, parents, and other school personnel. Practical strategies that include facilitation suggestions, sample lesson plans, and reflective questioning techniques. Engaging narratives that center the voices of students who have participated in book clubs. An accompanying website with suggested reading lists, teaching materials, classroom activities, and more.




Facilitating Youth-Led Book Clubs as Transformative and Inclusive Spaces


Book Description

Learn how to integrate book clubs into secondary school communities for transformation and inclusion so as to enhance and nurture students’ literacies along with their social and emotional development. Using her extensive experiences with culturally, neurologically, and linguistically diverse students, the author provides a rich resource that demonstrates how book clubs serve as critical places where adolescents can develop as readers while simultaneously working to build authentic relationships with their peers. Polleck offers research and theories grounded in culturally sustaining pedagogies and healing-centered engagements along with practical strategies for book club facilitators—from developing specific student-centered pedagogical approaches to embodying critical and humanizing dispositions. Book Features: Guidance based on the author’s 25 years of experience as a facilitator and researcher of book clubs.A focus on encouraging meaningful participation, identity and community building, and social justice. An approach that prioritizes collaboration among teachers, social workers, counselors, administrators, parents, and other school personnel. Practical strategies that include facilitation suggestions, sample lesson plans, and reflective questioning techniques. Engaging narratives that center the voices of students who have participated in book clubs. An accompanying website with suggested reading lists, teaching materials, classroom activities, and more.







Embracing Diversity


Book Description

Embracing Diversity is about the craft of teaching, with a particular focus on celebrating the myriad of human identities through classic, contemporary, and unconventional texts. Experienced secondary English language arts educators narrate their own experiences and provide insights through reflecting upon aspects of everyday pedagogy. Featuring a rich array of texts designed to be both familiar and unfamiliar to the reader, the authors explore complex issues raised by a diverse body of writers, while simultaneously sharing methods that engage students to think critically. Topics include how students’ learning is influenced by their identities; the importance of building relationships; creating a balanced curriculum; developing cultural responsivity and cultural sustainability; confronting (dis)comfort zones; adapting to different educational contexts; and considering how the COVID-19 pandemic changed teaching. This teacher-friendly resource illustrates how reflective practitioners are assisted in their goal of teaching literacy skills while encompassing issues of social justice. Book Features: Multiple examples of classroom activities for the secondary ELA classroom. User-friendly text boxes highlighting points of interest.Questions at the end of each chapter to help readers reflect on their own practices.Detailed appendices featuring recommended books and practical resources.




Midnight at the Electric


Book Description

6 Starred Reviews and a New York Public Library Best Book of 2017! New York Times bestselling author Jodi Lynn Anderson's epic tale—told through three unforgettable points of view—is a masterful exploration of how love, determination, and hope can change a person's fate. 2065: Adri has been handpicked to live on Mars. But weeks before launch, she discovers the journal of a girl who lived in her house more than a hundred years ago and is immediately drawn into the mystery surrounding her fate. 1934: Amid the fear and uncertainty of the Dust Bowl, Catherine’s family’s situation is growing dire. She must find the courage to sacrifice everything she loves in order to save the one person she loves most. 1919: In the recovery following World War I, Lenore tries to come to terms with her grief for her brother, a fallen British soldier, and plans to sail from England to America. But can she make it that far? While their stories span thousands of miles and multiple generations, Lenore, Catherine, and Adri’s fates are entwined in ways both heartbreaking and hopeful. In Jodi Lynn Anderson’s signature haunting, lyrical prose, human connections spark spellbindingly to life, and a bright light shines on the small but crucial moments that determine one’s fate. “Deft, succinct, and ringing with emotion without ever dipping into sentimentality, Anderson's novel is both intriguing and deeply satisfying.”—Kirkus (starred review) “Each character’s resilience and independence shines brightly, creating a thread that ties them together even before the intersections of their lives are fully revealed. Anderson’s piercing prose ensures that these remarkable women will leave a lasting mark on readers.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “With quietly evocative writing, compellingly drawn characters, and captivating secrets to unearth, this thought-provoking, lyrical novel explores the importance of pinning down the past before launching into the mystery of the future.”—Booklist (starred review) “Anderson …allows her characters to shine through, with each distinct, nuanced, and memorable.”—BCCB (starred review) “Anderson deftly tackles love, friendship, and grief in this touching exploration of resilience and hope. A must-have for all YA collections.”—School Library Journal (starred review) "In Midnight at the Electric, Jodi Lynn Anderson weaves a shining tale of hope in the face of adversity. " —Shelf Awareness (starred review)







Get Active


Book Description

Active learning spaces offer students opportunities to engage, collaborate, and learn in an environment that taps into their innate curiosity and creativity. Students well versed in active learning - the capabilities that colleges, vocational schools and the workforce demand - will be far more successful than those educated in traditional classrooms. Get Active is a practical guide to inform your thinking about how best to design schools and classrooms to support learning in a connected, digital world. From classroom redesigns to schoolwide rennovation projects and new building construction, the authors show the many ways that active learning spaces can improve the learning experience.




Why Race and Culture Matter in Schools


Book Description

Issues tied to race and culture continue to be a part of the landscape of America’s schools and classrooms. Given the rapid demographic transformation in the nation’s states, cities, counties, and schools, it is essential that all school personnel acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and dispositions to talk, teach, and think across racial and cultural differences. The second edition of Howard’s bestseller has been updated to take a deeper look at how schools must be prepared to respond to disparate outcomes among students of color. Tyrone Howard draws on theoretical constructs tied to race and racism, culture and opportunity gaps to address pressing issues stemming from the chronic inequalities that remain prevalent in many schools across the country. This time-honored text will help educators at all levels respond with greater conviction and clarity on how to create more equitable, inclusive, and democratic schools as sites for teaching and learning. “If you thought the first edition of Why Race and Culture Matter in Schools was impactful, this second edition is even more of a force to be reckoned with in the fight for social justice. By pushing the boundaries of the ordinary and the normative, this book teaches as it transforms. Every educator, preservice and inservice, working with racially, linguistically, and culturally diverse young people should read this book.” —H. Richard Milner IV, Cornelius Vanderbilt Distinguished Professor of Education, Vanderbilt University “On the 10th anniversary of this groundbreaking book, Tyrone Howard not only reminds me of the salient role that race and culture play in education, but also moves beyond a Black–White binary that reflect the nuances and contours of diversity. This book should be in the hands of all teachers and teacher educators.” —Maisha T. Winn, Chancellor’s Leadership Professor, School of Education, University of California, Davis




Breathing New Life Into Book Clubs


Book Description

Foreword / Cornelius Minor Gratitude -- Creating a culture of reading through book clubs -- Organizing and setting up book clubs -- Launching and managing book clubs -- Lighting the fire of discussion -- Resources at a glance -- Living with books all year long.




School, Family, and Community Partnerships


Book Description

Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.