Transforming Students


Book Description

It is preparation for life.--Rachel A. Heath "Reflective Teaching"




Transforming Professional Development into Student Results


Book Description

How can we create and sustain professional learning programs that actually lead to improved student achievement? In this thoughtful and informative guide for teachers, administrators, and policymakers, Douglas B. Reeves provides answers. First he casts a critical eye on professional learning that is inconsistent, unfocused, and ultimately ineffective, and explains why elaborate planning documents and "brand-name" programs are not enough to achieve desired outcomes. Then he outlines how educators at all levels can improve this situation by * Taking specific steps to move from vision to implementation; * Focusing on four essentials: teaching, curriculum, assessment, and leadership; * Making action research work; * Moving beyond the "train the trainer" model; and * Using performance assessment systems for teachers and administrators. If you're tired of professional development that takes up too much time and delivers too little, read Transforming Professional Development into Student Results and discover how to move toward a system that gives educators the learning experiences they need to make a measurable difference for their schools and their students.




Transforming the Elite


Book Description

When traditionally white public schools in the South became sites of massive resistance in the wake of the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, numerous white students exited the public system altogether, with parents choosing homeschooling or private segregationist academies. But some historically white elite private schools opted to desegregate. The black students that attended these schools courageously navigated institutional and interpersonal racism but ultimately emerged as upwardly mobile leaders. Transforming the Elite tells this story. Focusing on the experiences of the first black students to desegregate Atlanta's well-known The Westminster Schools and national efforts to diversify private schools, Michelle A. Purdy combines social history with policy analysis in a dynamic narrative that expertly re-creates this overlooked history. Through gripping oral histories and rich archival research, this book showcases educational changes for black southerners during the civil rights movement including the political tensions confronted, struggles faced, and school cultures transformed during private school desegregation. This history foreshadows contemporary complexities at the heart of the black community's mixed feelings about charter schools, school choice, and education reform.




Transforming Schooling for Second Language Learners


Book Description

The purpose of Transforming Schooling for Second Language Learners: Theoretical Insights, Policies, Pedagogies, and Practices is to bring together educational researchers and practitioners who have implemented, documented, or examined policies, pedagogies, and practices in and out of classrooms and in real and virtual contexts that are in some way transforming what we know about the extent to which emergent bilinguals (EBs) learn and achieve in educational settings. In the following chapters, scholars and researchers identify both (1) the current state of schooling for EBs, from their perspective, and (2) the particular ways that policies, pedagogies, and/or practices transform schooling as it currently exists for EBs in discernible ways based on their scholarship and research. Drawing on current and seminal research in fields including second language acquisition, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and educational linguistics, contributing authors draw on complementary theoretical, methodological, and philosophical frameworks that attend to the social, cultural, political, and ideological dimensions of being and becoming bi/multilingual and bi/multiliterate in schools and in the United States. In sum, we are deeply committed to asserting hope, possibility, and potential to discussions and discourses about bi/multilingual students. We value the urgency around improving the conditions, experiences, and circumstances in which they are learning languages and academic content. Our aim is to highlight perspectives, conceptualizations, orientations, and ideologies that disrupt and contest legacies of deficit thinking, linguistic purism, language standardization, and racism and the racialization of ethnolinguistic minorities.




Street Data


Book Description

Radically reimagine our ways of being, learning, and doing Education can be transformed if we eradicate our fixation on big data like standardized test scores as the supreme measure of equity and learning. Instead of the focus being on "fixing" and "filling" academic gaps, we must envision and rebuild the system from the student up—with classrooms, schools and systems built around students’ brilliance, cultural wealth, and intellectual potential. Street data reminds us that what is measurable is not the same as what is valuable and that data can be humanizing, liberatory and healing. By breaking down street data fundamentals: what it is, how to gather it, and how it can complement other forms of data to guide a school or district’s equity journey, Safir and Dugan offer an actionable framework for school transformation. Written for educators and policymakers, this book · Offers fresh ideas and innovative tools to apply immediately · Provides an asset-based model to help educators look for what’s right in our students and communities instead of seeking what’s wrong · Explores a different application of data, from its capacity to help us diagnose root causes of inequity, to its potential to transform learning, and its power to reshape adult culture Now is the time to take an antiracist stance, interrogate our assumptions about knowledge, measurement, and what really matters when it comes to educating young people.




Transforming Schools for English Learners


Book Description

Whether you are just beginning to work with or trying to improve the outcomes of English learners, this book provides a comprehensive framework for educating a growing population of public school english learners. Each chapter focuses on a key element of EL education programming as it relates to the entire school. The author uses research-based principles and practices to address such critical topics as: selecting the appropriate program model for your school; managing time appropriately for English language development and content learning; making data-driven decisions using effective measures of student prerformance; and effectively using Response to Intervention (RTI). The author summarizes the key Supreme Court cases that led to the federal regulations for educating ELs. Also included is a framework for designing and delivering high quality instruciton, enhancing parental engagement, and creating a learning environment and whole-school community where ELs flourish.




7 Ways to Transform the Lives of Wounded Students


Book Description

7 Ways to Transform the Lives of Wounded Students provides a wealth of strategies and ideas for teachers and principals who work with wounded students—those who are beyond the point of "at-risk" and have experienced trauma in their lives. Sharing stories and examples from real schools and students, this inspirational book examines the seven key strategies necessary for changing school culture to transform the lives of individual students. Recognizing the power of effective leadership and empathy in creating a sense of community and safety for wounded students, Hendershott offers a valuable resource to help educators redesign their school environment to meet the needs of children and empower educators to direct students on a path to academic and life success.




Leaders of Their Own Learning


Book Description

From EL Education comes a proven approach to student assessment Leaders of Their Own Learning offers a new way of thinking about assessment based on the celebrated work of EL Education schools across the country. Student-Engaged Assessment is not a single practice but an approach to teaching and learning that equips and compels students to understand goals for their learning and growth, track their progress toward those goals, and take responsibility for reaching them. This requires a set of interrelated strategies and structures and a whole-school culture in which students are given the respect and responsibility to be meaningfully engaged in their own learning. Includes everything teachers and school leaders need to implement a successful Student-Engaged Assessment system in their schools Outlines the practices that will engage students in making academic progress, improve achievement, and involve families and communities in the life of the school Describes each of the book's eight key practices, gives advice on how to begin, and explains what teachers and school leaders need to put into practice in their own classrooms Ron Berger is Chief Program Officer for EL Education and a former public school teacher Leaders of Their Own Learning shows educators how to ignite the capacity of students to take responsibility for their own learning, meet Common Core and state standards, and reach higher levels of achievement. DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of the e-book file, but are available for download after purchase.




CliftonStrengths for Students


Book Description

Helps aspiring college students discover where their strengths truly lie and how to develop them to reach their full potential at school and later in the real world.




Transforming University Education


Book Description

What is a university degree for? What can it offer to students? Is it only about getting a job? How can we measure the quality of an undergraduate degree? Paul Ashwin shows how, around the world, economic arguments have come to dominate our thinking about the purpose and nature of university education. He argues that we have lost a sense of the educational purposes of an undergraduate degree and the ways in which going to university can transform students' lives. Ashwin challenges a series of myths related to the purposes, educational processes, and quality of an undergraduate education. He argues that these myths have fuelled the current misunderstanding of the educational aspects of higher education and explores what is needed to reinvigorate our understanding of a university education. Throughout, Ashwin draws on his deep engagement with international research to offer an accessible and thought-provoking analysis of the nature of university education.