middle school

The Power of the Adolescent Brain:  Strategies for Teaching Middle and High School Students

The Power of the Adolescent Brain: Strategies for Teaching Middle and High School Students

$26.99eBook: $20.49

Moody. Reckless. Impractical. Insecure. Distracted. These are all words commonly used to describe adolescents.  But what if we recast these traits in a positive light?  Teens possess insight, passion, idealism, sensitivity, and creativity in abundance -- all qualities that can make a significant positive contribution to society.

In this thought-provoking book, Thomas Armstrong looks at the power and promise of the teenage brain from an empathetic, strength-based perspective—and describes what middle and high school educators can do to make the most of their students potential.

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Mindfulness in the Classroom:  Strategies for Promoting Concentration, Compassion, and Calm

Mindfulness in the Classroom: Strategies for Promoting Concentration, Compassion, and Calm

$27.95eBook: $15.11

In today's schools, students and teachers feel unprecedented--even alarming--levels of stress.  How can we create calmer classrooms in which students concentrate better and feel more positive about themselves and others?  Author Thomas Armstrong offers a compelling answer in the form of mindfulness, a secular practice he defines as the intentional focus of one's attention on the present moment in a nonjudgmental way.

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If Einstein Ran the Schools: Revitalizing U.S. Education

If Einstein Ran the Schools: Revitalizing U.S. Education

$39.00eBook: $30.42

During the last three decades, education reformers have pushed standardized testing and policies like No Child Left Behind and Common Core to improve test scores and proficiency in basic skills. However, during this period that author Thomas Armstrong calls the "miseducation of America," a number of troubling trends have surfaced, including a decrease in creative thinking scores among children in kindergarten through third grade.

Rather than focus on what's wrong with the education system that has produced these outcomes, Armstrong lays out what creative thinkers know about how children should be educated. In an extended thought experiment, he asks what would happen if we turned the reins of educational policy over, not to the politicians and educational bureaucrats, but to eminent thinkers and creators like Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Martin Luther King Jr., Rachel Carson, Doris Lessing, Jane Goodall, and other seminal culture-builders. What might they say about the best way to educate a child? If Einstein Ran the Schools suggests that the answers to this intriguing question should guide future efforts to reform our nation's schools.

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You’re Smarter Than You Think:  A Kid’s Guide to Multiple Intelligences, Revised and Updated

You’re Smarter Than You Think: A Kid’s Guide to Multiple Intelligences, Revised and Updated

$15.99eBook: $11.99

Being smart is more than getting good grades or passing tests in school.  It's more than reading well, solving math problems, memorizing facts, and having a high IQ.  Psychologist Dr. Howard Gardner studied how kids and adults learn.  He discovered many different ways people can be smart.  You can be Music Smart, People Smart, Body Smart, Logic Smart, Word Smart, Self Smart, Picture Smart, Nature Smart, and Life Smart.  Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences has changed how teachers teach in schools around the world.  Now, kids can use the same approach to develop their own smarts!

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The Best Schools:  How Human Development Research Should Inform Educational Practice

The Best Schools: How Human Development Research Should Inform Educational Practice

$9.83eBook: $22.99

Educators, politicians, parents, and even students are consumed with speaking the language of academic achievement. Yet something is missing in the current focus on accountability, standardized testing, and adequate yearly progress. If schools continue to focus the conversation on rigor and accountability and ignore more human elements of education, many students may miss out on opportunities to discover the richness of individual exploration that schools can foster.

In The Best Schools, Armstrong urges educators to leave narrow definitions of learning behind and return to the great thinkers of the past 100 years—Montessori, Piaget, Freud, Steiner, Erikson, Dewey, Elkind, Gardner—and to the language of human development and the whole child.

The Best Schools highlights examples of educational programs that are honoring students’ differences, using developmentally appropriate practices, and promoting a humane approach to education that includes the following elements:

  • An emphasis on play for early childhood learning.
  • Theme- and project-based learning for elementary school students
  • Active learning that recognizes the social, emotional, and cognitive needs of adolescents in  middle schools.
  • Mentoring, apprenticeships, and cooperative education for high school students

Educators in “the best schools” recognize the differences in the physical, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual worlds of students of different ages. This book will help educators reflect on how to help each student reach his or her true potential, how to inspire each child and adolescent to discover an inner passion to learn, and how to honor the unique journey of each individual through life.

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