Building Learning Communities with Character

Building Learning Communities with Character
Author: Bernard Novick
Publisher: ASCD
Total Pages: 151
Release: 2002
Genre: Education
ISBN: 087120665X

Today's students need to learn more than just reading, writing, and arithmetic. They need to learn life skills to successfully manage tasks, form relationships, solve everyday problems, and adapt to the demands of simply growing up. To satisfy those needs, many educators seek effective and lasting programs for their students' academic, emotional, and social growth. This book presents a nine-step, problem-solving approach to help educators not only create such a program, but also shape the school climate to sustain and nurture it. Combining three decades of work with individual schools and districts, authors Bernard Novick, Jeffrey S. Kress, and Maurice J. Elias provide experienced insight to overcoming obstacles to social-emotional learning and character education programs. Their organized approach deals with the implementation process stage by stage, including: * Assessing your school's readiness for change * Setting goals for your program * Anticipating details and roadblocks * Obtaining feedback to modify your implemented program * Creating high standards for accomplishment in academics and character Any educator who is confused by the avalanche of different terminologies and methodologies surrounding social-emotional learning will benefit from this book. This practical and concise guide will help educators create an effective and goal-oriented environment in every school, one where students, staff, and parents are continually sustained in a caring community of learners.

PRIMED for Character Education

PRIMED for Character Education
Author: Marvin W Berkowitz
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2021-04-21
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1351030248

Winner of the 2023 Outstanding Book Award from AERA's Moral Development and Education SIG! In PRIMED for Character Education, renowned character educator Marvin W Berkowitz boils down decades of research on evidence-based practices and thought-provoking field experience into a clear set of principles that leaders, administrators, and teacher-leaders can implement to help students thrive. The author’s original six-component framework offers a comprehensive guide to shaping purposeful learning environments, healthy relationships, core values and virtues, role models, empowerment, and long-term development in any PreK-12 school or district. This engaging and heartfelt book features tips for practice, anecdotes from award-winning schools, and straightforward tenets from moral education, social-emotional learning, and positive psychology.

Building Character, Community, and a Growth Mindset in Physical Education

Building Character, Community, and a Growth Mindset in Physical Education
Author: Leigh Anderson
Publisher: Human Kinetics
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2017-02-21
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1492586412

Building Character, Community, and a Growth Mindset in Physical Education is a highly practical and theoretically sound resource that will help you build a positive learning environment, teach valuable life skills, and inspire in students a desire to live active, healthy lives. It reinforces the many ways in which physical education and sport are the ideal setting to build college and career readiness skills. Teachers will learn how to help students develop a growth mindset and recognize that obstacles, challenges, and failures provide the greatest learning opportunities. The book is written with both American and Canadian national standards in mind: You can help your students achieve Standards 3, 4, and 5 of SHAPE America’s National Standards and Grade-Level Outcomes for K-12 Physical Education and PHE Canada’s goals for physical education (“enable individuals to make healthy, active choices that are both beneficial to and respectful of their whole self, others, and their environment”). It will also aid you in achieving Standard Six of the objectives set by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). This text provides • 35 new large-group warm-up activities; • 20 character-building activities; • 11 team-building challenges; • assessment, reflection, and goal-setting strategies; and • a web resource with ready-to-use printable and editable activity materials (such as focus words and definitions, reflection scenarios, station and team challenge cards, and more). The activities, which are ready-made for use in your curriculum, include a motivational strategy and resource tool using the acronym GROWTH that will help your students learn and adopt the growth mindset traits necessary to set and reach goals. The book addresses many hot-button topics, such as emotional intelligence, community building, teamwork, physical fitness, and goal setting—all in a concise, practical, and highly effective way. As such, you will be helping your students meet Common Core and College and Career Readiness objectives. And students with goal-setting skills and a growth mindset will be well prepared to meet the challenging standards that are promoted by the Every Student Succeeds Act. In addition, Building Character, Community, and a Growth Mindset in Physical Education is the perfect antidote to bullying: Through the materials and activities, the students learn to be respectful competitors and supportive teammates. The text contains six chapters: • Chapter 1 explores the connection between emotional intelligence and a growth mindset. It reinforces the many ways in which physical education and sport are the ideal settings to build college and career readiness skills. • Chapter 2 describes the impact community building has on motivation and learning. It also contains fun community-building activities as well as guidance on how to develop a positive learning environment. • Chapter 3 outlines strategies for building character and offers reflection scenarios, focus words, inspirational sayings, and recommended video clips. • Chapter 4 supplies more than 20 fun, engaging, and motivational character-building activities and games. • Chapter 5 provides outdoor collaborative team-building challenges. • Chapter 6 delves into various aspects of developing a growth mindset through concepts such as assessment, reflection, and goal setting. Building Character, Community, and a Growth Mindset in Physical Education is a powerful and valuable resource because it develops the whole student. It helps students meet important national standards while also preparing them for success in life. This book will help you develop resilient citizens who choose to live active, healthy lifestyles; understand the importance of collaboration and teamwork; and are intrisically motivated to succeed in all areas of their lives.

Engaging All by Creating High School Learning Communities

Engaging All by Creating High School Learning Communities
Author: Jeanne Gibbs
Publisher: Centersource Systems
Total Pages: 527
Release: 2008-01-01
Genre: Group work in education
ISBN: 9780932762603

"This comprehensive book provides the research-based framework, pedagogy, concepts and strategies that are essential for engaging all by creating high school learning communities. Topics discussed include critical indicators of the very different needs of 21st century youth, voices of students themselves, and a consensus of recommendations from the literature and studies, including the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP). Readers will explore the most promising strategy for sustained, substantive school improvement that of building the capacity of school personnel the insiders to function as a collegial learning community, in which teachers collaboratively learn together, tailor curricula to ways in which students of today's world best can learn, support each other in implementation, and reflect together continuously on their own enhanced learning as well as that of their students. Readers will understand why and how the research-based developmental process of Tribes Learning Communities, when implemented well, can transform the culture, structures and pedagogy of the whole high school system particularly one committed to preparing today's students for an entirely different era the Era of Learning." - product description.

Create a Culture of Kindness in Middle School

Create a Culture of Kindness in Middle School
Author: Naomi Drew
Publisher: Free Spirit Publishing
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2017-10-02
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1631981609

Practical, research-based lessons for middle school educators to teach students pro-social attitudes and behaviors to prevent bullying. Create a Culture of Kindness in Middle School focuses on positive and pro-social attitudes and behaviors that build a respectful and compassionate school environment, while also addressing the tough issues of prejudice, anger, exclusion, and bullying. Through role-playing, perspective-taking, sharing, writing, discussion, and more, students develop the insights and skills they need to accept differences, resolve conflicts peacefully, stop bullying among peers, and create a community of kindness in their classrooms and school. Based on survey data gathered by the authors from more than 1,000 students, the book’s research-based lessons are easy to implement and developmentally appropriate. Digital content includes student handouts from the book.

The Knowledge Gap

The Knowledge Gap
Author: Natalie Wexler
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2020-08-04
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0735213569

The untold story of the root cause of America's education crisis--and the seemingly endless cycle of multigenerational poverty. It was only after years within the education reform movement that Natalie Wexler stumbled across a hidden explanation for our country's frustrating lack of progress when it comes to providing every child with a quality education. The problem wasn't one of the usual scapegoats: lazy teachers, shoddy facilities, lack of accountability. It was something no one was talking about: the elementary school curriculum's intense focus on decontextualized reading comprehension "skills" at the expense of actual knowledge. In the tradition of Dale Russakoff's The Prize and Dana Goldstein's The Teacher Wars, Wexler brings together history, research, and compelling characters to pull back the curtain on this fundamental flaw in our education system--one that fellow reformers, journalists, and policymakers have long overlooked, and of which the general public, including many parents, remains unaware. But The Knowledge Gap isn't just a story of what schools have gotten so wrong--it also follows innovative educators who are in the process of shedding their deeply ingrained habits, and describes the rewards that have come along: students who are not only excited to learn but are also acquiring the knowledge and vocabulary that will enable them to succeed. If we truly want to fix our education system and unlock the potential of our neediest children, we have no choice but to pay attention.

Building Community in Schools

Building Community in Schools
Author: Thomas J. Sergiovanni
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 261
Release: 1999-09-21
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0787950440

"Sergiovanni documents cases of schools that have successfully reinvented themselves in order to establish a sense of 'community' as the foundation for all curriculum and instruction decisions. . . . Teachers, administrators, teacher educators, and communities seeking advice and motivation for restructuring schools for the 21st century would be well advised to consult this work." --Choice "Provides the practitioner with both a theoretical blueprint with which to build learning communities and a rich supply of benchmark illustrations to use as prototypes. . . . thought-provoking and challenging." --NASSP Bulletin Both in and out of schools, people are experiencing a loss of community. In this book, Thomas J. Sergiovanni explains why a sense of community is so vital to the success of any school and shows teachers, parents, and administrators what they can do to rebuild it. Filled with case studies and other school examples, Building Community in Schools provides the necessary intellectual framework for understanding the need to create communities that are inclusive, meaningful, and democratic.