Empowering Family-Teacher Partnerships: Building Connections Within Diverse Communities prepares students to work collaboratively with families and community professionals in support of children's early education and development. Students are invited to develop a personal philosophy of family involvement to guide their work with families and to join a community of learners in relying upon their collective insights and problem-solving skills to address family involvement challenges. The author takes a student-centered approach to delivering substantive information and framing activities, providing: (a) comprehensive coverage of the diversity of family lives represented in classrooms and strategies for working with those families; (b) challenges to family involvement and strategies for addressing them; (c) strategies for communicating effectively with and empowering families, and (d) reflections, activities, tip boxes, and field assignments designed to facilitate students' skills in building positive family-school-community partnerships.

Building community and empowering partnerships Empowering Family-Teacher Partnerships: Building Connections Within Diverse Communities prepares students to work collaboratively with families and community professionals in support of children′s early and middle childhood education and development. Students are invited to develop a personal philosophy of family involvement to guide their work with families and to join a community of learners in relying upon their collective insights and problem-solving skills to address family involvement challenges.

"This book provides prospective and practicing teachers with scenarios, background knowledge to develop asset-based viewpoints, and strategies for navigating a multitude of challenging situations they may face in working with caregivers to support the students in their classrooms"--

Reach beyond theory and engage every family in student success Family engagement increases student achievement but how do schools connect with families who don’t participate yet? Educators can easily become frustrated trying to reach the disconnected and often fall back to engaging the already engaged. Is it possible to win over everyone? Discover how to move beyond theory to change your culture for better family engagement and student achievement. Through practical steps, reflections, and case studies, you will discover and address: How and where family engagement breaks down, and How to create a truly inviting culture for successful community and family partnerships

We want students to master academic standards, and we want them to be confident, adaptive, and socially responsible. Above all, we want them to find meaning and satisfaction in their lives. Achieving these goals requires a concerted focus on the social-emotional skills that empower students in and beyond the classroom. In Teaching to Empower, Debbie Zacarian and Michael Silverstone explore what an empowered student looks like in our increasingly diverse contemporary schools and prompt educators to examine their own relationship to empowerment. The book's evidence-based strategies and authentic examples show you how to foster an inclusive culture of agency, self-confidence, and collaboration that will give each of your students—regardless of race, culture, language, socioeconomic status, abilities, sexuality, or gender—the opportunity, responsibility, and tools to become an active learner, thoughtful community member, and engaged global citizen. Whether you're a preservice teacher, a classroom novice, or a veteran, you'll find the practical guidance you'll need to * Create inclusive and empowering physical learning spaces. * Set up self-directed learning and promote positive interdependence. * Promote student self-reflection. * Teach the skills of collaboration. * Foster the self-advocacy that fuels deeper, more autonomous learning. * Partner more effectively with families and the community to support student empowerment.

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.

Expand classroom experiences and spark student excitement with learning adventures powered by technology! Written by an internationally recognized expert in the field, this second edition of the bestseller provides educators with practical strategies for using technology to "break down" classroom walls and prepare all students to succeed in a digital world. Making the case for technology′s capacity to improve school performance and create communities of best practice, the book demonstrates how appropriate use of computer and Internet technologies enhances students′ critical thinking, research, and problem-solving skills. Equally important, informed use of technology can level the learning field for disadvantaged students and allow children who are disabled to participate more fully in mainstream education. Offering more than 50 Web sites, as well as new resources, realistic lesson ideas, sample activities, more information about online learning, and real-world examples, this timely revision examines: Information literacy Learning in a globally connected community Increased access to information Applications for digital cameras, fax machines, cell phones, and more The relationship between technology expenditures and student achievement Complete with a section on navigating government archives online, this updated edition of Empowering Students With Technology helps students connect instructional content to real life and facilitates their development as independent and collaborative learners.