In this dynamic book, today's educational leaders offer their best ideas for building school communities that are safe, smart, caring, successful, and emotionally intelligent.

"Schools cannot teach character . . . School have to create an environment that models and promotes character development, and then they have to allow the children to ′catch′ character from the behavior of the adults and students around them." —From Chapter 1 by James P. Comer Let today′s educational leaders show you how to create a safe, healthy, and successful classroom community! Combining emotional intelligence (EQ) with academic intelligence (IQ) is the essential key to developing knowledgeable, caring, healthy, and successful students in today′s troubled world. Social-emotional skills often are not taught at home, but they are in fact the crucial connection that enables students to master and retain content knowledge while also creating a classroom atmosphere filled with proficient, civic-minded students with sound judgment and problem-solving skills that will last a lifetime. In this dynamic book, today′s educational leaders offer their best ideas for building school communities that are safe, smart, caring, successful, and emotionally intelligent. Key topics include: Transforming the Lives of Children (James P. Comer) Leadership for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (Mary Utne O′Brien, Roger P. Weissberg, Timothy P. Shriver) How New Knowledge About the Brain Applies to Social and Emotional Learning (Ronald S. Brandt) A Vision of Schools with Heart and Spirit (Linda Lantieri) Institutionalizing Programming for Social and Emotional Learning (Linda Bruene Butler, Jeffrey S. Kress, Jacqueline A. Norris) Implementing a Social and Emotional Learning Program (Carol Apacki)

Approaches to Behavior and Classroom Management focuses on helping teachers use a variety of approaches in behavior and classroom management in order to make good decisions when faced with the challenge of creating positive classroom communities. Today's classrooms often include children from a variety of backgrounds and with different needs - needs that must be met if these children are to thrive in school. This text will provide teachers and other educators with the historical and cultural framework necessary to understand approaches to behavior and classroom management, a deep understanding of each approach, and a tool belt of relevant methods from which to choose to meet the needs of various situations. Ancillaries available, including: Instructor's Resource CD-ROM (for qualified instructors) Student Resource CD-ROM Student Study Site (www.sagepub.com/scarlettstudy)

Bringing together a powerful group of leading educational thinkers, including Michael Fullan, Dennis Sparks, Linda Lambert, and Dean Fink, this volume examines how to sustain improvement through shared leadership.

"Establishing school-family-community partnerships to promote the social, emotional, and academic learning of students is the most important challenge for 21st-century education. In this volume, leading practitioners and researchers compellingly convey the rationale and inspiration for these partnerships. They also share many practical, innovative, and effective strategies that readers can readily implement to engage partners in raising knowledgeable, responsible, caring, and contributing children." —Roger P. Weissberg, Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor University of Illinois at Chicago Making schooling a community endeavor! Because schools are the heart and soul of a community, educational leaders have a responsibility to bring the community into the school, as well as to make the school a part of the surrounding community. This volume in the Soul of Educational Leadership series goes beyond administrative skills to examine educators′ pivotal role of leading family and community involvement in school success. With articles written by leading authorities and practitioners in the field, this resource discusses how school leaders can build successful family and community partnerships that flourish even in trying circumstances and over time. Readers will find: Contributions from Alan M. Blankstein, Pedro A. Noguera, Mavis G. Sanders, Paul D. Houston, Edward H. Moore, and others Inspiring and unique perspectives on the interplay of family and community in school success Ideas for engaging families as partners

This edited volume presents innovative and practical strategies for creating districtwide communication systems, responding to district challenges, using electronic communication tools effectively, and keeping the public informed.

Resilience is a set of qualities that enable children to adapt and transform, to overcome risk and adversity, and to develop social competence, problem-solving skills, autonomy and a sense of purpose. For children and young people it is as vital to possess these qualities in school environments as in the family and the community at large. This handbook for teachers and educators explores ways of nurturing resilience in vulnerable students. It proposes a new, positive way of thinking about schools as institutions that can foster cognitive and socio-emotional competence in all students. Individual chapters examine effective practices in schools and classrooms, and assess a range of classroom processes, such as engagement, inclusion, collaboration and prosocial behaviour. The author makes use of case studies throughout to bring to life classroom activities and concrete strategies that will promote best practice for enhancing student resilience, and offers a framework that can be adapted to the existing nature, culture and needs of each individual school community and its members. Promoting Resilience in the Classroom is a valuable resource for educational practitioners as well as educational officers and policy makers engaged in school development and educational improvement.