Letting students lead goal setting is one way to foster student ownership and begin to create a learner-centered environment. Research shows that students who feel ownership of their learning are more likely to persevere in the face of challenges and take steps to proactively meet their goals. When students monitor their own progress, it means that they have set a goal and know how to measure where they are in the process of achieving it. When students track their own progress on assessments using graphic displays, the gains are even higher. Students are never too young to begin tracking!

WIN Time: Fearlessly Transforming Your School is an action-driven, practical leadership playbook and roadmap that provides a proven path to success so you can create your own WIN system in your school. The authors break down the steps of defining WIN and "what" and "why" you need to provide interventions and enrichments for your students. WIN Time will equip you with ideas and inspire you to take action to transform your campus. These very ideas transformed our school from low-performing to being awarded the prestigious National Blue Ribbon by the U.S. Department of Education for our progress in closing the achievement gaps. This book is designed to be a practical-based approach to leadership, designed around a proven learner-centered approach. The proven learner-centered "What I Need" intervention system is outlined in detail within the book and sets the stage for how this book is designed for your leadership solutions. Lessons learned from seasoned administrators are discussed and outlined throughout the book to help the reader reflect and apply scenarios to their own schools. Each chapter concludes with a problem-based scenario that allows the learner to walk through a provided roadmap to help design a solution to an issue in their school. This book will hopefully be "What You Need" to spark a thoughtful solution to an area of struggle on your leadership journey. True professional growth is acquired through reflection. We feel this book provides the spark for reflection in some common areas where we have struggled in our leadership experience. A true learner-centered school is composed of professionals with a passion for learning. If we, as educators, can model a love for learning, it sends a powerful message to the students. I have learned many lessons over the past twenty years as an administrator. Hopefully, some of the lessons shared in the book will make your journey a little easier. Remember to be your best self, build relationships, be grateful, lead with passion, and always model a love for learning. - Morris Lyon, Superintendent, and Author I believe successful schools must have strong and effective leaders. The fundamental purpose of writing this book is to assist you as you transform your school into a true, high-performing school and to help you improve student achievement and learning. I hope that by sharing our experiences and what we have learned, we can help you on this journey. - Stephanie McConnell, Principal, Author, and Owner of Principal Principles

For success in school and life, students need more than proficiency in academic subjects and good scores on tests; those goals should form the floor, not the ceiling, of their education. To truly thrive, students need to develop attributes that aren’t typically measured on standardized tests. In this lively, engaging book by veteran school leader Thomas R. Hoerr, educators will learn how to foster the “Formative Five” success skills that today’s students need, including Empathy: learning to see the world through others’ perspectives. Self-control: cultivating the abilities to focus and delay self-gratification. Integrity: recognizing right from wrong and practicing ethical behavior. Embracing diversity: recognizing and appreciating human differences. Grit: persevering in the face of challenge. When educators engage students in understanding and developing these five skills, they change mindsets and raise expectations for student learning. As an added benefit, they see significant improvements in school and classroom culture. With specific suggestions and strategies, The Formative Five will help teachers, principals, and anyone else who has a stake in education prepare their students—and themselves—for a future in which the only constant will be change.

Wake Up and Win: Your Student Guide to Success will become your go-to guide to achieving better grades and accomplishing more goals in a shorter time and living the life you've always imagined. Each chapter provides action steps and a journaling section to help create a customized plan for your success. You will learn how you¿ Achieve more goals with a focused strategy¿ Remove fear, self-doubt, and procrastination¿ Dream outside of your current circumstances¿ Create systems that set you up to win¿ Maximize all your resources¿ Understand the importance of building impactful relationships

The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration. Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success. They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options. Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers. Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including: -When, where, and what to publish -Writing a foolproof grant application -Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV -Acing the job talk and campus interview -Avoiding the adjunct trap -Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.

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.

Offers a practical guide for improving schools dramatically that will enable all students from all backgrounds to achieve at high levels. Includes assessment forms, an index, and a DVD.

Children in today's world are inundated with information about who to be, what to do and how to live. But what if there was a way to teach children how to manage priorities, focus on goals and be a positive influence on the world around them? The Leader in Meis that programme. It's based on a hugely successful initiative carried out at the A.B. Combs Elementary School in North Carolina. To hear the parents of A. B Combs talk about the school is to be amazed. In 1999, the school debuted a programme that taught The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Peopleto a pilot group of students. The parents reported an incredible change in their children, who blossomed under the programme. By the end of the following year the average end-of-grade scores had leapt from 84 to 94. This book will launch the message onto a much larger platform. Stephen R. Covey takes the 7 Habits, that have already changed the lives of millions of people, and shows how children can use them as they develop. Those habits -- be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek to understand and then to be understood, synergize, and sharpen the saw -- are critical skills to learn at a young age and bring incredible results, proving that it's never too early to teach someone how to live well.

There are over 20 million young people of color in the United States whose representation in STEM education pathways and in the STEM workforce is still far below their numbers in the general population. Their participation could help re-establish the United States' preeminence in STEM innovation and productivity, while also increasing the number of well-educated STEM workers. There are nearly 700 minority-serving institutions (MSIs) that provide pathways to STEM educational success and workforce readiness for millions of students of colorâ€"and do so in a mission-driven and intentional manner. They vary substantially in their origins, missions, student demographics, and levels of institutional selectivity. But in general, their service to the nation provides a gateway to higher education and the workforce, particularly for underrepresented students of color and those from low-income and first-generation to college backgrounds. The challenge for the nation is how to capitalize on the unique strengths and attributes of these institutions and to equip them with the resources, exceptional faculty talent, and vital infrastructure needed to educate and train an increasingly critical portion of current and future generations of scientists, engineers, and health professionals. Minority Serving Institutions examines the nation's MSIs and identifies promising programs and effective strategies that have the highest potential return on investment for the nation by increasing the quantity and quality MSI STEM graduates. This study also provides critical information and perspective about the importance of MSIs to other stakeholders in the nation's system of higher education and the organizations that support them.