Turn ideas into goals—and goals into impact The road to school improvement and student achievement is paved with good intentions—so why does the destination seem so far away? If you’re like most educators, the answer is a pothole known as the implementation gap. This book provides a road map to bypassing that gap in your school or district, offering a carefully researched, field-tested methodology that takes leadership teams, professional learning communities, and educators all the way from good ideas to systematic impact. Following the five Ds, you’ll: Discover goals worth pursuing and problems worth addressing Design instruments and actions that generate deep impact Deliver interventions and collect data Double-back to monitor your progress and evaluate the impact Double-up to enhance, sustain, and scale your success You became an educator to make a difference in students’ lives. With this playbook, you’ll transform research and ideas into achievable actions—and make maximum impact.

When you know what to say and how to say it, people listen. Find your powerful voice, and step into leadership. Speak with impact. Every day, you have an opportunity to use your voice to have a positive impact -- at work or in your community. You can inspire and persuade your audience -- or you can distract and put them to sleep. Presentation styles where leaders are nervous, ramble, and robotic can ruin a talk on even the most critical topics. As your performances become weak, your career prosects start to dim. To get ahead and make an impact, you need to deliver well-crafted messages with confidence and authenticity. You must?sound?as capable as you are. Public speaking is a skill, not a talent. With the right guidance, anyone can be a powerful speaker. Written by former opera singer turned CEO and TEDx speaker Allison Shapira, Speak with Impact unravels the mysteries of commanding attention in any setting, professional or personal. Whether it’s speaking up at a meeting, presenting to clients, or talking to large groups, this book’s easy-to-use frameworks, examples and exercises will help you: Engage your audience through storytelling and humor Use breathing techniques to overcome stage fright Strengthen and project your voice by banishing filler words/uptalk Use effective body language and build your executive presence Compose a clear message and deliver confident, authentic presentations Learn to conquer fear, capture attention, motivate action, and take charge of your career with?Speak with Impact.

Despite enormous investments of time and money, are we making a dent on the social and environmental challenges of our time? What if we could exponentially increase our impact? Around the world, a new generation is looking beyond greater profits, for meaningful purpose. But, unlike business, few social interventions have achieved significant impact at scale. Inspired by the modern innovation practices, popularized by bestseller The Lean Startup, that have fueled technology breakthroughs touching every aspect of our lives, Lean Impact turns our attention to a new goal - radically greater social good. Social change is far more complicated than building a new app. It requires more listening, more care, and more stakeholders. To make a lasting difference, solutions must be embraced by beneficiaries, address root causes, and include an engine that can accelerate growth to reach the scale of the need. Lean Impact offers bold ideas to reach audacious goals through customer insight, rapid experimentation and iteration, and a relentless pursuit of impact. Ann Mei Chang brings a unique perspective from across sectors, from her years as a tech executive in Silicon Valley to her most recent experience as the Chief Innovation Officer at USAID. She vividly illustrates the book with real stories from interviews with over 200 organizations across the US and around the world. Whether you are a nonprofit, social enterprise, triple bottom line company, foundation, government agency, philanthropist, impact investor, or simply donate your time and money, Lean Impact is an essential guide to maximizing social impact and scale.

Michael Strahan spent his childhood on a military base in Europe, where community meant everything, and life, though idyllic, was different. For one, when people referenced football they meant soccer. So when Michael's father suggested he work toward a college scholarship by playing football in Texas, where tens of thousands of people show up for a weekend game, the odds were long. Yet he did, indeed, land a scholarship and from there a draft into the NFL where he scaled the league's heights, broke records, and helped his team win the Super Bowl, as a result of which he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. How? By developing "Strahan's Rules" -- a mix of mental discipline, positive thinking, and a sense of play. He also used the Rules to forge a successful post pro-ball career as cohost with Kelly Ripa on Live! -- a position for which he was considered the longshot -- and much more. In Wake Up Happy, Michael shares personal stories about how he gets and stays motivated and how readers can do the same in their quest to attain their life goals.

Todd Durkin is the most sought-after personal trainer in sports, and if you don't know his name, you've definitely seen his work. He is a trainer on NBC's new show Strong, and he has helped world-class athletes reach the top of their game, including quarterback and Super Bowl MVP Drew Brees, pitcher and World Series MVP Cole Hamels, and snowboarder and Olympic gold medalist Shaun White. He is known throughout sports as the one trainer who can use any person's unique raw materials to transform them into--quite literally--the best they can be. Now Durkin has tailored his elite training program for anyone looking to transform their bodies. Based on groundbreaking "muscle matrix" research, Durkin's IMPACT! Body Plan is designed to adapt to your body to help you shed flab, build strength and flexibility, and enhance your athletic performance.

This book describes in simple terms exactly how schools should align and organize professional learning to ensure significant positive change in teaching and student learning. The author's partnership principles-a humanizing approach to professional learning-apply to workshops, intensive learning teams (a focused form of professional learning communities), and instructional coaching. This is the first in a two volume series that is designed to provide a simple (not simplistic) framework and a set of tools for improving teaching in schools. (The second volume, The Big Four, was proposed last year.)

Two leading experts on designing strategic conversations unveil a simple, creative process that allows teams to tackle their most challenging issues. In our fast-changing world, leaders are increasingly confronted by messy, multifaceted challenges that require collaboration to resolve. But the standard methods for tackling these challenges—meetings packed with data-drenched presentations or brainstorming sessions that circle back to nowhere—just don’t deliver. Great strategic conversations generate breakthrough insights by combining the best ideas of people with different backgrounds and perspectives. In this book, two experts “crack the code” on what it takes to design creative, collaborative problem-solving sessions that soar rather than sink. Drawing on decades of experience as innovation strategists—and supported by cutting-edge social science research, dozens of real-life examples, and interviews with well over 100 thought leaders, executives, and fellow practitioners— they unveil a simple, creative process that leaders and their teams can use to unlock solutions to their most vexing issues. The book also includes a “Starter Kit” full of tools and tips for putting the book’s core principles into practice.