Violence in Student Writing


Book Description

Your guide to action when student writing crosses the line At what point should violent student expressions be considered a legitimate threat? This legal handbook helps you apply caution and logic in protecting your students freedom of speech while also protecting the safety of everyone in the building. Gretchen Oltman, an experienced educator and licensed attorney, shows you how to react appropriately to warning signs from students. Youll discover how to: Prevent violence by creating a positive and safe school environment Guide teachers in assessing written threats of violence Evaluate writing outside the classroom, including texting and Facebook postings Violence in Student Writing delves into the real-life experiences of administrators, teachers, and students, exploring current and relevant issues in student writing violence and offering solutions that every school administrator needs to know.




Violence in Student Writing


Book Description

Your guide to action when student writing crosses the line At what point should violent student expressions be considered a legitimate threat? This legal handbook helps you apply caution and logic in protecting your students′ freedom of speech while also protecting the safety of everyone in the building. Gretchen Oltman, an experienced educator and licensed attorney, shows you how to react appropriately to warning signs from students. You′ll discover how to: Prevent violence by creating a positive and safe school environment Guide teachers in assessing written threats of violence Evaluate writing outside the classroom, including texting and Facebook postings Violence in Student Writing delves into the real-life experiences of administrators, teachers, and students, exploring current and relevant issues in student writing violence and offering solutions that every school administrator needs to know. "This book provides educators with legal and education frameworks for distinguishing students who are writing about violence from writing by violent students. Knowing the difference between the two can possibly save lives." —Kenneth S. Trump, President of National School Safety and Security Services Author of Proactive School Security and Emergency Preparedness Planning "Increased emphasis on writing, combined with evolving trends in online media and bullying, make this a book we all need to keep handy. Here, Oltman combines her wisdom as both a classroom teacher and a lawyer, offering us a guide we can trust as we all seek to navigate our way through the complex landscape of writing instruction." —Jim Burke, Author of The English Teacher′s Companion




Curriculum Violence


Book Description

This book examines the historical context of African Americans' educational experiences, and it provides information that helps to assess the dominant discourse on education, which emphasises White middle-class cultural values and standardisation of students' outcomes. Curriculum violence is defined as the deliberate manipulation of academic programming in a manner that ignores or compromises the intellectual and psychological well being of learners. Related to this are the issues of assessment and the current focus on high-stakes standardised testing in schools, where most teachers are forced to teach for the test.




Fight Write


Book Description

Whether a side-street skirmish or an all-out war, fight scenes bring action to the pages of every kind of fiction. But a poorly done or unbelievable fight scene can ruin a great book in an instant. In Fight Write you'll learn practical tips, terminology, and the science behind crafting realistic fight scenes for your fiction. Broken up into "Rounds," trained fighter and writer Carla Hoch guides you through the many factors you'll need to consider when developing battles and brawls. • In Round 1, you will consider how the Who, When, Where, and Why questions affect what type of fight scene you want to craft. • Round 2 delves into the human factors of biology (think fight or flight and adrenaline) and psychology (aggression and response to injuring or killing another person). • Round 3 explores different fighting styles that are appropriate for different situations: How would a character fight from a prone position versus being attacked in the street? What is the vocabulary used to describe these styles? • Round 4 considers weaponry and will guide you to select the best weapon for your characters, including nontraditional weapons of opportunity, while also thinking about the nitty-gritty details of using them. • In Round 5, you'll learn how to accurately describe realistic injuries sustained from the fights and certain weapons, and what kind of injuries will kill a character or render them unable to fight further. By taking into account where your character is in the world, when in history the fight is happening, what the character's motivation for fighting is, and much more, you'll be able write fight scenes unique to your plot and characters, all while satisfying your reader's discerning eye.




The Freedom Writers Diary (20th Anniversary Edition)


Book Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The twentieth anniversary edition of the classic story of an incredible group of students and the teacher who inspired them, featuring updates on the students’ lives, new journal entries, and an introduction by Erin Gruwell Now a public television documentary, Freedom Writers: Stories from the Heart In 1994, an idealistic first-year teacher in Long Beach, California, named Erin Gruwell confronted a room of “unteachable, at-risk” students. She had intercepted a note with an ugly racial caricature and angrily declared that this was precisely the sort of thing that led to the Holocaust. She was met by uncomprehending looks—none of her students had heard of one of the defining moments of the twentieth century. So she rebooted her entire curriculum, using treasured books such as Anne Frank’s diary as her guide to combat intolerance and misunderstanding. Her students began recording their thoughts and feelings in their own diaries, eventually dubbing themselves the “Freedom Writers.” Consisting of powerful entries from the students’ diaries and narrative text by Erin Gruwell, The Freedom Writers Diary is an unforgettable story of how hard work, courage, and determination changed the lives of a teacher and her students. In the two decades since its original publication, the book has sold more than one million copies and inspired a major motion picture Freedom Writers. And now, with this twentieth-anniversary edition, readers are brought up to date on the lives of the Freedom Writers, as they blend indispensable takes on social issues with uplifting stories of attending college—and watch their own children follow in their footsteps. The Freedom Writers Diary remains a vital read for anyone who believes in second chances.




Mercy Rule


Book Description

Danny’s parents yanked him from the art school that let him wear a kilt and listen to bands that no one’s heard of. Now he’s starting sophomore year at the public high school—the one with the gymnasium at the heart of the building and the glorified athletes who rule it all. The smart thing would be to blend in, but Danny has always been about making statements. Brady just wants to get out. Go to college, play football, maybe reach the NFL. He definitely wants to stop waiting for his deadbeat mother to come home, sleeping on park benches, and going to bed hungry. But first he has to lead the team to the championships. It all adds up to a lot of stress. So who can really blame him when he and the football team turn their aggressions on the new freak? Even the quarterback needs to blow off steam sometimes. Coach turns a blind eye to his players’ crimes—because this year, they’re going to State. But maybe if Coach had paid more attention they could’ve caught it before it all happened. Maybe it could’ve been avoided. Maybe. With quick cuts between a large cast of unforgettable characters, and razor-sharp plotting, Tom Leveen takes readers on a countdown to an inevitable, horrifying act. This gripping novel offers an intense, smart perspective on the tragic, toxic mindsets behind the celebrated American sport and the monsters it creates.




Systemic Violence in Education


Book Description

Although compulsory schooling intends to develop the potential of all students, some students may actually be harmed by schooling practices. In this book, researchers and practitioners identify and examine various aspects of systemic violence, particularly as it is embedded in administrative and pedagogical practices. Some of these are obvious—racism, harassment, and child abuse—however, systemic violence is insidious and may reside in "common sense" practices intended to improve student performance. The authors explore some of these subtle manifestations of violence from a variety of perspectives by investigating school administration policies, pedagogical methods, labeling, classroom interaction, children's games, and teacher reactions to child abuse.




Violence in Student Writing


Book Description

Your guide to action when student writing crosses the line At what point should violent student expressions be considered a legitimate threat? This legal handbook delves into the real-life experiences of administrators, teachers, and students to help you apply caution and logic in protecting your students' freedom of speech while also protecting the safety of everyone in the building. Gretchen Oltman, an experienced educator and licensed attorney, shows you how to: Prevent violence by creating a positive and safe school environment Guide teachers in assessing written threats of violence Evaluate writing outside the classroom, including texting and Facebook postings




Contending with Gun Violence in the English Language Classroom


Book Description

Utilizing experiences and expertise from English educators, young adult literature authors, classroom teachers, and mental health professionals, this book considers how secondary English Language Arts can address school gun violence. Curated by field experts, contributions to this volume pay special attention to how a school’s culture and climate affect how teachers and students communicate around difficult topics that are embedded in the curriculum, but not directly addressed. As the first book that helps teachers and teacher educators to grapple with the topic of school violence specifically in the English education classroom, this book promotes young adult literature and writing activities that address timely and unfortunately recurring events.




The Night of Broken Glass


Book Description

Over the last three decades, Kashmir has been ravaged by insurgency. While reams have been written on it - in human rights documents, academic theses, non-fiction accounts of the turmoil, and government and military reports - the effects of the violence on its inhabitants have rarely been rendered in fiction. Feroz Rather's The Night of Broken Glass corrects that anomaly. Through a series of interconnected stories, within which the same characters move in and out, the author weaves a tapestry of the horror Kashmir has come to represent. His visceral imagery explores the psychological impact of the turmoil on its natives - Showkat, who is made to wipe off graffiti on the wall of his shop with his tongue; Rosy, a progressive, jeans-wearing 'upper-caste' girl who is in love with 'lower-caste' Jamshid; Jamshid's father Gulam, a cobbler by profession who never finds his son's bullet-riddled body; the ineffectual Nadim 'Pasture', who proclaims himself a full-fledged rebel; even the barbaric and tyrannical Major S, who has to contend with his own nightmares. Grappling with a society brutalized by the oppression of the state, and fissured by the tensions of caste and gender, Feroz Rather's remarkable debut is as much a paean to the beauty of Kashmir and the courage of its people as it is a dirge to a paradise lost.