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This edited volume is part of the Information Age Publishing (IAP) Series on Family, School and Community Partnerships. This book addresses the ways families and communities engage with an increasingly common feature of the American public education landscape: charter schools. Family and Community Engagement in Charter Schools contains seven chapters examining this emerging field of study authored by both established and emerging scholars. Chapters examine how charter schools, the policy landscape, families, community institutions, and charter school educators both create and inhibit opportunities for effective family and community engagement. Data is included from intensely charterized school districts such as Los Angeles, Denver, New York City, New Orleans and Oakland as well as broader state-level perspectives from California and Massachusetts. The authors approach this important relationship without the fixed ideological lens that often colors research on this controversial from of school organization. In addition to highlighting their unique findings, chapters propose practical, research-based strategies for schools, districts, or communities so that charter schools can be strong sources of local democracy- an oft-cited but rarely achieved goal. The book will broaden the field of Family and Community Engagement by including new theories, scholars, and areas of study. It is valuable reading for researchers, graduate students, policymakers, educational leaders, and community-based organizations seeking to better understand this unique form of organizing public schools.

This book lays out the promise and potential of schools as community-building institutions. It explores the challenges faced in incorporating schools into broader community development policy, and also recognizes the changing demographics of schools and their need to integrate with economic development policy in order to promote broader community development.The book includes chapters on tax abatements and economic development policy impacts on schools, new approaches to school building renovation, the potential and reach of shared services between communities and schools, and the impact of school-based health centers. It also offers a theory to integrate schools into community development. Key elements include shared power between communities and schools, greater transparency in economic development policy, collaboration across the broad range of community actors, and engagement of diverse voices. These elements build a greater sense of belonging across generations and class and racial divides.Creative democracy can broaden both school and community development agendas and build a culture of health. This book will help community development and school leaders recognize and pursue the promise of schools as critical community development actors.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 license.

Community service is often an enriching experience, but should it be mandatory for all students? This is the question readers explore as they learn about both sides of a debate that directly affects them. As readers learn the reasons people feel strongly in favor of and against making service hours mandatory for young people, they are encouraged to think for themselves about where they stand on this issue. They're also invited to use the information presented in fact boxes to support their opinion. Colorful photographs of relatable students and a helpful graphic organizer enhance this exercise in critical thinking.

This book is your roadmap to successfully navigating your child's middle school years!Marked by significant physical, cognitive, and emotional changes, this period poses unique challenges that can have a profound impact on middle-grade students'academic performance, social and emotional well-being, and overall development. This book provides the knowledge, resources, and strategies needed to successfully navigate these challenges while creating a nurturing and supportive environment. In addition to covering topics such as puberty, changing social dynamics, identity exploration, digital literacy, and self-advocacy, chapters also provide resources for further reading and reflection questions to inspire dynamic discussion between parent and child.Parents, caregivers, and educators of middle school students will find the support and guidance in this book invaluable as they help their student foster growth, resilience, and success while navigating this key period of change.

Just inside the school doors from the back parking lot, in the farthest reaches from the school entrance, there is a short corridor that leads to the hallway that houses Washington River High School's two English Learning classrooms. These classrooms offer both safe sanctuary for the school's growing population of Latinx students and a troublingly hidden space that allows most of the school and community to maintain the pretense of the generally prosperous, White, neighbor-helping-neighbor place of their myopic nostalgia. This Mayberry-like imaginary excludes the divisive sociopolitical battles of the last decade that have earned Washington River both local and national attention for a city ordinance that would fine landlords who rented to undocumented residents, a de jure policy that became de facto racial profiling. The English Learning classrooms are thus sites for the work of learning English and other academic subjects alongside the more abstract but no less important work of constructing citizen identities. In these spaces, adolescent Latinx newcomers negotiate and assert complicated claims about how they get to be of Washington River High School, the wider community of Washington River, and of the United States. As established residents and newcomers interact with each other (or not) in Washington River, they confront people who are linguistically, culturally, racially, and socially different from themselves. The polarized and contentious sociopolitical context of the United States in the wake of Donald Trump's election to the United States presidency in 2016 provides the backdrop to this nine-chapter book. The book centers the experiences of newcomer students as they construct citizen identities within the microcontext of their classroom and school and the macro-context of a changing and polarized United States. While this is an account of the local context of Washington River, the issues raised—welcome, unwelcome, belonging, and claiming rights—are not particular to Washington River. As part of the changing sociocultural landscape of the Midwestern United States, in which historically distinct groups come together in common spaces, Washington River High School offers an example of the concurrently familiar and uncomfortable ways that new receiving communities in the New Latino Diaspora (Hamann & Harklau, 2015; Hamann, Wortham, & Murillo, 2002) “host newcomers” (Lamphere, et al., 1992) within the common and complex institution of high school.

A spiritually grounded source of inspiration and answers for education leaders in troubling times Public confidence in schools is waning, and there remains an unprecedented teacher shortage in the United States. Leading with Heart and Soul: 30 Inspiring Lessons of Faith, Learning, and Leadership for Educators shows leaders how to use spiritual principles to care for teachers, students, and other stakeholders despite these obstacles. Principals, superintendents, and others will gain motivation from the stories and strategies inside. Drawing on spiritual principles and Dr. Irvin Scott's experience as a classroom, school, district, and non-profit leader, this book will reinvigorate you and your team as you try to answer your most pressing questions about the future of education, including: How do we empower innovative, servant-hearted educational leaders to meet the needs of students? How do we inspire whole communities to support the learning journeys of their youth? How do we engage the entire educational ecosystem—including nonprofits and other organizations—to uplift equitable opportunities to learning and ensure that every student has the resources needed to thrive? This is not a time for leaders to turn away from our children, their caregivers, and the educators who teach and nurture them. Instead, it is a time to lift them up and celebrate the work they do while navigating our own administrative mandates and challenges. Leading with Heart and Soul speaks directly to the individuals in a position to achieve that goal. It is perfect for book clubs; personal study; and within public, Christian private, and faith-based charter schools.

Envisioned as a story, a guide, a resource, and an aesthetic experience, this book features the work of a multigenerational collective of K–12 educators, students, and teaching artists seeking educational justice. This multivocal approach illustrates how bringing together arts-infused writing pedagogies, with the visionary and intellectual force of freedom dreaming, can create more luminous and socially transformative educational spaces. Through vivid vignettes, compelling first-person narratives, mixed media artwork, and detailed lesson plans, readers will experience schools as places of joy, belonging, and justice. As an act of radical hope during the turmoil and trauma of post-pandemic times, this book invites readers to draw on the principles of freedom dreaming and abolitionist teaching to imagine and enact arts-infused writing pedagogies across a multitude of settings. Authors offer guidance for teachers, teacher educators, and professional development leaders wishing to take up this work in their own contexts.Book Features:Provides detailed guidelines and principles for enacting arts-infused writing pedagogies, adaptable to a range of contexts.Showcases original artwork by K–12 students and educators, many in full color. Includes insights on teaching writing and engaging in inquiry-based professional learning from a local site of the National Writing Project.Highlights the role of teaching artists in enhancing teacher and student learning.Illuminates the potential of a/r/tography, affect, and wonder in qualitative inquiry.Contains visually arresting and narratively powerful contributions from students as young as 6 years old to teachers nearing retirement, as well as professional artists and novelists.Contributors: Marcus Kwame Anderson, Mandy Berghela, Dana Corcoran, Cheryl L. Dozier, Tammy Ellis-Robinson, Brittany Gonzalez-Barone, Emily Hass, Rana Hughes, H. D. Hunter, Patricia Poole Jeffress, Rae Johnson, Maria Latorre, Kyle McHugh, Gina M. Mooney, Christina Pepe, Matt Pinchinat, Brandon Porter, Camille Ramos, Amy Salamone, Fatima Shah, Alisa Sikelianos-Carter, Christina Taylor, Hanum Tyagita, Alicia Wein, Leah Werther, Vanessia Wilkins, Kelly K. Wissman, Jacquelyn Woods, Shania Yearwood

This teaching guidebook will help educators navigate emerging best practices to center historically marginalized voices and perspectives in middle, high school, and postsecondary learning spaces. The author provides an accessible blueprint for utilizing histories, culturally responsive teaching, and community responsive pedagogy to build collaborative and equitable classrooms. Inspired by research steeped in oral histories, Bunch brings forth lessons from educators, merged with voices of students, to share impactful classroom practices. The un/HUSH framework asks us to unlearn the “hush” often associated with marginalized histories and stories. The framework considers the following guiding principles: (H) using histories not told to inform teaching practices, (U) unlearning behaviors and practices that do not empower marginalized voices, (S) creating classrooms and spaces that allow for stories to be shared, and (H) encouraging healing to occur from connection, collaboration, and relationships. Part narrative, part guidebook, this resource harnesses the collective power of us to improve outcomes for students. “Bunch's un/HUSH framework can help all educators be guided by the voices of past educators.”—From the Foreword by Joyce Ladner, civil rights activist, educator, and author “I am confident that my experiences in Dr. Bunch's classroom have shaped me into the curious and knowledgeable woman I strive to be. I believe this book will help create similar experiences for students across the world.”—Xyanne Purnell, former student

Advancing Critical Pedagogy and Praxis Across Educational Settings is both an inquiry and response of gratitude to the work of critical scholars, educators, practitioners, and researchers who honor the complex realities of partnerships between school communities and institutions of higher education. This volume centers the voices of those who explore across time and in between spaces to illuminate synergistic approaches, pathways to new ideas and consciousness, relationships of mutual respect, and human-centered perspectives. This collective of narratives reveals the power of local schools and communities partnering with universities and organizations to disrupt inequitable social processes. The authors interrogate the creation and permeation of boundaries to understand interconnectivity of educational practices, community, and the impact of social contexts.

It is vital that we decolonise community education and development – learning from the past in order to challenge current discrimination and oppression more effectively. In this book, Marjorie Mayo identifies ways of developing more inclusive policies and practices, working towards social justice for the future. She also tackles the pervasive influence of the ‘culture wars'undermining work in communities, including the denial of problematic colonial legacies. Inspired by movements such as Black Lives Matter and labour solidarity, the book includes case studies from the US, UK and the Global South, outlining the lessons that can be applied to community education and development training and practice.

Establish a sense of community and foundation of trust with parents and guardians. On the Same Team offers current research and real classroom examples to guide school and district leaders in building Families and Educators Together (FET) teams. Discover how the FET framework can help create strong family-school partnerships and foster a culture of inclusion and support for underrepresented groups. This book will help K–12 leadership: Differentiate between family involvement in schools and the authentic, mutually beneficial collaborative partnerships behind FET teams Facilitate a successful and inspiring launch of the framework with key preparation steps Prepare for common roadblocks and identify potential barriers to successful implementation Foster the habits and skills behind a successful FET team leader Use team-building activities, as well as sample email messages, questions to ask primary caregivers, calendars, timelines, and other practical resources Contents: Introduction Chapter 1: Understanding Families and Educators Together Teams Chapter 2: Building Your Teams Chapter 3: Preparing for the Launch Chapter 4: Making Your First FET Meeting a Success Chapter 5: Being a Great Team Leader Chapter 6: Taking Action and Sustaining the Momentum Epilogue Appendix A: Frequently Asked Questions Appendix B: Organizational Tools Appendix C: Outreach Materials References and Resources Index

The role of the rural education leader is complex and demanding, but the rewards of serving in a rural school district are innumerable. Learn how to work through challenges and maximize success in this often overlooked and underresourced field.In the United States, the umbrella term'rural education'applies to diverse place-based contexts ranging from remote mountain communities to midwestern agricultural areas to southwestern mesas and beyond. One thing these varied environments have in common is the need for creative, solutions-oriented leadership.In The Resilient Rural Educator, award-winning superintendent Melissa A. Sadorf draws on her extensive experience teaching and leading in a rural school district in Arizona to identify issues unique to rural education and explore ways to capitalize on local resources to provide the best possible education for all students. Topics Sadorf investigates in depth include the following:•Juggling multiple district roles while maintaining efficiency and effectiveness•Recruiting and retaining staff, teachers, and administrators in a rural area•Connecting students and families with needed services and resources•Solving the challenges of limited access to utilities such as broadband internet•Navigating the role of the rural school as the hub of the community•Managing community partnerships for mutually beneficial resultsRural school districts serve approximately one in five students across the United States—students who deserve an equitable education. The insightful, innovative, and comprehensive strategies found in this book will help you and your district deliver that education to them.

The Green Book: For Black Folks in Education is a nonfiction book written for parents and educators to examine best practices for supporting Black children in schools. Dr. Brown addresses topics such as parenting, high expectations, unconscious bias, community, culture, and navigating the traditional American educational system. This book provides a professional and personal lens to view the experiences of Black children in schools.

This is an open access book. 2nd Annual International Conference (AIC) 2023! Annual International Conference (AIC) is an international conference hosted by the Guidance and Counseling Department, Faculty of Education and Teacher Trainings, Universitas Mercu Buana Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The chosen theme is “Reimagining Guidance and Counseling in the VUCA Era: Navigating Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity in the Field of Education”. Believe that this seminar will provide valuable insights into the evolving landscape of education and the vital role of guidance and counseling in supporting students'well-being and success amidst the challenges posed by VUCA.

Built around the culturally responsive family support model, the fifth edition of Home, School, and Community Collaboration prepares teachers to work empathetically and collaboratively with all families. Through case studies, vignettes, and reflective connections, authors Kathy B. Grant and Julie A. Ray guide readers through changing trends in family engagement. The authors emphasize a strengths-based approach to families throughout the text. This book offers powerful ways to connect with families through online communication, community engagement, and suggestions from parents, in their own words, to improve parent-teacher collaboration. The fifth edition highlights the national and global shifts in family engagement. Each chapter now features an'Impact of a Pandemic'textbox, highlighting a key effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on children and families and offering resources and support for teachers. Additionally, each chapter now includes learning objectives tied to key topics and new end-of-chapter assessments to match each learning objective. Chapter 10, Teacher as Family Communication Facilitator, is now Chapter 3 in the text to prepare readers earlier to take on this crucial role. Throughout, the latest data, policies, models, and citations give readers up-to-date information and the latest thinking on working with students and families alike.

The American Psychological Association (2020) reported that some 81% of teenage children (13 to 17 years-of-age) were negatively impacted in a range of ways due to school closures in connection with COVID-19, including 47% who indicated that they “didn't learn as much as they did in previous years” (para. 21). That perhaps many more than 47% of teenage children in the United States did not learn as much as they did in previous years was documented in the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report which found that “the national average score declines in mathematics for fourth- and eighth-graders were the largest ever recorded in that subject” (Wilburn & Elias, 2022, para. 1). The National Center for Educational Statistics Commissioner commented somewhat hyperbolically that the results showed that “every student was vulnerable to the pandemic's disruptions” (Wilburn & Elias, 2022, para. 5) and called for a single-minded emphasis on ways to assist students to recover from their trauma and accelerate their learning. Wilburn and Elias (2022) joined those who have pointed out that the learning declines associated with COVID-19 did not occur equitably. The likelihood of a single-minded policy response to change the system and address the achievement gaps exposed by the range of responses to COVID-19 seems small. On the one hand, doubting the sustainability of innovative responses, education historian Larry Cuban referenced the dominant stability of schooling which, if anything, “produces this huge public and professional need to resume schooling as it was” (Young, 2022, para. 18). On the other hand, diverse political agendas will diffuse concerted efforts. Grossman et al. (2021) discussed a pertinent example from Michigan where “public health data, partisanship, and collective bargaining” (p. 637) each played a role in determining school reopening decisions. On this same issue of school reopening, there is credible evidence from Massachusetts that the much maligned and politically explosive masking policies implemented in some schools may have saved lives (Cowger et al., 2022). Roy (2020) asserted that “historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next” (para. 48). The chapters in this volume attest to the willingness of individuals to collaborate in stepping through that portal.

Family and Community Partnerships: Promising Practices for Teachers and Teacher Educators, offers a fresh new look at the competencies, strategies, and practices that effective educators develop to build strong partnerships with families and communities. Written by leaders in the field, the book is an outgrowth of a cutting-edge initiative led by the National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement to reimagine how educators are prepared for family and community engagement. Based on four guiding practices - reflect, connect, collaborate, and lead alongside families – each section of the book highlights theory, real-world strategies, discussion questions, and activities that can be used by teachers, teacher educators, and professional learning specialists to inspire new ideas for courses, workshops, and for self-reflection.

Reauthoring Savage Inequalities brings together scholars, educators, practitioners, and students to counter dominant narratives of urban educational environments. Using a community cultural wealth lens, contributors center the strategies, actions, and ways of knowing communities of color use to resist systemic oppression. So often, discussions of urban schooling are filled with stories of what Jonathan Kozol famously referred to as'savage inequalities'in his 1991 book of the same title—with tales of deficiency and despair. The counternarratives in this volume grapple with the inequalities highlighted by Kozol. Yet, in foregrounding lived experiences of educating and being educated in schools and communities that were systemically isolated and disenfranchised then and continue to be thirty years later, Reauthoring Savage Inequalities brings nuance to depictions of teaching and learning in urban areas. In nineteen essays, as well as commentaries, a foreword, and an afterword, contributors engage readers in critical dialogue about the importance of community cultural wealth. They identify the sources of support that enable students, staff, parents, and community members to succeed and thrive despite the purposeful divestment in communities of color across this nation's cities.

Anti-racist Community Engagement: Principles and Practices centers anti-racist community-engaged traditions that BIPOC academics and community members have created through more than a century of collaboration across university and community. It demonstrates both the progress and the work that still needs to be done. The book is organized around a set of Anti-racist Community Engagement Principles developed by the editors as part of their shared work and dialogue with colleagues regionally and across the country. The significant number of diverse voices that have informed the creation of the principles reveal the groundswell of work underway to center anti-racist values and to pivot away from the traditional, higher education-centric, and “white savior” ways of doing community engagement teaching, research, and practice.The chapters in this book are organized into four sections, each focused on one of the four Anti-racist Community Engagement Principles. The first section explores the various ways in which reframing our institutional and pedagogical practices can help counteract the persistence and impact of racism on our campuses and in our community engagement work. In the second section, authors share practices that promote critical reflection on individual and systemic/structural racism through examinations of positionality, bias, and historical roots of systemic racism. The third section examines intentional learning and course design through anti-racist learning goals, course content, policies, and assessment. Finally, the fourth section shows how authors have developed compassionate and reflective classrooms by creating a sense of belonging that acknowledges student cultural assets and contributions and meets students where they are to co-create a supportive anti-racist learning environment.Each chapter in the book introduces a specific example of anti-racist community engagement, with authors providing unique, situated insights into the nature and complexity of the factors at play. This is followed by a “Practice” section where authors reflect on their engagement, and the lessons learned through it, thus leaving readers with detailed insights and roadmaps for adapting or replicating the work. Finally, a “Connections” section places the case and its practices into broader contexts of pedagogical, curricular, institutional, and community change.There is an open access digital companion to the volume, where authors have shared materials that will help shed further light on their compelling practices, including syllabi, agendas, handouts, worksheets, and additional resources.

Countless reforms and interventions have sought to improve academic outcomes for immigrant-origin students, with labels like “at-risk” rushing forth to solve the “dropout crisis.” And yet, even in culturally and linguistically affirmative environments, youth still fall to the margins. Based on research in a newcomer school located in New York City, the author explores the everyday lives of nine immigrant students outside of school, showing that youth are not simply waiting for school reforms. Their educational lives are not bound to institutional spaces or the logics of schooling. Instead, youth routinely take up educational practices that are intellectually rigorous, joyous, resilient, and fulfilling. These practices reveal educations that are not held to a single place or purpose. Instead, they are present in schools, on subways, at museums, in neighborhoods, across many other places, and always on the move. Using a historical and ethnographic lens, this book challenges researchers and educators to consider how education might be reconceptualized to better respond to marginalization and exclusion and, in the process, provoke new understandings of education itself. Book Features:Listens to the stories, histories, and philosophies of immigrant youth as they explore the realities and possibilities of education.Examines undocumented educations--practices that fall outside of schools or appear only in marginalized, liminal ways.Explores education in everyday life, moving outward from the classroom, to hallways, beyond the school doors, and finally beyond the very logics of schooling.Includes vignettes of student participants, interviews with teachers and administrators, and analysis of school policies and curricular documents.Sparks different ways for researchers, educators, and activists to think and study with recently immigrated youth.

Beyond the Schoolhouse introduces eight paradigm shifts that are urgently needed to challenge inequities in education and improve the conditions for historically marginalized school children. The book provides educators and scholars with actionable strategies to shift the paradigm from schools alone to engaged partnerships with families and communities. Too many educators enter the profession with an incompatible paradigm, one that asks educators to resolve the problems facing school children from behind the closed doors of the school. The book offers a new paradigm, one that opens the power of partnerships to improve the conditions for school children from within and beyond the walls of the schoolhouse. Drawing thoughtfully on leadership theory, current research, and evidence-based practice, the author engages practitioners and scholars in a spirited and candid conversation about why partnerships with families and communities are needed in this era of rapid cultural change and soaring inequalities. The book features scenarios from the field along with lessons learned on the pitfalls and possibilities embedded in the paradigm shifts. The scenarios reveal how the partners leveraged their power to disrupt historical patterns of racism, classism, and nativism. The book offers a compelling analysis of the power of school, family, and community partners to embrace dramatically different paradigms for schooling. With anecdotes and illustrations, the author invites readers to consider their role in engaging in meaningful partnerships that reflect the community's best hopes for the education of their children. Her narratives offer a deeply rooted understanding of the possibilities and pitfalls of school, family, and community partnerships in a diversity of settings, including urban, rural, and tribal schools and systems in the U.S. and abroad. The chapters build hope and a realistic optimism that engaged partners can leverage their talents and resources and work together to bring best practices to scale for the benefit of children of diverse identities, cultures, and ethnicities. Chapters contain strategies and tools to tackle the growing inequalities which keep far too many children on the margins of schooling and furthest from justice and equity. Strategies include equity-focused protocols, structured questions for dialogue in virtual and face-to-face settings, and resources for extended reflection. The book may be useful for scholars in academic circles, principal and teacher preparation providers, novice and experienced educators and administrators, and the allies, school board members, and elected officials who are invested in enriching the education and well-being of school children and the families and communities they serve.

Title IX is a federal lawthat prohibits federally funded educational institutions-- from elementary to university level-- from discriminating against students or employees based on sex. Title IX is best known for its application to female athletes, but Title IX also applies to pregnant and parenting students. It prohibits discrimination against them and protects their right to an education equal to their peers. Yet, fifty years after the passage of Title IX, 50% of pregnant and parenting students do not complete high school. This is largely because educational barriers push pregnant and parenting students out of school, and schools directly violate Title IX. What if those educational barriers exist at your school? What if your school is in direct violation of this federal law? Wouldn't you want to know? Helping Teen Moms Graduate will help ensure your school is in compliance and help you learn practical strategies to decrease the 50% high school pushout rate for this student population.

The pandemic exposed pervasive societal fractures that have long been destabilizing our educational system. These imbalances and injustices that have compromised teachers, children, families, and communities have been enabled for decades. This watershed moment in our human story requires us to respond to these inhumane conditions with unprecedented commitment and action. At the heart of this book are questions and talking points that will spur us to reimagine schools as healthy, safe, sustainable, vibrant places.

Praise for Talk about Sex “Must reading for scholars, sexuality researchers, activists, and public policy and public health planners engaged in efforts to promote education on sex, sexually transmitted diseases, and HIV infection prevention for adolescents in schools.”—JAMA Talk about Sex is a rich social history about the political transformations, cultural dynamics, and emotional rhetorical strategies that helped the right wing manufacture controversies on the local and national levels in the United States. Although the emergence of a politicized Christian Right is commonly dated at the mid-seventies, with the founding of groups like the Moral Majority, Talk about Sex tells the story of a powerful right-wing Christian presence in politics a full decade earlier. These activists used inflammatory sexual rhetoric—oftentimes deceptive and provocative—to capture the terms of public debate, galvanize voters, and reshape the culture according to their own vision. This 20th Anniversary Edition includes a new preface and epilogue by the author that examines current controversies over public education on sexuality, gender, and race. Demonstrating how the right wing draws on the cultural power of sexual shame and fear to build a political movement, Talk about Sex explores the complex entanglements of sexual knowledge, politics, and discourses.

In this provocative and timely book, Luis Eladio Torres challenges a common assumption: that education is the'first priority'for families, including those who are raising their children in low-income, high-need communities. Instead, he argues that these families must confront daunting challenges in five other areas—food, shelter, safety, health, and access to technology—before they can focus on their children's education.To make his case, Torres draws on his experience as the award-winning principal of an elementary school in the Bronx and as a leader in New York City's community schools network. A community school focuses on educating the whole child, supporting families, and extending its reach into the larger community—both by tapping into resources the community can offer and by providing a range of social and health services to that community.The Six Priorities: How to Find the Resources Your School Community Needs demonstrates how leaders in challenging education environments can improve their schools through a'community-matching process'that consists of four steps:1. Identifying the gaps between what is available and what is necessary for a school and its community to function well2. Specifying needs, including prioritizing and distinguishing needs from wants.3. Telling your story, as a way to gain support for the effort to close the gap and address the needs. 4. Establishing strategic partnerships with individuals, organizations, and agencies that can provide resources and expertise.To help you implement the process in your own school, this insightful guide includes a downloadable community-matching worksheet. The goals of this process are clear: to reduce the shocking inequities between impoverished communities and their wealthier counterparts; to help disadvantaged students succeed; and, ultimately, to steer them toward productive lives beyond the classroom. The need has never been greater.

The community cultural wealth that culturally responsive Latina/o/x school leaders bring to their profession has much to offer Latina/o/x students and families in particular, schools and communities generally, aspiring school leaders, and those who prepare them. Engraving School Districts With the Cultural Wealth and Social Justice Advocacy of Latinx School Leaders examines the lived experiences of eight Latina/o/x school and district leaders, presented as testimonios. The authors explain how community cultural wealth, which is derived from critical race theory, informed professional motivations, leadership experiences, and advocacy actions. Key aspects of Latina/o/x school leadership include how leaders: dismantled deficit-based thinking; maintained high expectations; developed equitable relationships with students and families; acknowledged and valued Latino cultures and identities; and encouraged Spanish language. Connections between the leaders'actions, culturally responsive leadership, and related concepts are drawn. The enactment of culturally responsive leadership combined with the centering of Latino cultures and language is evidence of Latino Educational Leadership. The concept of “engraving” is introduced to consider ways in which districts and leader preparation programs can make enduring changes by embedding the culturally responsive practices of Latina/o/x leaders across all current and aspiring leaders. Therefore, the responsibility for creating equitable engagement and achievement for Latina/o/x students and families will not rest solely upon Latina/o/x leaders.

This timely book advances a new vision for educational justice centered on the leadership activities, organizing efforts, and counternarratives of youth, parents, families, and communities of color and other groups who are seeking to transform local schools and communities across the United States. Bringing together scholars, activists, and leaders, this contributed volume presents cases and first-person narratives for readers to analyze in order to interrogate inequities facing communities and schools. By creating spaces for youth, family, and community leadership within schools and opening decision-making to include their input, leaders can support transformative, justice-oriented school change. This book is a critical teaching tool asking educators and administrators to reflect, learn, and re-imagine their practice and collaborate with other leaders in their communities.

School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Preparing Educators and Improving Schools, 3rd Edition prepares future teachers and administrators to conduct effective and equitable programs of family and community engagement that contribute to student success in school. Renowned authors Joyce L. Epstein and Steven B. Sheldon present the theories, research, policies, and practices that have been shown to improve the design and conduct of partnership programs in diverse communities and at all grade levels. Chapters include a historic overview of early research, recent studies with advanced methods, and many examples of research-based approaches for district leadership and school improvement. All chapters include discussion questions and classroom assignments that professors may use to provoke thinking and help future educators understand that family and community engagement is part of their professional work.New in this 3rd Edition: Updated, streamlined readings make it easy for students to explore early, influential studies that framed the field and recent studies of multilevel effects of leadership for partnerships. Comments, discussion topics, and classroom activities challenge students to think deeply about many aspects and issues of school, family, and community partnerships. Interview assignments enable students to hear the voices and views on partnerships of practicing educators, parents, students, and others in the community. Readings and activities across chapters help colleges and universities meet new standards of the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) for graduates to'demonstrate their ability to effectively work with diverse P-12 students and their families.'After decades of research and exemplary practice that confirm that family and community engagement is an essential component of good school organization, most new teachers and administrators still are unprepared to partner with all families to support student learning and development. This book will help professors in Schools, Colleges, and Departments of Education (SCDE) prepare their graduates to understand, organize, and continually improve partnership programs in all schools, with all families, and for all students.

This essential playbook reveals the winning strategies for successfully fighting a radical woke agenda in your kids'schools. Ian Prior is one of the most articulate and successful parent-activists in the United States. Armed with 12 inspiring battle-tested rules and revealing stories about sparring with self-righteous Woke neighbors (the “Chardonnay Antifa”), Ian shares secrets about what fellow parents can do in their own school districts to stop the Left's dark vision from taking root. Get ready to laugh. This is not a boring education book. With real world lessons and funny anecdotes readers can connect with, Ian explains how families can win the battle to stop divisive and dangerous concepts rooted in critical race theory and other dangerous left-wing ideologies from spreading to their schools. He convincingly makes the case that the Left envisions a public education system in America where children are no longer the responsibility of their parents but rather mere wards of the state. You'll be shocked and amused by the outrageous stories in Ian's suburban county that unexpectedly became ground zero for the parents'rights movement. This sign-of-the times book helpfully explains the confusing and infuriating cultural moment we find ourselves in.Parents of the World, Unite! is an indispensable book for American families who believe they should be able to raise their children without government interference in their moral, religious, and ethical choices -- and are ready to join a revolution of parents.

In recent decades, the populations in major urban areas across the country have become increasingly diverse in terms of their ethnicities, languages, and economics, and within these evolving contexts many of our schools have struggled to produce good learning results for substantial numbers of their students. Our schools have tried to be fair to all they serve by using similar instructional methods, materials, and technology, and comparable schedules, facilities, and funding, but the outcomes realized for many students are seriously worrisome in terms of their abilities to succeed in our economy in the future. The Covid-19 pandemic further exacerbated this problem. Diverse Students, Diverse Outcomes: Portal Schools for Access to Diverse Teaching and Learning proposes ways to preserve our enormous staff and facility investments in order to provide schooling that will help different students learn in different ways and in the process make education much more attractive and engaging for all concerned—and thereby more economical. The concepts outlined are enriched by perspectives of other building types and supplemented with brief descriptions of twenty-eight schools created over the last fifty years that have been very successful—yet from which we seem to have learned little.

Build civil discourse with courage, understanding, belonging, and empathy. Discomfort lies at the heart of all learning and growth, especially concerning discussions on difficult and complex topics like climate change, slavery, and police brutality. This book presents ways to help teachers become strong facilitators—not endorsers—of contentious conversations to promote a stronger sense of community. There are four themes that arise when exploring civil discourse: courage, understanding, belonging, and empathy. This book is organized around these themes, each chapter providing resources for educators to teach the skills of discourse with: How-to tips for bringing work beyond the classroom Chapter checklists to guide progress and assess learning Exploration of different types of discourse (dialogue, discussion, debate) and when to use each Steps for preparing a classroom for contentious conversations Activities to practice discourse and disagreement Addressing the problem of how to have politically and emotionally charged conversations in the classroom, this book guides 6-12 educators – particularly teachers of history, civics, ELA, and other social studies and humanities disciplines -- in facilitating discussions based on fact, intellectual reasoning, and mutual respect.

The Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools (2011) lamented the “lack of high-quality civic education in America's schools [that] leaves millions of citizens without the wherewithal to make sense of our system of government” (p. 4). Preus et al. (2016) cited literature to support their observation of “a decline in high-quality civic education and a low rate of civic engagement of young people” (p. 67). Shapiro and Brown (2018) asserted that “civic knowledge and public engagement is at an all-time low” (p. 1). Writing as a college senior, Flaherty (2020) urged educators to “bravely interpret... national, local, and even school-level incidents as chances for enhanced civic education and to discuss them with students in both formal and casual settings” (p. 6). In this eighth volume in the Current Perspectives on School/University/Community Research series, we feature the work of brave educators who are engaged in school-university-community collaborative educational endeavors. Authors focus on a wide range of projects oriented to civic education writ large—some that have been completed and some that are still in progress—but all authors evince the passion for civic education that underpins engagement in the democratic project.

This book examines the role that community-based educators in violence-affected cities play in advancing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s radical nonviolent vision for racial and social justice.This work argues that nonviolence education can help communities build capacity to disrupt and transform cycles of violence by recognizing that people impacted by violence are effective educators and vital knowledge producers who develop unique insights into racial oppression and other forms of systemic harm. This book focuses on informal education that takes place beyond school walls, a type of education that too often remains invisible and undervalued in both civil society and scholarly research. It draws on thousands of hours of work with the Connecticut Center for Nonviolence (CTCN), a grassroots organization that presents an ideal case study of the implementation of King's core principles of nonviolence in 21st-century urban communities. Stories of educators'life-changing educational encounters, their successes and failures, and their understanding of the six principles of Kingian nonviolence animate the text. Each chapter delves into one of the six principles by introducing the reader to the lives of these educators, providing a rich analysis of how educators teach each principle, and sharing academic resources for thinking more deeply about each principle. Against the backdrop of today's educational system, in which reductive and caricatured treatments of King are often presented within the formal classroom, CTCN's work outside of the classroom takes a fundamentally different approach, connecting King's thinking around nonviolence principles to working for racial justice in cities deeply impacted by violence.This book will be of much interest to students of conflict resolution, race studies, politics and education studies, as well as to practitioners in the field.

A revised and updated edition of an exploration into the foundational principles, impact, and real-life success stories from Communities In Schools.Since 1977, Communities In Schools (CIS) has reached more than one million students and their families annually approximately 3,000 American schools, surrounding them with a community of support and empowering them to stay in school and achieve in life.In The Last Dropout, CIS founder Bill Milliken offers nine key principles that Communities In Schools has tested over four decades. Interwoven are his real-world life stories, a journey that began in the turbulent 1960s as a youth worker and evolved into a handful of groundbreaking'Street Academies'that became the CIS movement with a national network of hundreds of local affiliates. Milliken also shares transformative stories about how CIS leaders have adopted these principles in their own communities, with stunning results.Milliken's guiding philosophy has been'It is relationships, not programs, that change children,'and it is a principle that has served as a beacon in the movement for educational equity and success.

The sacrificial nature of juggling instructional, operational, managerial, and collegial goals often leaves school leaders feeling so desperate to resolve conflicts that they lose self, abandoning their core values and forgetting their'why.'In this timely and impactful resource, author and professor'Dr. O'draws on her own leadership journey– a journey where she remained true to her beliefs and commitment to serve BIPOC communities, even when that meant choosing the road less traveled--offering nine anchor principles to help guide educational leaders in returning to their core values; communicate and build trusting relationships with staff members, students, and parents; and recognize their self-worth beyond their role on school campuses. Lead with Truth is an interactive text that invites you to identify learning objectives and reflect on guided questions throughout the chapters, each of which ends in activities geared to help you make personal connections with the content. This engaging resource is for current and aspiring school leaders who aim to make lifelong impacts and transform their practice, while remaining true to their own beliefs.

Why are preservice teachers often told by veteran teachers to'forget what you learned'in teacher preparation programs? Why is there a gap between pedagogical practices employed at schools and those taught at colleges and universities? And why, after evidence from countless studies, are there still so few teachers of color working in our rapidly diversifying schools?These questions are addressed in this book, which describes a reconceptualized teacher preparation program based on a teacher residency model. This model is grounded in three core beliefs: first, that teacher quality is a shared responsibility between universities and school districts; second, that all students have a right to high-quality teachers who are as racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse as the students they teach; and third, that for education to be transformative, future educators must have the right balance of theoretical knowledge and practical experiences grounded in specific contexts.Through a combination of rich description and qualitative and quantitative program data, the authors make the case that university programs focused on the communities they serve can ensure more effective, learner-ready teachers who remain in the profession longer. By providing a detailed blueprint for program development, the contents of this book will be of value and interest to educational leaders, policy makers, and researchers.

In this book, internationally migrant families invite us to listen to the storylines of their mostly muted voices as they navigate the local schools in their new cultural context. They call us to hear them as they grapple with issues they encounter. They implore us to feel like an outsider and see the school as a foreign culture with language and communication barriers. The book is organized to enhance this carework. Each chapter begins with a vignette that includes the voices of one or more members of international migrating families, while introducing the context of the chapter. At the end of each chapter readers will find specific implications to consider. These are constructed with preservice teachers, practicing teachers, and educational administrators in mind. As you read each chapter, there is the call for school transformation. The families in this book entreat school personnel to engage with international migrant families and to embrace a risk and resilience model as we strive together for success. These storylines challenge us to examine our personal storylines for biases and deficit understandings and call us all to purposefully rewrite these in the spirit of possibilities as the families in this book have embodied for us.

American political culture runs through civics classrooms, and the degraded dialogue and scorched-earth partisanship that has defined modern American politics is an indicator that all is not well in our nation's schools. Teaching Civics in Unstable Times: Guidelines for Defining “We” in American Democracy offers a fresh, expansive view of what civic education can look like in K-12 classrooms, and presents three strategies to help teachers, curriculum writers, and administrators turn their schools into laboratories for democracy that train young people for the moral and intellectual challenges of democratic citizenship.This book defines “democracy” as a way of life that is characterized by frequent public engagement, stubborn open-mindedness, and rigorous debate. Our democratic government depends on our citizens leading a democratic life, and civic education's chief priority is to teach young people how to do so. Civic curriculum has spent decades obsessing over names and dates that fail to give students a sense of their vaunted place in our governing system. This book presentsthree strategiesfor teaching civics that invest young people in our shared, grand experiment in self-government and prepares them to lead our nation towards a politics that is more compassionate, inclusive, and inspired.

This handbook is a guide and recourse of strategies, tips, and how-to-do's for parents/caregivers, teachers, and school leaders. The author provides topics in the handbook that addresses parent involvement/engagement and its effect on academic achievement and school success, the benefits of parent involve/engagement and its impact, role of parents with their child's/children's education, a listing of selected easy-to-do games and instructional activities to develop and nurture self-esteem, self-confidence, resilience, and perseverance (Power Tools) to ensure school and life success. This book has tips/recommendations for not only parents/caregivers, but also for teachers and school leaders. When the home, school, and community form a viable partnership, all youth thrive and reach their potential. As an added feature of the handbook, includes brief explanations of the roles of key school personnel, general school policies, procedures, and regulations to demystify schooling to minimize misperceptions and increase positive relationships. Additionally, although the handbook is a resource all parents/caregivers in general, a chapter is included and devoted to the parents/caregivers of special needs children and discusses/shares strategies for maximizing the effectiveness of Individualized Education Program ( I.E.P.) meetings. There are also suggestions and recommendations for teachers and school leaders to participate as viable members of I.E.P. team members.

School leaders and educators confront complexity daily in their service. To counter the chaos, collective leadership approaches that invite multiple stakeholders within and outside schools are critical in preparing students for a highly diverse world. Social darkness and isolation must be eradicated and education that provides more opportunities for peace and hope must become the core of school vision. Communities and schools must work together now.

Describing global trends in forced displacement in 2019, Filippo Grandi, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees declared that “we are witnessing a changed reality in that forced displacement nowadays is not only vastly more widespread but is simply no longer a short-term and temporary phenomenon”. At the end of 2019, almost 80 million people had been forced to leave the place they called home “as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order,” according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. This volume presents the concerted efforts of chapter contributors to alleviate the alienation of those who have been displaced and help them to feel at home in the country in which they have sought refuge. Chapter contributors highlight their endeavors specifically with Latino, Hmong, and African immigrants in the United States and Canada, as well as with a veritable united nations of immigrant identities in general. Endeavors oriented to making immigrants feel at home inevitably raise the vexed question of what it means to be a good member of a society—regardless of whether one is a citizen.

Tracing the historical development of partnerships between schools, universities, and communities, P-20 Partnerships: A Critical Examination of the Past and Future provides educators and policymakers with a framework for understanding how partnerships originated and their potential for the future. This book connects Dewey's lab schools, Goodlad's ideas about simultaneous renewal, and Professional Development Schools with today's next-generation P-20 partnerships and Cradle-to-Career networks. After examining the history and development of P-20 partnerships, we are able to categorize partnerships into three different types, depending on the purpose of their outcomes: partnerships to improve P-12 schools, partnerships to improve access to post-secondary opportunities, and Research-Practice Partnerships. Rather than categorizing partnerships by their activities and curricula, this book proposes that their goals for their students are what should define these school systems.

The perspective espoused by this volume is that collaboration among universities, schools, and communities is a crucial element in ensuring the provision of optimal learning environment for both im/migrant children and their parents. Chapter authors share their practice and theorizing regarding the many questions that arise when schools and universities collaborate with communities and build supportive structures to nurture literacy among im/migrant students. Enlightened teaching and culturally aware approaches from teachers engender support and cooperation from parents. Enlightened leadership is a constant thread through all the endeavors that are chronicled by contributors, as are the implications for socially just outcomes of successful implementation of inclusive pedagogies. Writing about the Children Crossing Borders study which began in 2003, Tobin (2019) asserted that “the social and political upheavals surrounding migration has (sic) put increasing pressure on the ECEC [early childhood education and care] sector to build bridges between the host and newly arrived communities” (p. 2). Tobin recalled that the original grant proposal for the Children Crossing Borders described young migrant children as “the true transnationals, shuttling back and forth daily between the cultures of their home and the ECEC [programs]” (p. 1)—programs staffed by well-intentioned individuals who nevertheless may “lack awareness of im/migrant parents'preferences for what will happen in their children's ECEC program” (p. 2). To extrapolate from Tobin's summary of the findings of Children Crossing Borders, for both the true transnationals (the children) and their parents, “the first and most profound engagement they have with the culture and language of their new host country” (p. 1) may well be mediated by a teacher who is unaware of the intricacies of the community.

Effective leadership is the necessary ingredient in achieving educational improvement in schools; everything rises and falls on leadership. For School Leaders of Color, this leadership imperative is more difficult than it is for their White counterparts. Concomitantly with this leadership necessity are the social and academic disparities of racism, student poverty, lack of resources, just to name a few. Yet these leaders have courageously accepted their role to disrupt low performance and thus they have created environments where students learn and professors teach. These leaders are “purveyors of change.” The purpose of this educational preparation supplemental text is to share stories of these exceptional leaders in the field and in the academy. The experiences shared by the various authors cover four important areas in leadership: Culture & Climate; Student Success; Resilience, Persistence, & Turnaround; and Social Justice. The authors have shared some deeply personal issues and triumphs. These are the stories that resonate more deeply with students and that with these types of stories, the theory to practice bridge is successfully crossed. While many of the chapters include narratives of resilience and triumph in the context of the P-12 education system, the overarching themes and suggestions can be transmuted to any industry.

This edited volume brings together voices of Latinx students, teachers, teacher educators, and education allies in Latinx communities to reveal ways in which today's sociopolitical context has given rise to politically-sanctioned hateful anti-immigrant rhetoric. Contributors—key stakeholders in the education of immigrant Latinx children, youth, and college students—share how this rhetoric has exacerbated existing systemic injustices within K-Higher Education. They draw attention to counternarratives that speak to leadership and strength of community. Contributors include high school and college students and faculty, community organizers, and early career academics, whose voices are too often underrepresented in academic conversations. This book highlights professional and personal acts of courage, community organization, and the transformation of students and educators who are stepping into leadership roles to affect change. Understanding that teaching and learning are political acts, we call all those vested in Latinx communities to engage in small and large acts of agency to collectively impact change in our K-Higher Education systems.

A major premise of the book is that teachers, school leaders, and school support staff are not taught how to create school and classroom environments to support the academic and social success of Black male students. The purpose of this book is to help champion a paradigmatic shift in educating Black males. This books aims to provide an asset and solution-based framework that connects the educational system with community cultural wealth and educational outcomes. The text will be a sourcebook for in-service and pre-service teachers, administrators, district leaders, and school support staff to utilize in their quest to increase academic and social success for their Black male students. Adopting a strengths-based epistemological stance, this book will provide concerned constituencies with a framework from which to engage and produce success.

This teacher education textbook invites preservice and beginning teachers to think critically about the impact of rurality on their work and provides an overview of what it means to live, teach, learn, and thrive in rural communities. This book underscores the importance of teaching in rural schools as an act of social justice—work that dismantles spatial barriers to economic, social, and political justice.Teaching in Rural Places begins with a foundational section that addresses the importance of thinking about rural education in the U.S. as an educational environment with particular challenges and opportunities. The subsequent chapters address rural teaching within concentric circles of focus—from communities to schools to classrooms. Chapters provide concrete strategies for understanding rural communities, valuing rural ways of being, and teaching in diverse rural schools by addressing topics such as working with families, building professional networks, addressing trauma, teaching in multi-grade classrooms, and planning place-conscious instruction.The first of its kind, this comprehensive textbook for rural teacher education is targeted toward preservice and beginning teachers in traditional and alternative teacher education programs as well as new rural teachers participating in induction and mentoring programs. Teaching in Rural Places will help ensure that rural students have the well-prepared teachers they deserve.

How local educational justice movements wrestle with neoliberal school reformParents, educators, and activists are passionately fighting to improve public schools around the country. In This Is Our School! Hava Rachel Gordon takes us inside these fascinating school reform movements, exploring their origins, aims, and victories as they work to build a better future for our education system.Focusing on a school district in Denver, Colorado, Gordon takes a look at different coalitions within the school reform movement, as well as the surprising competition that arises between them. Drawing on over eighty interviews and ethnographic research, she explores how these groups vie for power, as well as the role that race, class, and gentrification play in shaping their successes and failures, strategies and structures. Gordon shows us what happens when people mobilizefrom the ground up and advocate for educational change. This Is Our School! gives us an inside look at the diverse voices within the school reform movement, each of which plays an important role in the fight to improve public education.

Abolitionist Leadership in Schools offers school and district leaders rich insights and approaches for recreating, restructuring, and reorienting their service to students, families, staff, and communities in crisis. Though often associated with sudden, large-scale disruptions, crises are ongoing matters—particularly among systemically-oppressed people—that underscore the planning voids, resource inequities, marginalizing policies, and strategic lapses of any teaching and learning community while perpetuating students'social-emotional, psychological, and pedagogical traumas. This expansive book guides school leaders to provide pre-emptive, premeditated, and progressive leadership while countering the impacts of racism that endure in our schools. Working from an abolitionist lineage, author Robert S. Harvey's radically humane vision explores lessons from our collective national past, provides strategic planning with creativities and contingencies, and fosters liberatory decision-making through accountability, communication, and more.