A community-empowered school is one in which administrators, teachers, staff, students, parents, and members of the community at large feel that they have a stake in the success of that school. Despite common reservations about the involvement of parents and volunteers in the classroom, this book makes clear the long-term advantages of onsite parent centers offering ESL classes, computer literacy/job-training classes, and classes in how to help students learn at home. The sources of financial and other help need not be limited to local businesses. District personnel, legislators, nonprofit agencies, and corporations can discover that they will benefit as a school succeeds. Chapter 1 examines what attracts community involvement, providing specific plans for volunteer programs and resource development. Chapter 2 identifies the stakeholders and what they can offer a school. Chapter 3 describes policies and procedures for program monitoring. Chapter 4 offers specific material for a workshop to train teachers in the use of tutors and mentors in the classroom, including overheads, worksheets, and memos. Chapter 5 outlines strategies using volunteers that increase literacy for students and their families. Chapter 6 addresses sources of funding. Chapter 7 explains the cost-effective nature of community support, and Chapter 8 shows how all the stockholders can affect public policy to increase the number of community-empowered schools. (Contains 43 references.) (RKJ)

Positive youth development is a strengths-based, positive psychology approach to fostering adolescents' educational engagement and achievement. It focuses not just on students' academic development but also on their vocational, social, and emotional development. The positive youth development philosophy is at the heart of Cynthia Hazel's unique model of secondary school change, which uses a multi-tiered system of support to challenge the status quo of widespread achievement gaps. In this thought-provoking book, Cynthia Hazel presents her positive youth development-multi-tiered system of support model, including its theoretical foundations, practical instructions for implementing the model, and case examples illustrating application. Recognising that students' own voices are critical to their empowerment and strong outcomes, the model calls for students to participate alongside parents, teachers, and administrators in designing and guiding the school's support structures. The resulting paradigm shift - truly empowered learning - offers hope for all secondary schools, especially those in which many students currently do not achieve postsecondary success.

For courses in Introduction to Educational Administration, Principalship, Educational Leadership and Supervision. The revision of this popular text examines the important issues of educational leadership that relate to today's movement towards restructuring and creating empowering environments for teachers and their students. To better understand how to build empowering environments in schools, it examines two national studies conducted over six years in 26 schools. This body of research provides an empirical framework that is used to draw conclusions about leadership in schools striving to provide an empowering environment.

This volume presents the grassroots experiences, problems encountered, and lessons learnt from initiatives launched in five Indian states. The contributors cover a range of important issues including how community participation works in an environment characterized by deep-rooted socio-economic divisions; the equitable distribution of participation; identifying and defining the community; and ensuring the genuine representation of those who are traditionally excluded from decision-making in rural areas./-//-/ The five case studies cover Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Bihar and Kerala. They collectively shed light on how decentralization in education has been actualized in different parts of the country. These experiences contain valuable insights which can be fruitfully applied to the primary education sector. A theme running through the volume as a whole is ways to bring about genuine partnerships between civil society, the administration and NGOs in the drive to achieve universal education.

Children in today's world are inundated with information about who to be, what to do and how to live. But what if there was a way to teach children how to manage priorities, focus on goals and be a positive influence on the world around them? The Leader in Meis that programme. It's based on a hugely successful initiative carried out at the A.B. Combs Elementary School in North Carolina. To hear the parents of A. B Combs talk about the school is to be amazed. In 1999, the school debuted a programme that taught The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Peopleto a pilot group of students. The parents reported an incredible change in their children, who blossomed under the programme. By the end of the following year the average end-of-grade scores had leapt from 84 to 94. This book will launch the message onto a much larger platform. Stephen R. Covey takes the 7 Habits, that have already changed the lives of millions of people, and shows how children can use them as they develop. Those habits -- be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek to understand and then to be understood, synergize, and sharpen the saw -- are critical skills to learn at a young age and bring incredible results, proving that it's never too early to teach someone how to live well.

This is a book that will address the ways in which the theory andd of empowerment can be established and sustained in a variety of community settings and for a variety of target groups, and that may operate at different levels, from individual to societal.In this book, the authors aim to explore and illustrate how inclusive communities can be created and sustained through the development and implementation of empowerment strategies at various levels: Individual, peer, community and societal. The authors utilize the framework of the Dynamic Synergy Model, outlined in Chapter Two, as the context in which we can understand and then actualize the ideals of inclusive communities.In the first two chapters of this volume, the authors outline the concept of inclusive communities, beginning with the initial notion of inclusion, and how that concept has been applied in a variety of settings. They then discuss the topic of empowerment, its theoretical foundations and evolution, including a critique of the concept and the inherent power dynamics of community-based work. In Chapter Two, the authors outline the various levels of empowerment, introduce the Dynamic Synergy Model and delineate a variety of components for establishing and sustaining empowering activities at a variety of levels, in various settings, with evidence or goals for any of the elements outlined for establishing and sustaining empowerment goals with a variety of methods. The authors especially encourage contributions that can illustrate the implementation and/or evaluation of work that exemplifies the Dynamic Synergy Model.

Would you want to be a student in your own classroom? In Passionate Learners: How to Engage and Empower Your Students, author Pernille Ripp challenges both novice and seasoned teachers to create a positive, interactive learning environment where students drive their own academic achievement. You’ll discover how to make fundamental changes to your classroom so learning becomes an exciting challenge rather than a frustrating ordeal. Based on the author’s personal experience of transforming her approach to teaching, this book outlines how to: • Build a working relationship with your students based on mutual trust, respect, and appreciation • Be attentive to your students’ needs and share ownership of the classroom with them • Break out of the vicious cycle of punishment and reward to control student behaviour • Use innovative and creative lesson plans to get your students to become more engaged and intellectually-invested learners, while still meeting your state standards • Limit homework and abandon traditional grading so that your students can make the most of their learning experiences without unnecessary stress • And much more! New to the second edition, you’ll find practical tools, such as teacher and student reflection sheets, parent questionnaires, and parent conference tools, available in the book and as eResources on our website (http://www.routledge.com/9781138916920) to help you build your own classroom of passionate learners.