Beating the Adoption Odds


Book Description

Comprehensive, authoritative, and proactive, "Beating the Adoption Odds" is the indispensable manual for both those considering adoption and those working in the adoption field.




Beat the Odds


Book Description

'Beat the Odds' evolved from a study of a broad pool of companies acros a wide spectrum of performance over an extended period of time. It clearly illustrates why great organisations slip from leader to follower to road kill and how organisations can beat the odds and avoid this fate.




Redefining Normal


Book Description

Growing up, they didn't believe they had a future. Together, they are building forever. Alexis Black persevered through her mother's death and her father's imprisonment. And after escaping a long and abusive relationship, the college junior promised her foster parents not to date for at least a year. But when she meets an incoming freshman on the first day of their scholarship program, she feels the world melt away, as though it were only the two of them in the room. Justin Black lived in the poorest section of Detroit before his parents surrendered him to the foster care system at the age of nine. But when he grabs the chance for better opportunities by pursuing higher education, he can't help but be drawn to a beautiful third-year student. At first, their past traumas--and their age difference--conspired to complicate their attraction. But the joy each took in the other and eventually conquered those obstacles, and these two survivors journeyed together toward healing. In a stark and wholehearted true story that shares how two individuals on separate paths found each other, Alexis and Justin merge their course into one full of hope and purpose. And hand-in-hand, with a desire to help others, they learned to reject the abusive patterns of their past, thereby intentionally breaking the cycle of generational violence and unhealthy behaviors. Written in an engaging novelistic style, the authors put forward a thoughtful exchange of ideas and personal experiences illustrating how anybody, no matter their backgrounds, can have a life of self-empowerment and joy. Broken down into four sections that cover crucial topics such as "Worthiness" and "Mental Health," this compelling narrative will help any who are learning to love themselves and want to end the line of toxic relationships. Redefining Normal: How Two Foster Kids Beat The Odds and Discovered Healing, Happiness, and Love is a page-turning memoir that will open your eyes to possibilities and dreams. If you like honest tales of triumph, refreshing transparency, and resilient faith in God, then you'll adore Justin and Alexis' inspirational story. This story contains mentions of domestic violence, trauma, sexual assault, and other difficult issues faced on the road to healing. Buy Redefining Normal to claim victory over harmful pasts today!




Adopting On Your Own


Book Description

Addresses questions and concerns of prospective single adoptive parents, and provides information on transracial and international adoption and the rights of gays and lesbians to adopt.




I Beat the Odds


Book Description

The football star made famous in the hit film (and book) The Blind Side reflects on how far he has come from the circumstances of his youth. Michael Oher shares his personal account of his story, in this inspirational New York Times bestseller. Looking back on how he went from being a homeless child in Memphis to playing in the NFL, Michael talks about the goals he had to break out of the cycle of poverty, addiction, and hopelessness that trapped his family. Eventually he grasped onto football as his ticket out and worked hard to make his dream into a reality. With his adoptive family, the Touhys, and other influential people in mind, he describes the absolute necessity of seeking out positive role models and good friends who share the same values to achieve one's dreams. Sharing untold stories of heartache, determination, courage, and love, I Beat the Odds is an incredibly rousing tale of one young man's quest to achieve the American dream.




Fast Track Adoption


Book Description




Fast Track Adoption


Book Description

Most couples in the U.S. have to wait up to seven years to adopt an infant domestically--and all the expense and waiting doesn't always result in a successful adoption. Now, rather than relying on slow-paced and expensive adoption agencies, many couples are choosing to privately adopt a child. By eliminating the adoption agency, couples can customize and control their own adoption plan. Inside this book, couples will learn how becoming proactive in the adoption process may significantly speed up the adoption. Following the Fast Track method, readers will learn how to: - Establish a budget - Assemble a professional team - Obtain an approved home study - Prepare an effective family profile - Advertise for and talk to potential birth mothers - Detect warning signs for frauds and scams - Be prepared at the hospital With this book as their guide, potential parents can actively pick their own birth mother. By doing so, couples will save time and money, reduce stress, and, most importantly, find a baby to adopt.




Innovation in Odds-Beating Schools


Book Description

Three policy innovations at the heart of this book – the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), new Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR), and data driven instruction (DDI) provide a timely opportunity to join school and district improvement and policy implementation research with improvement science. This book is not just a collection of findings about odds-beating schools (those with higher than predicted student performance trends and higher than average poverty and diversity) and their journeys to implement these innovations. It also provides timely perspectives regarding policy innovations and how they might disrupt practice in desirable or undesirable ways. This book offers readers insight into how educators at every boundary—classroom, school, and district interact to make meaning of innovations, both individually and collectively; and also how their meanings and values influence innovation implementation outcomes. The story includes details how policy innovations were tailored to school and district office priorities; the features of these schools’ structures, climates, and routines that were conducive to implementation; and how these innovations were able to penetrate the classroom boundaries.




Haunted by Empire


Book Description

A milestone in U.S. historiography, Haunted by Empire brings postcolonial critiques to bear on North American history and draws on that history to question the analytic conventions of postcolonial studies. The contributors to this innovative collection examine the critical role of “domains of the intimate” in the consolidation of colonial power. They demonstrate how the categories of difference underlying colonialism—the distinctions advanced as the justification for the colonizer’s rule of the colonized—were enacted and reinforced in intimate realms from the bedroom to the classroom to the medical examining room. Together the essays focus attention on the politics of comparison—on how colonizers differentiated one group or set of behaviors from another—and on the circulation of knowledge and ideologies within and between imperial projects. Ultimately, this collection forces a rethinking of what historians choose to compare and of the epistemological grounds on which those choices are based. Haunted by Empire includes Ann Laura Stoler’s seminal essay “Tense and Tender Ties” as well as her bold introduction, which carves out the exciting new analytic and methodological ground animated by this comparative venture. The contributors engage in a lively cross-disciplinary conversation, drawing on history, anthropology, literature, philosophy, and public health. They address such topics as the regulation of Hindu marriages and gay sexuality in the early-twentieth-century United States; the framing of multiple-choice intelligence tests; the deeply entangled histories of Asian, African, and native peoples in the Americas; the racial categorizations used in the 1890 U.S. census; and the politics of race and space in French colonial New Orleans. Linda Gordon, Catherine Hall, and Nancy F. Cott each provide a concluding essay reflecting on the innovations and implications of the arguments advanced in Haunted by Empire. Contributors. Warwick Anderson, Laura Briggs, Kathleen Brown, Nancy F. Cott, Shannon Lee Dawdy, Linda Gordon, Catherine Hall, Martha Hodes, Paul A. Kramer, Lisa Lowe, Tiya Miles, Gwenn A. Miller, Emily S. Rosenberg, Damon Salesa, Nayan Shah, Alexandra Minna Stern, Ann Laura Stoler, Laura Wexler




The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game


Book Description

Story of Michael Oher, a rising gridiron star, who was rescued from the ghettos of Memphis and placed with a wealthy family to help develop his football skills.