Educate the whole child by building a culture of collaboration in your school! This book for K–12 general and special education teachers, administrators, and student support specialists explores how to make collaboration and coordination work, who takes responsibility for the process, and why collaboration is central to improving outcomes for students with complex learning needs. The author: Discusses the roles, responsibilities, and relationships between school professionals, community agencies, and service providers Offers case examples as real-world illustrations of collaboration Emphasizes important developmental transitions from the elementary years through high school and after

Packed with practical strategies you can use to create a culture of self-motivation in your school! Teachers use traditional incentive and reward systems with the best of intentions. We're trying to support students' positive behavior and learning. We're hoping to motivate and inspire students to work hard and do well in school. If everyone behaves, we'll have a pizza party. The more books you read, the more stickers you'll receive. On the surface, these systems seem to make sense. They may even seem to work. But in the long term, they do not foster intrinsic motivation or a love or learning. In fact, they often have the opposite effect. In Tackling the Motivation Crisis: How to Activate Student Learning Without Behavior Charts, Pizza Parties, or Other Hard-to-Quit Incentive Systems, award-winning educator and best-selling author Mike Anderson explains * The damage done by extrinsic motivation systems and why they are so hard for us to give up. * What intrinsic motivation looks like and the six high-impact motivators—autonomy, belonging, competence, purpose, fun, and curiosity—that foster it. * How to teach the self-management and self-motivation skills that can make a difference for kids. * How to use intrinsic motivation in curricula and instructional strategies, feedback and assessment, and discipline and classroom management. Ultimately, our job as teachers is not to motivate our students. It's to make sure that our classrooms and schools are places that inspire their intrinsic motivation and allow it to flourish. Anderson shows how you can better do that right away—no matter what grade level or subject area you teach.

This e-book collection of articles from Educational Leadership provides a compelling look at what it means to truly open students to learning--heart, mind, body, and soul. The articles describe how to impart relevance, respect, and reward while also teaching traditional and not-so-traditional curriculum subjects. They span all grade levels and subjects and offer both inspiration and practical advice. Note: This product listing is for the Adobe Acrobat (PDF) version of the book.

Creating Safe, Equitable, Engaging Schools brings together the collective wisdom of more than thirty experts from a variety of fields to show how school leaders can create communities that support the social, emotional, and academic needs of all students. It offers an essential guide for making sense of the myriad frameworks, resources, and tools available to create a continuous improvement system. Filled with recommendations gleaned from research and ongoing work in every US state and territory, this book is a critical resource for understanding and adopting evidence-based practices and making programmatic decisions to ensure the ideal conditions for learning, growth, and development. "Creating Safe, Equitable, Engaging Schools is an essential read for teachers, principals, district leaders, and organizations that work with schools to create challenging and supportive environments for all students." --Paul Cruz, superintendent, Austin Independent School District "Osher and colleagues not only connect the dots between big ideas--deeper learning, trauma, social and emotional learning, evidence-based programs, comprehensive community planning--but they model the continuous improvement approach in the way ideas are ordered across and within the chapters. This is a masterful volume: comprehensive, accessible, and way overdue." --Karen J. Pittman, cofounder, president and CEO, The Forum for Youth Investment "This book provides a very usable road map for creating safe, healthy, equitable, and caring schools. The editors and contributors successfully integrate research, practice, and policy to help educators develop and implement effective and sustainable models to nurture caring schools that all children and educators deserve." --Mark T. Greenberg, Bennett Chair of Prevention Research, Pennsylvania State University David Osher is vice president and an institute fellow at American Institutes for Research. Deborah Moroney is a managing director at American Institutes for Research and is director of the youth development and supportive learning environments practice area. Sandra Williamson is a vice president for policy, practice, and systems change at American Institutes for Research.

What motivates us to learn? We all want our students to be engaged learners, but we often struggle with getting them excited about and responsible for their own learning. In Engaging Children, Ellin Oliver Keene explores the question: What can we do to help students develop internal motivation or, better yet, engagement? Differentiating between compliance, participation, motivation, and engagement, she shows how to develop and recognize true student engagement in your classroom and help students take more responsibility for their learning. Explore the conditions where student-driven engagement flourishes. As a teacher, instructional coach, or principal you will learn to cultivate an environment for increasing student engagement. You will also explore four pillars of engagement that provide a framework for considering what it means to be engaged: Intellectual urgency: The compelling drive we experience when we choose to invest time and effort in learning; using questions to propel our learning forward. Emotional resonance: The ability to describe when a concept is imprinted on our mind and our heart; experiencing a strong emotional connection to what we learn or read. Perspective bending: An awareness of how others' knowledge, emotions, and beliefs shape our own; adjusting our thinking when challenged and relishing the opportunity to impact others with our ideas. The aesthetic world: A recognition of moments when we find something uniquely beautiful, captivating, hilarious, or meaningful; discussing a book, an illustration, a painting, or an idea that seems to have been created just for us. Truly engaged children are more likely to remember and reapply what they learn. Engagement provides authentic motivation for students and helps them become citizens who act on their learning for the betterment of the world. With Ellin's guidance, you'll discover how to help all children uncover their drive for deeper learning. Join the Engaging Children Facebook group: facebook.com/groups/EngagingChildren

While everyone wants students to be healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged, it's tough to work toward that vision when there are so many other priorities and constraints. That's why we've developed this special tool to help you lead and implement a school- or district-wide initiative for the Whole Child. Using the tools and guidelines in this action tool, you can Convince teacher, parent, and other audiences of the rationale for a Whole Child initiative Focus your school and community on developing and maintaining an intellectually engaging and challenging learning environment Focus your school and community on preparing 21st century students Put forward a plan to address students' health and safety issues Guide your school toward a more personalized and supportive learning environment Included is a single use of the Whole Child Assessment Survey to give you baseline data and help you assess your school's current strengths and weaknesses. Downloadable professional learning activities with a Powerpoint presentation make it much easier for you to conduct a professional development focused on educating the Whole Child. Plus, a school improvement planning process gives you steps and strategies for leading a successful Whole Child initiative.

This book provides a unique examination on the ways in which educating the whole child in the community school serves to ameliorate the conditions of poverty and obstacles to learning faced by students. Using a case study approach the book will highlight the successful journey of one school that transformed itself into a community school. Given the rise in poverty nation–wide and the unprecedented economic crisis, many school districts are looking for innovative ways to garner resources for their schools. The strategies outlined in this book will provide suggestions for using the resources of community partnerships as a framework for school renewal and improvement in student achievement. The authors share their first hand experiences building a community school from the ground up, as well as providing the national perspective on community schools. Given the power of the community school, this book concludes with a “call to action” for the dissemination of this model and its embrace of whole child education

Engage the minds and bodies of students in grades PK–2 in learning fun with Gross Motor Fun! This 160-page book helps students improve academic skills, fitness, motor skills, and confidence with more than 200 games and activities. It also explores the connection between learning and movement. Written by a Certified Adaptive Physical Educator, the book includes a skills matrix, checklists, strategies, a glossary, and educational definitions. It supports NCTE, NCTM, NAEYC, and NASPE standards.

Among the many models of school reform that have emerged in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, one has endured for more than 50 years: the School Development Program (SDP). Established in 1968 by renowned child psychiatrist James P. Comer and the Yale Child Study Center, the SDP is grounded in the belief that successful schooling—particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds—must focus on the whole child. With that in mind, the SDP encompasses both academics and social-emotional development, and it is founded on positive and productive relationships among students, teachers, school leaders, and parents. With the Whole Child in Mind describes the SDP's six developmental pathways (cognitive, social, psychological, physical, linguistic, and ethical) and explains how the program's nine key components (in the form of mechanisms, operations, and guiding principles) create a comprehensive approach to educating children for successful outcomes. Firsthand recollections by Comer, school leaders and teachers, and SDP staff members provide an inside look at the challenges and successes that eventually transformed severely underperforming schools into models of excellence. Linda Darling-Hammond, one of the country's foremost experts on K-12 education, and her colleagues argue persuasively for the continuing relevance of the SDP. Far too many schools still operate in a high-pressure environment that emphasizes testing and standardized curricula while ignoring the fundamental importance of personal connections that make a profound difference for students. Fifty years on, the SDP is still just as powerful as ever.

Synopsis: This book examines collaboration between teachers, administrators, student support specialists, community agencies, and service providers to improve outcomes for students with complex learning needs.