This journey will engage you in dealing with some hard truths and it will take you down a new pathway and new ways of thinking about K-12 education. We now live in a nation that is struggling with deep social, economic and political conflicts. We are all doing our best to resolve these conflicts and to solve the critical challenges that we all face in the Digital Age, but our children and young adults are having a very difficult time in dealing with the realities of their young lives. We wrote this book because we want to engage all of our readers in each local community in frank, honest, down-to-earth, practical conversations about our K-12 schools as the foundation for our constitutional democracy. Without well-educated citizens, our government, our economy and our society will not survive. And this is true regardless of the political beliefs of our readers across the political spectrum.

This journey will engage you in dealing with some hard truths and it will take you down a new pathway and new ways of thinking about K-12 education. We now live in a nation that is struggling with deep social, economic and political conflicts. We are all doing our best to resolve these conflicts and to solve the critical challenges that we all face in the Digital Age, but our children and young adults are having a very difficult time in dealing with the realities of their young lives. We wrote this book because we want to engage all of our readers in each local community in frank, honest, down-to-earth, practical conversations about our K-12 schools as the foundation for our constitutional democracy. Without well-educated citizens, our government, our economy and our society will not survive. And this is true regardless of the political beliefs of our readers across the political spectrum.

Featuring breathtaking panoramas and revelatory, unforgettable images, Battle Lines is an utterly original graphic history of the Civil War. A collaboration between the award-winning historian Ari Kelman and the acclaimed graphic novelist Jonathan Fetter-Vorm, Battle Lines showcases various objects from the conflict (a tattered American flag from Fort Sumter, a pair of opera glasses, a bullet, an inkwell, and more), along with a cast of soldiers, farmers, slaves, and well-known figures, to trace an ambitious narrative that extends from the early rumblings of secession to the dark years of Reconstruction. Employing a bold graphic form to illuminate the complex history of this period, Kelman and Fetter-Vorm take the reader from the barren farms of the home front all the way to the front lines of an infantry charge. A daring presentation of the war that nearly tore America apart, Battle Lines is a monumental achievement.

Math coach, Kassia Omohundro Wedekind and literacy coach, Christy Hermann Thompson, have spent years comparing notes on how to build effective classroom communities across the content areas. How, they wondered, can we lay the groundwork for classroom conversations that are less teacher-directed and more conducive to student-to-student dialogue? Their answers start with Hands-Down Conversations, an innovative discourse structure in which students' ideas and voices take the lead while teachers focus on listening and facilitating. In addition to classrom stories and examples, Christy and Kassia provide 28 micro-lessons designed to help K-5 students develop and excercise their speaking and listening muscles. Inside Hands Down, Speak Out you'll learn how to: Build talk communities that are accessible to everyone, especially those whose voices are often traditionally left out of classroom discourse. Analyze classroom conversations in order to plan next steps for developing the classroom talk community Plan and facilitate three types of conversations across literacy and math Christy and Kassia believe that the development of dialogue skills is worth the investment of time not only becuase it has the power to deepen our understanding of literacy and mathematics, but also to deepen our understanding of ourselves, our communities, and the world.

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.

1117 hymns and 19 doxologies and occasional pieces and chants.