Making Community Connections
Making Community Connections

Author: Connie L. Knapp

Publisher: ESRI, Inc.

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9781589480711

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Making Community Connections: The Orton Family Foundation Community Mapping Program is designed to bring teams of teachers and their students together with community members to study a problem, a resource, a condition -- any matter of interest and importance to the community. The school work includes gathering and examining existing information, discovering new facts through field investigation, and mapping the resource using GIS/GPS tools. Not only do the students meet and work with community mentors and experts who participate in the classroom and help with the field studies, they also typically hold public forums to gather input on the resource and their work. At the end of the semester or project the students hold a public forum to present their work in a variety of forms (including video conferences, speeches and presentations, reading of narratives, display of hand-drawn maps, GIS maps, etc.), providing a body of research to the community, which can be used to address immediate concerns and help plan for the future. The use of the word "mapping" in the name of the program indicates the importance of, and the commitment to, the use of GIS/GPS mapping technology. The Orton Family Foundation Community Mapping Program has found that the use of technology, and particularly this mapping technology, excites students and provides a powerful incentive to participate. However, the program, this book, and place-based education in general call for more than just the mapping of resources; they entail a more inclusive and integrative look at the world we all live in. Invariably, the Community Mapping Program makes more clearly visible the connections of the many and varied factors influencing or affecting the particular object of study. Concepts of sustainability, responsibility, integration, and the larger picture find their way into classroom discussions and are then mapped in a variety of ways. The materials in Making Community Connections have been constructed to provide a solid foundation and flexible framework for original projects created and developed by students, their teachers, and their communities, allowing explorations and investigations of places and problems of interest and concern to them. Book jacket.

Streets of Hope
Streets of Hope

Author: Peter Medoff

Publisher: South End Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 9780896084827

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Using the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative in Boston's most impoverished neighborhood as a case stuudy, the authors show how effective organizing reinforces neighborhood leadership, encourages grassroots power and leads to successful public-private partnerships and comprehensive community development.--Prof. Norman Krumholz

Handbook on Family and Community Engagement
Handbook on Family and Community Engagement

Author: Sam Redding

Publisher: IAP

Published: 2011-12-01

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1617356700

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Thirty-six of the best thinkers on family and community engagement were assembled to produce this Handbook, and they come to the task with varied backgrounds and lines of endeavor. Each could write volumes on the topics they address in the Handbook, and quite a few have. The authors tell us what they know in plain language, succinctly presented in short chapters with practical suggestions for states, districts, and schools. The vignettes in the Handbook give us vivid pictures of the real life of parents, teachers, and kids. In all, their portrayal is one of optimism and celebration of the goodness that encompasses the diversity of families, schools, and communities across our nation.

The Small Museum Toolkit
The Small Museum Toolkit

Author: Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko

Publisher: Rowman Altamira

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 0759119481

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Small museums need champions. In this book, we make a case for small museums and share what the broader museum field can learn from the small museum leadership. Because a few tools have been invaluable to small museum leaders and are referred to throughout the book series, we highlight the MAP and CAP assessment process, accreditation, and provide an overview of the StEPs program that inspired this book series in this first book.

Communities in Action
Communities in Action

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2017-04-27

Total Pages: 583

ISBN-13: 0309452961

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In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

The College Dropout Scandal
The College Dropout Scandal

Author: David Kirp

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-07-01

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 019086222X

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Higher education today faces a host of challenges, from quality to cost. But too little attention gets paid to a startling fact: four out of ten students -- that's more than ten percent of the entire population - -who start college drop out. The situation is particularly dire for black and Latino students, those from poor families, and those who are first in their families to attend college. In The College Dropout Scandal, David Kirp outlines the scale of the problem and shows that it's fixable - -we already have the tools to boost graduation rates and shrink the achievement gap. Many college administrators know what has to be done, but many of them are not doing the job - -the dropout rate hasn't decreased for decades. It's not elite schools like Harvard or Williams who are setting the example, but places like City University of New York and Long Beach State, which are doing the hard work to assure that more students have a better education and a diploma. As in his New York Times columns, Kirp relies on vivid, on-the-ground reporting, conversations with campus leaders, faculty and students, as well as cogent overviews of cutting-edge research to identify the institutional reforms--like using big data to quickly identify at-risk students and get them the support they need -- and the behavioral strategies -- from nudges to mindset changes - -that have been proven to work. Through engaging stories that shine a light on an underappreciated problem in colleges today, David Kirp's hopeful book will prompt colleges to make student success a top priority and push more students across the finish line, keeping their hopes of achieving the American Dream alive.

The TurnAround ToolKit
The TurnAround ToolKit

Author: Lynn Winters

Publisher: Corwin Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1412975018

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Lynn Winters's and Joan Herman's The Turnaround Toolkit is written for school leaders who are focused on transforming instruction, and who may be working under significant time constraints to reverse declining student achievement or public perceptions of school failure. Based on the evidence that simply implementing “continuous improvement” is not enough to close the achievement gap, The Turnaround Toolkit provides a nine-step formative evaluation program designed to achieve an immediate and consistent focus on improving instruction in order to bolster student achievement. In a straightforward and accessible fashion, Herman and Winters explain three overarching “Turnaround Tasks” that frame these steps and the necessary-and sometimes drastic-actions that must be taken by school leaders as they use data to strategically choose, implement, monitor, and revise school interventions. A dedicated, online “toolkit” offers numerous worksheets and templates that support each stage of the process and help school leaders scaffold the work of educators to put an aggressive turnaround plan into action while a leadership guide at the end of the book provides guidance to turnaround teams and facilitators.