"THE guide for getting the best life possible for your child...invaluable." -Dr. Phil McGraw As an individual rights attorney and parent of an autistic child herself, Areva Martin shares clear, step-by-step instructions on how parents can assert themselves-with doctors, teachers, school officials, neighbors, or even family members-and get the best results for their child. Practical and inspiring, with personal stories from other parents of autistic children, The Everyday Advocate offers real-world actions that work and teaches parents the skills to become better advocates for their children.

As Christians, we are called and anointed to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, and freedom to the oppressed. In The Everyday Advocate, Ross Murray helps Christians explore our individual callings to justice and start taking practical steps to live that out. The Everyday Advocate is for the layperson who feels overwhelmed by the world's troubles and helpless to address them. It is for the person who goes to church, hears the gospel, seeks to apply it to their lives, and yearns to be connected to, or create, a community that amplifies their voice and actions. It is also for pastors and faith leaders who want to help people think through their calling to advocacy and help connect them with the communities that can use their gifts and talents. Murray builds on two questions: Where is God? And what are we called to do? Viewing every action and phenomenon as theological, he stakes out values and shows readers how to work toward those values. He also distinguishes between direct service and cultural change, discussing the balance between them and acknowledging both are needed. Drawing on his own experience and exercising his pastoral spirit, Murray encourages readers to discern their own call to advocacy, learn to identify injustices that still reign, and respond faithfully by incorporating big and small actions into their everyday lives.

Offers advice, actions, and strategies for how to pitch a good idea to an influential group and gain their support.

A nationally recognized expert on autism advocacy and parent of an autistic child lays out vital and relevant step-by-step instructions to parents facing the seemingly impossible odds of advocating for a child with autism.

What counts as professionalism for teachers today? Once, teachers who knew their content area and knew how to teach it were respected as professionals. Now there is an additional type of competency required: in addition to content and pedagogical knowledge, educators need advocacy skills. In this groundbreaking collection, literacy educators describe how they are redefining what it means to be a teaching professional. Teachers share how they are trying to change the conversation surrounding literacy and literacy instruction by explaining to colleagues, administrators, parents, and community members why they teach in particular research-based ways, so often contradicted by mandated curricula and standardized assessments. Teacher educators also share how they are introducing an advocacy approach to preservice and practicing teachers, helping prepare teachers for this new professionalism. Both groups practice what the authors call “everyday advocacy”: the day-to-day actions teachers are taking to change the public narrative surrounding schools, teachers, and learning.

"THE guide for getting the best life possible for your child...invaluable." -Dr. Phil McGraw As an individual rights attorney and parent of an autistic child herself, Areva Martin shares clear, step-by-step instructions on how parents can assert themselves-with doctors, teachers, school officials, neighbors, or even family members-and get the best results for their child. Practical and inspiring, with personal stories from other parents of autistic children, The Everyday Advocate offers real-world actions that work and teaches parents the skills to become better advocates for their children.

Leadership is the habit of making good choices. Even in difficult and uncertain circumstances, the most effective leaders focus their attention and overcome entrenched patterns of behavior to push an organization to new heights of success. This capability is no fluke: the latest research on the brain shows that we can pinpoint the mental activity associated with it—and cultivate it for our benefit. In this book, Art Kleiner, a strategy expert; Jeffrey Schwartz, a research psychiatrist; and Josie Thomson, an executive coach, give a transformative explanation of how cutting-edge neuroscience can help business leaders set a course toward better management. Mapping the functions of a manager onto established patterns of mental activity, they identify crucial brain circuits and their parallels in organizational culture. Strategic leaders, they show, play the role of wise advocates: able to go beyond day-to-day transactional behavior to a longer-term, broader perspective that articulates their organization’s deeper purpose. True leaders can play this influencer role in an organization because they have cultivated similar self-reflective habits in their own minds. Providing a powerful guide to decision strategies and their consequences, The Wise Advocate helps managers find their own inner voice and then make that voice ring out loud and clear, with a four-step program for practice and catalytic implications for management strategy, executive education, and business results.