PRODUCTS

Improvement Science: Promoting Equity in Schools is intended for classroom teachers, school leaders, and district leaders charged with leading improvement efforts in schools. From questions such as “how do I develop a love of reading in my classroom?” to “how can I better manage student behavior during independent learning time?” to “what should we do to make sure kids of all races read at grade level by 3rd grade” to “how could we include families of all backgrounds as partners in learning” or “how do we increase our graduation rate among underserved students," this book shares real-life examples from those who are currently leading equity-focused improvement in our classrooms and schools. If you are curious about how Improvement Science has been used, or how others have succeeded—or failed—at equity-focused improvement efforts in our classrooms and in our schools, or if you’re wondering how to spur discussions in school districts, universities, and communities about leading equity-focused improvement, this book is for you. Teachers, students, family members, community members, principals and superintendents will be inspired to embrace Improvement Science as a method to improve equity in their schools.

The book helps people new to Improvement Science to understand the basic steps to implement the process. If you’re a beginner, it provides some basic steps and a resource (https://www.carnegiefoundation.org/our-ideas/six-core-principles-improvement/) to help you understand the process better; for those with some experience, the book will be an excellent refresher and tool with functional suggestions to take your practice further.

1.       Form a Team.

2.       Examine Data.

3.       Ask Why.

4.       Read Research.

5.       Get Perspective of Those Closest to the Problem.

6.       Plan the Change.

There are novels that portray cities as magical places, others as stifling, imposing environments, and others still as a gritty but beautiful, living landscape. Cities can be the center of culture, business, the arts, and are the meeting places for diversities of all kinds. Examining Images of Urban Life gathers contributions from scholars, educators, and young adult authors, like Benjamin Alire Saenz and e.E. Charlton-Trujillo, who consider how living in a city affects character identity and growth, and the ways authors world-build the urban setting. The collection discusses what the urban landscape means, and dispels the media-driven, anecdotally propagated preconceptions about city living.

Urban life is varied and rich, just as its literature is. The collection revolves around a reconsideration of what the city represents, to its readers and to its inhabitants, and serves as a resource in urban settings, wherein teachers can select books that mirror and advocate for the students sitting in their classes.


Perfect for courses such as: Young Adult Literature | Children’s Literature | Elementary Literacy | Reading and Literacy | Methods of Teaching | Public Purposes of Education | Educational or Historical Foundations of Education | Urban Studies | Media and Library Sciences

The term “teacher leadership” is not without its problems, since some interpret it to have both corporate and hierarchical implications. Stewardship as Teacher Leadership: Portraits from the Profession discusses the impact of changing that language to stewardship, a term that is more inclusive, more professional, and more morally-based. At a time when the work of teachers is critiqued and denigrated, the concept of stewardship within the profession better supports the efforts of all teachers, but particularly early career teachers. Stewards have the best interests of the profession at the forefront of their actions.

Through the “portraits” of a variety of teachers, readers of Stewardship as Teacher Leadership will engage with and recognize how teachers are stewards as they make intentional and deliberate choices in their daily work that have lasting impacts on their relationships with colleagues, their school programs, and the profession in a multiplicity of ways that traditional teacher leadership models often miss.

Perfect for courses in:
Foundations of Education | Introduction to Teaching | Student Teaching Seminars | Teacher Leadership | Educational Leadership

For the past 35 years, Scott Mandel has been teaching students in an urban Los Angeles school district. In addition, he instructs teachers in professional development courses. In those classes, he’s known for telling stories—stories gleaned from his time spent in the classroom. Classrooms in the Real World is a collection of many of those stories, presented as a set of teachable moments—a practical how-to book for new teachers, one based on interacting with kids on a daily basis. Rather than providing educational theories about what should be, Mandel shares real-life stories of how to relate to your students, administrators and parents, along with his thoughts on how to deal with the multiple curricular and classroom challenges that all teachers face in the real world. Chapters such as "Kids Don't Care How Much You Know As Long As They Know You Care," "Take Curricular Chances," "Administrators Want You To Succeed," "Keeping My Sanity All These Years," and “What Have I Learned” will give you the reader practical ideas, philosophies and encouragement from a long-time classroom teacher, someone still in the classroom sharing the lived experience of teaching in today’s school environment.

Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Teaching | Classroom Management | Student Teaching

The Last Ten Days addresses the concerns of loved ones and caregivers, providing them not only with information but also acknowledging the sadness and frustration, the heartache and bittersweet memories experienced during this painful time. To these readers, the book says, “You are not alone.”

The Last Ten Days: Academia, Dementia, and the Choice to Die is a heartrending memoir of love, scholarship, dignity, courage, and the choices one is forced to make when given the devastating diagnosis of a terminal illness.

Spanning sixty years, this extraordinary book recounts the love story of Martha Risberg Brosio and her husband, Richard Brosio, Ph.D., a brilliant scholar and college professor whose communication skills dazzled all with whom he came in contact. Teenage sweethearts who went their separate ways after high school, Martha and Richard reconnected twenty-six years later over a friendly dinner that sparked into passionate love. They married in 1983, enjoying a vibrant life.  

Then tragedy struck. In late 2013, Richard was diagnosed with Primary Progressive Aphasia, a type of dementia similar to Alzheimer’s that affects the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. The disease impacted Richard’s ability to communicate. Eventually, he would lose his verbal and processing skills. There was no cure. Determined to have a dignified death at the time and in the manner of his own choosing, Richard hastened his death two years after his diagnosis by voluntarily stopping eating and drinking, seeking only palliative and hospice care until the end.

Reminiscent of Still Alice, The Notebook, Tuesdays with Morrie, and When Breath Becomes Air, The Last Ten Days grabs the heartstrings and gives a mighty tug.

Contemporary political and socioeconomic conditions largely characterized by corruption and inequity have added new urgency to recurring calls for reorienting American public schools to their historic purpose: educating a citizenry both equipped and motivated to serve as the ultimate guardians of democracy.

While the Founding Fathers, including Jefferson, as well as the founders of public schools, including Horace Mann, explicitly stated that rationale, perhaps no one has done more than John Dewey to detail the inextricable relationship between education and democratic society. In Moral Principles in Education and My Pedagogic Creed, Dewey reminds readers of public schools’ original purpose, identifying specific educational principles and practices that either promote or undermine their essential democratic goals.

“There cannot be two sets of ethical principles,” he says, “one for life in the school, and the other for life outside of the school.” In these works and through such caveats, Dewey offers readers both the motivation to engage in the struggle for a new emphasis on educating for democratic citizenship and the guidance necessary to translate his theory into effective practice. 

Perfect for courses such as: Philosophy of Education, Teaching Methods, Principles of Teaching and Learning, Education Policy, Education Leadership, Education Foundations, Curriculum Theory and History, Curriculum Design, The Philosophy of John Dewey, and School Change/Reform.

Some students enter classrooms with an “I dare you try to teach me” look on their faces, and others bounce into class excited to learn and anxious to please the teacher. We know we can’t automatically blame teachers or schools when students don’t want to learn. But we also know that sometimes teachers and schools don’t always set students up for success, and they don’t always help them love what they’re learning.

Why Kids Love (and Hate) School: Reflections on Practice investigates some of the school and classroom practices that help students love school—and some that send students in the opposite direction. Intended for classroom teachers, teacher education students, and school administrators, chapters in the book investigate a variety of topics: how schools can build effective school cultures, the “struggle” students encounter in learning, practices of other countries that help students love school, testing practices that cause students to hate school—and much more.  

Perfect for courses in: Introduction to Education, General Methods, Management/Assessment, Educational Research, Educational Administration/Leadership, Teacher Leadership, Curriculum Theory, Curriculum Development.

A 2018 AESA Critics' Choice Award Winner
A 2019 SPE Outstanding Book Award Winner

Teacher moonlighting has been studied and documented since at least the early 1960s, and yet, it can be easily argued that the phenomenon is still not understood. Teachers moonlight in higher numbers than other professions, and while most teachers claim that they do it for the money, increases in their compensation have not reduced the practice.

By the Light of the Silvery Moon is the first book to provide a thorough review of the research on the topic, looking deeply into the intricate workings of a profession that is at least imperiled or, in the best of scenarios, a profession that is in transition. Teachers play a critical role in society, so teaching needs to be a sustainable profession where teachers may still moonlight, but the opportunities to expand the status as well as the content and context of their work are unlimited. This book fills an important gap in the literature by bringing together the research and situating it within a broader conversation about teachers’ work.

Perfect for courses such as: All undergraduate and graduate Foundations of Education courses, Introduction to Education, History and Philosophy of Education, and Teacher Leadership.

2019 SPE Outstanding Book Award Honorable Mention

To be able to promote effective anti-colonial and decolonial education, it is imperative that educators employ indigenous epistemologies that seek to threaten, replace and reimagine colonial thinking and practice. Indigeneity and Decolonial Resistance hopes to contribute to the search for a more radical decolonial education and practice that allows for the coexistence of, and conversation among, “multiple-epistemes.” The book approaches the topics from three perspectives:
• the thought that our epistemological frameworks must consider the body of the knowledge producer, place, history, politics and contexts within which knowledge is produced,
• that the anti-colonial is intimately connected to decolonization, and by extension, decolonization cannot happen solely through Western science scholarship, and
• that the complex problems and challenges facing the world today defy universalist solutions, but can still be remedied.

Indigeneity and Decolonial Resistance is an excellent text for use in a variety of upper-division undergraduate and graduate classrooms. It is also a valuable addition to the libraries of writers and researchers interested in indigenous studies and decolonialism.

Perfect for courses such as: Anti-Colonial Thought, Indigenous Knowledges, and Decolonization, Education, Social Development, and Social Justice Research in Education, Race, Indigeneity, and the Colonial Politics of Recognition, Marginality and the Politics of Resistance, Indigenous Settler Relations Issues for Teachers, Education Leadership, Reform, and Curriculum Innovation, Leadership in Social-Change Organizations, Adaptive Leadership: Power, Identity, and Social Change, Equity & Anti-Oppression in Practice and the Promise of Diversity: Addressing Race and Power in Education Settings, Strategies and Policies for Narrowing Racial Achievement, and Major Concepts and Issues in Education.

This collection consists of theoretical discussions, personal reflections, research reports, and policy suggestions sourced in the experiences of our most vulnerable students with an eye to making schools places all students might love rather than hate. The essays take up these issues from the perspectives of poverty, gender, race, ethnicity, ability, language, and religion among others.

These essays also provide practical advice for teachers and administrators—both practicing and pre-service—for making classrooms and schools spaces that would encourage our students to say, “I love school.”  

Perfect for courses in: Introduction to Education, General Methods, Social Foundations of Education, Diversity, Management/Assessment, Philosophy of Education, Sociology of Education, Educational Research, Educational Administration/Leadership, Teacher Leadership, Curriculum Theory, and Curriculum Development.

W. E. B. Du Bois’s seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk, not only captures the experience of African Americans in the years following the Civil War but also speaks to contemporary conditions. At a time when American public schools are increasingly re-segregating, are increasingly underfunded, and are perhaps nearly as separate and unequal as they were in earlier decades, this classic can help readers grasp links between a slavery past and a dismal present for too many young people of color. Disagreeing with Booker T. Washington, Du Bois analyzes the restrictiveness of education as a simple tool to prepare for work in pursuit of wealth (a trend still very much alive and well, especially in schools serving economically disadvantaged students). He also, however, demonstrates the challenges racism presents to individuals who embrace education as a tool for liberation. Du Bois’s accounts of how racism affected specific individuals allow readers to see philosophical issues in human terms. It can also help them think deeply about what kind of moral, social, educational and economic changes are necessary to provide all of America’s young people the equal opportunity promised to them inside and outside of schools.

Perfect for courses in: Social Foundations of Education, Political and Social Foundations of Education, Foundations of American Education, Foundations of Education, Introduction to Education Theory and Policy, Philosophy and Education, History of American Education, and African American Education. 

Some hundred years after John Dewey worked to illuminate what it means to educate and how public education serves as the bedrock of democracy, his seminal Democracy and Education speaks urgently not only to critical contemporary educational issues but to contemporary political issues as well. As mania for testing forces a steadily narrowing curriculum, Dewey explains why democracy cannot “flourish” if “the chief influences in selecting subject matter of instruction are utilitarian ends narrowly conceived for the masses.” As such utilitarian subject matter is increasingly placed online, isolating individual students and their electronic screens, he insists that education happens not through direct instruction but “indirectly by means of the environment” where members of a community engage in meaningful tasks. As the American population appears increasingly subject to rhetorical manipulation and ideological extremism, Dewey imagines the possibility of education cultivating “habits of mind which secure social changes without introducing disorder.” Insightful and inspiring, Dewey’s classic reintroduces readers to educational and political possibilities hard to remember as political and corporate forces to work reshape American public schools in the service of global profit rather than democratic life.

Myers Education Press’s Timely Classics in Education offer readers the opportunity to return to the original works of giants whose influence on education have persisted through the years. Critical introductions to each work offer information on the context of the original work as well as insights into current relevance. For readers unfamiliar with each text, the introductions provide entrée to the work; for experienced readers, the series offers an opportunity to return to original works untainted by the distortions of decades of interpretation. Unlike poorly produced facsimile editions, Timely Classics are high-quality products. They can be adopted for use in many types of education classes.

Perfect for courses in: Social Foundations of Education, Political and Social Foundations of Education, Foundations of American Education, Foundations of Education, Introduction to Education Theory and Policy, Philosophy and Education, History of American Education, and The Philosophy of John Dewey. 

A 2018 AESA Critics' Choice Award Winner
A 2019 SPE Outstanding Book Award Winner

How is it, this text asks, that given such good intentions among education professionals, things in schools can go so very wrong?

The problem, Hinchey and Konkol posit, is that unspoken and misleading assumptions result in choices, decisions and policies with disastrous consequences for kids. They tease out those assumptions on the key issues of school goals, curriculum, education for citizenship, discipline, and school reform, inviting readers to think again, to question the taken-for-granted, in the hope of better aligning intentions and outcomes.

This book is the perfect text for both undergraduate and graduate classrooms devoted to the study of public education. Questions at the end of each chapter point to ways for preservice and inservice teachers, as well as administrators and other education personnel, to advance their thinking about choices in their own contexts. In addition, suggested readings, websites and videos offer more food for thought.

Perfect for courses such as: Social Foundations of Education, Political and Social Foundations of Education, Foundations of American Education, Policy Issues in American Education, Political Issues in American Education, Educational Policy Studies, Foundations of Education, Foundations of Education Policy, Intro to Curriculum Issues/Policy, American Education Policy and Reform, Introduction to American Education, Introduction to Education Theory and Policy, Contemporary Issues in American Education.