See how one school district made cultural proficiency real—and how you can too! This book tells the story of Ventura Unified School District's successful implementation of cultural proficiency, which opened long-closed doors for marginalized students and returned gains on every key success metric. Most importantly, it will empower you to do the same for your school or district. Resources include: A method for evaluating the impact of educational decisions on students' access to learning A clearly outlined three-year implementation plan for making your school culturally proficient A content-rich companion website that includes templates and forms for implementing the book’s suggestions

The first book available to comprehensively address the treatment of sexually abused males, Opening the Door: A Treatment Model for Therapy with Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse is based on current research and the carefully evolved techniques of 41 therapists who have developed expertise in working with sexually abused males. It discusses both the approaches that these therapists bring to their work and presents interventions they have successfully applied in treatment. Written in clear, concise language, Opening the Door features a four-phase treatment model and presents, in detail, the therapeutic tasks necessary for each phase. This model makes clear the significant parallels and distinctions between the processes of therapy and abuse. These processes are discussed throughout the text to ensure that therapy will be a healing rather than a harmful experience. The volume presents information about the frequency of male sexual victimization, the impact of this victimization on the individual, primary differences between male and female victimization, and the issues victims typically bring into therapy. The four-phase treatment model for male survivors and the therapeutic tasks of each stage is then addressed. This model serves as a framework for presenting specific therapeutic interventions. Chapters examine such areas as the essential processes that pertain to all therapeutic modalities (individual, group, etc.) when treating male survivors of sexual abuse; contracting with clients, assessment guidelines, and methods of evaluation; individual therapy with male survivors; a two-stage group treatment model for male survivors, which discusses contraindications for group treatment, screening criteria, general ground rules for the group, and effective interventions; critical issues in treating male survivors, including engagement strategies, therapeutic impasses, and client/therapist gender dynamics; and the therapeutic process as it applies to adolescent male survivors, with particular emphasis on how treatment must be carefully tailored to the developmental needs of this group. Included are guidelines for working with adolescents and several interventions that contributors have successfully used with this population. Since working extensively with abuse survivors can exact significant personal costs, the book provides important self-care strategies for therapists to incorporate into their work and lives and discusses seven ways in which to recognize and manage counter-transference. The volume also contains a highly comprehensive list of written, video, and training resources that will provide therapists with numerous avenues to expand their clinical practice and knowledge, as well as seven appendices that include the DES Questionnaire and the Dean Adolescent Inventory Scale. Opening the Door will be an invaluable resource for all mental health practitioners who help male victims of sexual abuse to transcend survivorship and learn to live healthy, productive, and vital lives.

The Opening Door, first published in 1943 by author Helen Reilly, is a murder-mystery featuring New York City police inspector Christopher McKee, who is called in to solve the puzzling death of a young socialite. From the book cover: “This is the story of a beautiful and haunted young woman. When she was one year old, she was worth nine hundred thousand dollars. At twenty-one, she was sole heir to five million. Before she was twenty-two, she had endured more heartache, greed and violence than her whole estate was worth. It was anybody’s guess whether she would ever see twenty-three....”

Opening the Doors is a wide-ranging account of the University of Alabama’s 1956 and 1963 desegregation attempts, as well as the little-known story of Tuscaloosa, Alabama’s, own civil rights movement. Whereas E. Culpepper Clark’s The Schoolhouse Door remains the standard history of the University of Alabama’s desegregation, in Opening the Doors B. J. Hollars focuses on Tuscaloosa’s purposeful divide between “town” and “gown,” providing a new contextual framework for this landmark period in civil rights history. The image of George Wallace’s stand in the schoolhouse door has long burned in American consciousness; however, just as interesting are the circumstances that led him there in the first place, a process that proved successful due to the concerted efforts of dedicated student leaders, a progressive university president, a steadfast administration, and secret negotiations between the U.S. Justice Department, the White House, and Alabama’s stubborn governor. In the months directly following Governor Wallace’s infamous stand, Tuscaloosa became home to a leader of a very different kind: twenty-eight-year-old African American reverend T. Y. Rogers, an up-and-comer in the civil rights movement, as well as the protégé of Martin Luther King Jr. After taking a post at Tuscaloosa’s First African Baptist Church, Rogers began laying the groundwork for the city’s own civil rights movement. In the summer of 1964, the struggle for equality in Tuscaloosa resulted in the integration of the city’s public facilities, a march on the county courthouse, a bloody battle between police and protesters, confrontations with the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, a bus boycott, and the near-accidental-lynching of movie star Jack Palance. Relying heavily on new firsthand accounts and personal interviews, newspapers, previously classified documents, and archival research, Hollars’s in-depth reporting reveals the courage and conviction of a town, its university, and the people who call it home.

This powerful third edition offers fresh approaches that enable school leaders to engage in effective interactions with students, educators, and the communities they serve.

The first book by a respected journalist on Nearing Death Awareness—similar to Near-Death Experience—this “fascinating” (Kirkus Reviews) exploration brings “humor, sympathy, and keen critical intelligence to a topic that is all too often off-limits” (Ptolemy Tompkins, collaborator with Eben Alexander on Proof of Heaven). People everywhere carry with them extraordinary, deeply comforting experiences that arrived at the moment when they most needed relief: when they lost a loved one. These experiences can include clear messages from beyond, profound and vividly beautiful visions, mysterious connections and spiritual awareness, foreknowledge of a loved one’s passing—all of which evade explanation by science and logic. Most people keep these transcendent experiences secret for fear they will be discounted by hyperrational scrutiny. Yet these very common occurrences have the power to console, comfort, and even transform our understanding of life and death. Prompted by her family’s surprising, profound experiences around the death of her father and her sister, reporter Patricia Pearson sets out on an open-minded inquiry, a rare journalistic investigation of Nearing Death Awareness, which Anne Rice praises as “substantive, eloquent, and worthwhile.” Opening Heaven’s Door offers deeply affecting stories of messages from the dying and the dead in a fascinating work of investigative journalism, pointing to new scientific explanations that give these luminous moments the importance felt by those who experience them. Pearson also delves into out-of-body and near-death experiences, examining stories and research to make sense of these related but distinct categories. Challenging current assumptions about what we know and what we are still unable to explain, Opening Heaven’s Door will forever alter your perceptions of the nature of life and death.