Students play it, teachers perpetuate it, parents condone it, principals endorse it, and governments legislate it. The "game of school" is that familiar scenario where students' natural curiosity and desire to learn are replaced with a frantic rush (or a compliant shrug) to do the work, please the teacher, and get the grades. This game is easy to master, but exerts a high price. Can we afford to pay the price in wasted time and idle minds? In this compelling book, Robert L. Fried shows how we can change the rules of the game, reclaim and refocus the learning experience, and ultimately bring joy back into the classroom. The Game of School is filled with interviews and stories of teachers and students who are struggling to put the game of school behind them and engage in authentic learning. We experience the excitement of the first day of first grade; listen to urban teens discuss Shakespeare's Othello; and meet a college student who is beginning to question her long disengagement with learning. We are introduced to seven types of learners—from "go-getters" to "pluggers" to "rebels"—and find out how the game shapes their relationship to schooling and life. The Game of School offers workable solutions that take into account the reality of a culture consumed with testing, accountability, and the race for college. Fried redefines our common ideas of discipline, curriculum, instruction, grading, motivation, and family involvement in ways that enhance true learning and diminish the game's stranglehold on our curiosity and will. He argues that classrooms are more easily "managed" in a climate of mutual respect, and students are eager for "instruction" when it is challenging and engaging. His "Joy and Misery Index" serves to remind teachers of what really matters most in the classroom. Thoughtful and inspiring, The Game of School offers suggestions and ideas for teachers, parents, and students who want to free themselves from the ever-tightening grip of a game in which even winners end up losing.

Turn your classroom into a thriving community of learners! In The Passion-Driven Classroom, bestselling authors Angela Maiers and Amy Sandvold show you how to spark and sustain your students’ energy, excitement, and love of learning. This updated edition offers a new framework for changing your mindset and implementing a passion-driven classroom, where passion meets practice every day as students learn new skills and explore their talents. You’ll come away with specific examples of how to set up your classroom, how to manage it, and how to assign passion projects where students take the lead. With this book, you’ll be able to move away from prescription-driven learning toward Passion-Driven Learning, so you can make a real difference in the lives of your students.

"For some time, traditional (A - F) grading practices have been under fire from a wide range of stakeholder. Grading policies are wildly inconsistent from classroom to classroom, frequently misguided, uninformed, and frequently based on subjective judgments. Of even more concern, our grading practices exacerbate the achievement gap. It is well-documented that African-American and Latino students, boys, as well as special education students, are disproportionately suspended and expelled, influenced by teachers' unconscious but biased judgments of student behavior. Virtually ignored is how teachers' incorporate subjective and non-academic criteria into their grades (through criteria such as student attitude, "participation", and "effort"), and how approach to grading contributes to these same students' disproportionately high course failure rates and disproportionately low placement in advanced academic tracks"--

The purpose of this book is to change the conversation about teacher induction, preparation, and development and how we create effective teachers. Our national discussion about how to create effective teachers needs to move away from how higher education can do a better job preparing our teachers and move toward how our local schools can do a better job inducting, preparing, and developing our teachers over a full career. There are two interconnected and irrefutable reasons for this. First, school culture supersedes all rational strategies for teacher development, and, second, teachers learn to teach in the schools where they work, not in higher education or any of the alternative routes which the ineffectiveness of higher education teacher preparation have caused to emerge. With the affirmation of these postulates, this book clarifies that teachers are at their best when they are working together in collaborative cultures where teacher thinking and decision-making lead schools in continuous improvement and change. Elaborating on the importance of these best conditions for optimal teacher development, this book will insist that it is the entirety of a school culture that produces effective teachers, and schools with authentic learning communities produce the cultures that produce effective teachers.

Education has become synonymous with schooling, but it doesn't have to be. As schooling becomes increasingly standardized and test driven, occupying more of childhood than ever before, parents and educators are questioning the role of schooling in society. Many are now exploring and creating alternatives. In a compelling narrative that introduces historical and contemporary research on self-directed education, Unschooled also spotlights how a diverse group of individuals and organizations are evolving an old schooling model of education. These innovators challenge the myth that children need to be taught in order to learn. They are parents who saw firsthand how schooling can dull children's natural curiosity and exuberance and others who decided early on to enable their children to learn without school. Educators who left public school classrooms discuss launching self-directed learning centers to allow young people's innate learning instincts to flourish, and entrepreneurs explore their disillusionment with the teach-and-test approach of traditional schooling.

How can we make sure that our children are learning to be creative thinkers in a world of global competition - and what does that mean for the future of education in the digital age? David Williamson Shaffer offers a fresh and powerful perspective on computer games and learning. How Computer Games Help Children Learn shows how video and computer games can help teach children to build successful futures - but only if we think in new ways about education itself. Shaffer shows how computer and video games can help students learn to think like engineers, urban planners, journalists, lawyers, and other innovative professionals, giving them the tools they need to survive in a changing world. Based on more than a decade of research in technology, game science, and education, How Computer Games Help Children Learn revolutionizes the ongoing debate about the pros and cons of digital learning.

The Evolution of Teaching invites teachers to rethink what teachers and schools do. The need to rethink the role of teachers is driven by an abundance of data showing that teachers are increasingly unhappy with their work. Most critically, they feel a loss of control over their work and their profession as they witness teacher voices being marginalized by impersonal authorities outside of schools who dictate more and more of what teachers and schools must do. The antidote to this condition is the evolution of teaching. Teachers need to take charge and lead change. They need to redefine teaching and schooling in such a way that it authentically supports student learning and teacher learning. They must redefine it in a way that supports every teacher’s desire to have a personal impact on students while having control over their own work, stakeholder standing as respected professionals, and a full career of professional growth. As A Guidebook to the Advancement of Teaching, Teacher Education, and Happier Careers, this text will assist teachers in reconceiving the profession of teaching in ways that will make it more personally satisfying while acknowledging that the work of teachers in the twenty-first century must necessarily be different from what we have now, legacy practices of standardization left over from the industrial age.