With little or no knitting experience, readers can refashion blankets, sweaters, scarves, or even hand-knitted pieces into colorful clothing, accessories, and home dcor by incorporating a range of skills that include felting, appliqu, and embroidery.

“The only stability possible is stability in motion.”—John William Gardner In his classic treatise Self-Renewal, John W. Gardner examines why great societies thrive and die. He argues that it is dynamism, not decay, that is dramatically altering the landscape of American society. The twentieth century has brought about change more rapidly than any previous era, and with that came advancements, challenges, and often destruction. Gardner cautions that “a society must court the kinds of change that will enrich and strengthen it, rather than the kind of change that will fragment and destroy it.” A society’s ability to renew itself hinges upon its individuals. Gardner reasons that it is the waning of the heart and spirit—not a lack of material might—that threatens American society. Young countries, businesses, and humans have several key commonalities: they are flexible, eager, open, curious, unafraid, and willing to take risks. These conditions lead to success. However, as time passes, so too comes complacency, apathy, and rigidity, causing motivation to plummet. It is at this junction that great civilizations fall, businesses go bankrupt, and life stagnates. Gardner asserts that the individual’s role in social renewal requires each person to face and look beyond imminent threats. Ultimately, we need a vision that there is something worth saving. Through this vision, Gardner argues, society will begin to renew itself, not permanently, but past its average lifespan, and it will at once become enriched and rejuvenated.

A Devotional Magazine for WomenThis devotional magazine is for women, age forty and beyond, whoselives are filled with struggles, sorrows, joys, and triumphs at home, work,church, and in the community. It offers inspirational thoughts and wiseinsights from women who have triumphed through similar trials. It alsoshows how to pass on a legacy of faith, wisdom, and love to others.

When was the last time you shook up your writing instruction? In Renew!: Become a Better and More Authentic Writing Teacher, author Shawna Coppola builds on the premise that our students are ever-changing, and so is our collective knowledge base. Instructional strategies that have worked in the past may need to evolve accordingly. Coppola guides K-8 writing teachers with a three-part framework for Rethinking, Revising, and Renewing their approach'sand finding new energy along the way. Using the framework, Renew! examines the most pervasive educational practices in writing instruction and poses questions that guide teachers to revise those practices to ensure they are effective for all students. Coppola believes the work is challenging, yet critical, referencing R. Buckminster Fuller's Knowledge Doubling Curve: According to Fuller's paradigm, the amount of time it takes for us to increase our collective knowledge base by 100 percent will continue to shrink the older we get. If this is true'sor even close to being true'show can we, as educators, ever feel satisfied with teaching our students the same concepts, using the same methodologies and practices, that we have in the past? The book offers a road map for renewing key aspects of our practice, including: How we teach the writing process: Over time and frequent usage, some of our favorite teaching strategies can become rigid. Coppola gives a candid account of how her enthusiasm for the writing process as an undergraduate led her to teach writing for years as a set of pre-determined steps. Now she teaches that there are many variations of the writing process, and many twists and turns along the path. One foundational strategy used is opening up her own process as a writer'sand her writer's notebook'sto students and encouraging them to think and talk about their process with classmates. What we mean by Writing: Coppola argues that drawing isn't an accompaniment to writing; it is writing. Its another form of composition through which students can tell stories, convey ideas, and engage readers. The book is full of visual compositions by students as well as Shawna's wonderfully simple and evocative sketches from her writer's notebook. The tools we use to teach writing: The most ubiquitous tools used to teach writing'sfrom anchor charts to graphic organizers to sentence starters etc.'stend to be teacher-centric rather than student-centric. Renew! invites students into the process of constructing tools that are meaningful and helpful to them. The book includes a range of examples of tools built collaboratively with students. How we assess and evaluate student writing: Coppola draws a distinction between assessment'swhich should be an interactive conversation with students'sand evaluation, which is about judging and categorizing what students know and can do. Renew! offers a range of examples and resources that illustrate effective feedback for student writers, including online videos of teacher-student and peer-to-peer conferences. Renew! also offers ideas for how teachers can nurture their own writing lives and thus reinvigorate their instructional practice. Through rethinking, revising, and renewing their practice, teachers can not only strengthen students' skills as writers, but also nurture students to become critical thinkers, problem solvers, and risk takers in the classroom and in our rapidly-changing world.

Considers legislation to extend for five years Presidential authority to negotiate trade agreements and to revise tariff rates.

Potterversity: Essays Exploring the World of Harry Potter presents a written companion to the popular, "Hermione-Approved" MuggleNet podcast by the same name. Selected from the top Potter Studies scholars in the field, the diverse authors in the volume provide a range of interpretations of wizarding world stories. Essays include analysis of genre conventions, literary and religious symbolism, the role of games in the series, pedagogical approaches, and politically challenging issues like U.S. race relations, colonialism, and gender and sexuality--including direct attention to J.K. Rowling's controversial statements about trans people. Grouped into the sections "Occult Knowledge," "Ancient Magic," "A Question of Character," "Self and Other," "Playing Potter," and "Teaching, the Hogwarts Way," partnered essays precede transcripts of podcast conversations, led by the hosts of Potterversity. The book's essays and conversations aim to engage not only the mind but the spirit as well--the emotional, personal, and moral responses the Potterverse has evoked in so many people around the world. Fundamentally, this book demonstrates that the characters, stories, and situations of the magical realm promote thinking that helps us navigate our more mundane but no less dangerous world. Perhaps even more importantly, they help us to recognize the magic amid our everyday Muggle realities.