Troublemakers
Troublemakers

Author: Carla Shalaby

Publisher: The New Press

Published: 2017-03-07

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1620972379

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A radical educator's paradigm-shifting inquiry into the accepted, normal demands of school, as illuminated by moving portraits of four young "problem children" In this dazzling debut, Carla Shalaby, a former elementary school teacher, explores the everyday lives of four young "troublemakers," challenging the ways we identify and understand so-called problem children. Time and again, we make seemingly endless efforts to moderate, punish, and even medicate our children, when we should instead be concerned with transforming the very nature of our institutions, systems, and structures, large and small. Through delicately crafted portraits of these memorable children—Zora, Lucas, Sean, and Marcus—Troublemakers allows us to see school through the eyes of those who know firsthand what it means to be labeled a problem. From Zora's proud individuality to Marcus's open willfulness, from Sean's struggle with authority to Lucas's tenacious imagination, comes profound insight—for educators and parents alike—into how schools engender, exclude, and then try to erase trouble, right along with the young people accused of making it. And although the harsh disciplining of adolescent behavior has been called out as part of a school-to-prison pipeline, the children we meet in these pages demonstrate how a child's path to excessive punishment and exclusion in fact begins at a much younger age. Shalaby's empathetic, discerning, and elegant prose gives us a deeply textured look at what noncompliance signals about the environments we require students to adapt to in our schools. Both urgent and timely, this paradigm-shifting book challenges our typical expectations for young children and with principled affection reveals how these demands—despite good intentions—work to undermine the pursuit of a free and just society.

The School I'd Like
The School I'd Like

Author: Catherine Burke

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9780415301145

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In 2001, The Guardian launched a competition called The School I'd Like, in which young people were asked to imagine their ideal school. This vibrant, groundbreaking book presents material drawn from that competition, offering a unique snapshot of perceptions of today's schools by those who matter most - the pupils. The book is wonderfully illuminated by children's essays, stories, poems, pictures and plans. Placing their views in the centre of the debate, it provides an evaluation of the democratic processes involved in teaching and learning by: identifying consistencies in children's expressions of how they wish to learn highlighting particular sites of 'disease' in the education system today illustrating how the built environment is experienced by today's children posing questions about the reconstruction of teaching and learning for the twenty-first century. This book offers a powerful new perspective on school reform and is essential reading for all those involved in education and childhood studies, including teachers, advisors, policy-makers, academics, and anyone who believes that children's voices should not be ignored.

Families, Schools and Communities
Families, Schools and Communities

Author: Donna Lee Couchenour

Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing Company

Published: 2013-01-01

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 9781133942290

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

FAMILIES, SCHOOLS, AND COMMUNITIES: TOGETHER FOR YOUNG CHILDREN, 5E, International Edition emphasizes the role of families and communities in children's education, and is geared to meeting national standards in teacher preparation programs. Content reflects current research and best practices in education. Divided into two sections, this book helps you understand contemporary families and provides you with the skills that you will need to build relationships with families and the community. You'll find specific ideas and strategies for increasing family involvement in the community and schools, encouraging learning at home, working with military families, recognizing family strengths, diversity in the classroom, and many other topics. New content includes integration of current standards and a new video feature as well as expanded material on advocacy, technology, and strategies for dealing with parents.

Small Schools
Small Schools

Author: Michael Klonsky

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2008-03-25

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1135899169

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

When education activists in New York, Chicago, and other urban school districts in the 1980s began the small-schools movement, they envisioned a new kind of public school system that was fair and equitable and that encouraged new relationships between teachers and students. When that movement for school reform ran head-on into the neo-conservative takeover of the Department of Education and its No Child Left Behind strategy for school change, a new model of federal power bent on the erosion of public space and the privatization of public schooling emerged. Michael and Susan Klonsky, educators who were among the early leaders of the small-schools movement, tell the story of how a once-promising model of creating new small and charter schools has been used by the neocons to reproduce many of the old inequities. Small Schools is the engaging story of what happens when the small-schools movement meets the Ownership Society.

Educating for Insurgency
Educating for Insurgency

Author: Jay Gillen

Publisher: AK Press

Published: 2014-08-18

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13: 1849352003

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A manifesto for today’s broken schools. Desegregation has failed. Schools filled with black and brown students have become plantations of social control, where the policing of behavior trumps the expanding of minds. Radical teachers and organizers in American public schools must help young people fashion an insurgency. That means, at the very least, seeing each student’s rebellion not as violation, but as communication. Jay Gillen writes with passion and compassion about the daily lives of poor students trapped in institutions that dismiss and degrade them. In the spirit of Paulo Freire, and using the historical models of slave rebellions and Civil Rights struggles as guides, Gillen explains what sort of insurgency is needed and how to create it: the tools and techniques required to build social, intellectual, and political power. This poetic manifesto of revolutionary “educational reform” belongs in the pocket of anyone who currently works in, suffers through, or simply cares about public schooling in this country. Jay Gillen teaches English in a Baltimore public school and has worked with the Baltimore Algebra Project since 1995, building math literacy among youth of color and youth experiencing poverty in US public schools. Bob Moses is an educator and Civil Rights activist. He founded the Algebra Project in 1982.

The School I Deserve
The School I Deserve

Author: Jo Napolitano

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2021-04-20

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 0807024988

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Uncovers the key civil rights battle that immigrant children fought alongside the ACLU to ensure equal access to education within a xenophobic nation Journalist Jo Napolitano delves into the landmark case in which the School District of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was sued for refusing to admit older, non-English speaking refugees and sending them to a high-discipline alternative school. In a legal battle that mirrors that of the Little Rock Nine and Brown v. Board of Education, 6 brave refugee students fought alongside the ACLU and Education Law Center to demand equal access. The School I Deserve illuminates the lack of support immigrant and refugee children face in our public school system and presents a hopeful future where all children can receive an equal education regardless of race, ethnicity, or their country of origin. One of the students, Khadidja Issa, fled the horrific violence in war-torn Sudan with the hope of a safer life in the United States, where she could enroll in school and eventually become a nurse. Instead, she was turned away by the School District of Lancaster before she was eventually enrolled in one of its alternative schools, a campus run by a for-profit company facing multiple abuse allegations. Napolitano follows Khadidja as she joins the lawsuit as a plaintiff in the Issa v. School District of Lancaster case, a legal battle that took place right before Donald Trump’s presidential election, when immigrants and refugees were maligned on a national stage. The fiery week-long showdown between the ACLU and the school district was ultimately decided by a conservative judge who issued a shocking ruling with historic implications. The School I Deserve brings to light this crucial and underreported case, which paved the way to equal access to education for countless immigrants and refugees to come.

Successful Schools for Young Adolescents
Successful Schools for Young Adolescents

Author: Joan Lipsitz

Publisher: Transaction Publishers

Published:

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 9781412835404

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

At a time when the public, researchers, and policymakers are losing confidence in public schooling, this presentation of case studies of four schools offers solutions and concrete models of diverse ways in which excellence can be attained in middle-grade schools. Asking what "effectiveness" means for the young adolescent age group (a hitherto unexplored area in research literature), how effective schools come about, and how they achieve acceptance in their communities, Lipsitz identifies and examines successful middle-grade schools that foster healthy social development and academic achievement. She establishes a framework for examining successful middle-grade schools, noting that the major problem in schooling is meeting the massive individual differences in the development of early adolescents.