We interrupt this program to bring meaningful, conceptual change to your team′s professional learning! If you′re involved in professional learning, you know that big ideas can sometimes get stuck on the way to becoming real change. Steven Katz and Lisa Ain Dack explain the secret to getting unstuck: interrupting the status quo of traditional activity-based professional development to help educators embrace permanent changes in thinking and behavior. They outline a process—grounded in psychological research—for real professional learning that ultimately leads to improved student achievement. You can enable true learning by Building a focus on learning, collaborative inquiry, and formal and informal instructional leadership in schools Recognizing the psychological processes involved in adult learning, and overcoming the psychological biases and barriers to change Using tools and strategies such as critical friend relationships, learning conversations, task sheets, and protocols Illustrated with concrete, school-based examples drawn from real practice, Intentional Interruption shows how rethinking professional learning can lead to the development of a real and sustainable learning culture in your school. "Few books challenge your thinking of a field to this degree. The authors reveal the secret key to unlocking true professional learning and thus impact for students." —Terry Morganti-Fisher, Consultant Learning Forward "Before your learning team goes much further, it needs to stop, read, and collectively reflect on these insights. This book will identify those sticky challenges and how you can optimize your joint work." —Mag Gardner, Superintendent of Student Achievement Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board, ON

Break down the barriers that keep professional learning from sticking! Real professional learning takes place when there is a permanent change in practice. This book outlines what it means to intentionally interrupt the status quo in order to overcome barriers to learning that impede permanent change. The authors explain the psychological processes involved in learning and which biases get in the way of making professional learning stick. Staff developers will find tools and strategies for: * Moving professional learning beyond activities to deepen conceptual change* Enabling new learning by building three key capacities: a learning focus, collaborative inquiry, and instructional leadership* Embedding and sustaining a true learning culture in schools.

Why are so many speakers interrupted in Luke and in Acts? For nearly a century, scholars have noted the presence of interrupted speech in the Acts of the Apostles, but explanations of its function have been limited and often contradictory. A more effective approach involves grounding the analysis of Luke-Acts within a larger understanding of how interruption functions in a wide variety of literary settings. An extensive survey of ancient Greek narratives (epics, histories, and novels) reveals the forms, frequency, and functions of interruption in Greek authors who lived and wrote between the eighth-century B.C.E. and the second-century C.E. This comparative study suggests that the frequent interruptions of Jesus and his followers in Luke 4:28; Acts 4:1; 7:54–57; 13:48; etc., are designed both to highlight the pivotal closing words of the discourses and to draw attention to the ways in which the early Christian gospel was received. In the end, the interrupted discourses are best understood not as historical accidents, but as rhetorical exclamation points intended to highlight key elements of the early Christian message and their varied reception by Jews and Gentiles.

The economic prosperity and the well-being of our nation's communities depend on the reliable functioning of critical infrastructures: transportation, banking and finance, information and communications, water supply systems, emergency services, and especially energy (electric power, oil, and natural gas). In the new economy, these infrastructures are increasingly reliant on information technologies and are strongly affected by restructuring and other market forces. They are much more heavily interconnected than ever before, and disruptions in one system can have significant adverse consequences, both locally and regionally. Communities often are not well prepared to deal with widespread infrastructure failures, which could become commonplace in the new millennium. This report, prepared on behalf of the partnership, is a first-of-a-kind effort to compile this type of information on the electric power system in a form that municipal governments can use and adapt to local conditions. ComEd and Harza Engineering Company have provided valuable support for this effort. Argonne National Laboratory's Infrastructure Assurance Center compiled and integrated the planning information.

Jump start your roles as “learning leader” and “lead learner!” Designed for leaders to learn and lead within the “middle space” between the seemingly opposing dynamics of district expectations and practitioner experience, this book advances the concept of the school as a learning organization. This innovative perspective guides leaders through an intentional, deliberate learning process to develop intelligent, responsive leadership practice. Using stories, strategies, and tools, the authors · Explain the power of “purposeful practice” as a methodology for getting better · Show how to build the requisite capacities to lead effectively via “influence” · Describe how to turn adaptive challenges into leadership inquiries for growth "This important work demonstrates and reinforces the idea that continuous improvement can only come from deep, intentional, focused, and hard work on the part of everyone within an organization. While the examples are rooted within schools and school districts, this work is applicable to any organization that seeks meaningful and specific improvement in their results. This is a must-read for leaders!" —Lynn Macan University at Albany - SUNY, Albany, NY

Homeric Voices is a study, from a compositional point of view, of the substantial speeches and exchanges of speech that Homer depicts in his songs. Drawing on research in sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and cognitive psychology, Elizabeth Minchin considers the words that Homer attributes to his characters from two perspectives, as cognitive and as social phenomena. She asks how the poet worked with memory to generate the speech forms that he represents; and how Homeric speech constructs and reveals the social hierarchies that are bound up with age, status, and gender - with particular interest in gender - in the world of the poems.