A personal development & growth book about choice, direction, and principles that lead to the life you've always wanted to live.

The Self-Directed Learning Handbook offers teachers and principals an innovative program for customizing schooling to the learning needs of individual students-- and for motivating them to take increasing responsibility for deciding what and how they should learn. Whether the students are struggling or proficient, the program is designed to nurture their natural passion for learning and mastery, challenging them to go beyond the easy and familiar so they can truly excel. The program can be introduced in stages in any middle or high school classroom and enables students of diverse abilities to design and pursue independent course work, special projects, or even artistic presentations, community field work or apprenticeships. Using this approach, the students take on an increasingly autonomous, self-directed role as they progress. The heart of the program is the action contract (or learning agreement) whereby the student sets challenging yet attainable goals, commits to a path for achieving them, and evaluates the results. Special emphasis is placed on developing skills and competencies that can serve the student well in his or her academic and career endeavors.

This volume focuses on assessing students' abilities as self-directed learners. The authors use 'triangulation' to ensure that the assessment system is balanced and complete.

"This book fills the gap between theory-laden academic books designed to help academic faculty incorporate self-directed learning activities into their courses and the self-help books designed to help motivate individuals to learn new skills"--

No one is immune to the byproducts of compulsory schooling and standardized testing. And while reform may be a worthy cause for some, it is not enough for countless others still trying to navigate the tyranny of what schooling has always been. Raising Free People argues that we need to build and work within systems truly designed for any human to learn, grow, socialize, and thrive, regardless of age, ability, background, or access to money. Families and conscious organizations across the world are healing generations of school wounds by pivoting into self-directed, intentional community-building, and Raising Free People shows you exactly how unschooling can help facilitate this process. Individual experiences influence our approach to parenting and education, so we need more than the rules, tools, and “bad adult” guilt trips found in so many parenting and education books. We need to reach behind our behaviors to seek and find our triggers; to examine and interrupt the ways that social issues such as colonization still wreak havoc on our ability to trust ourselves, let alone children. Raising Free People explores examples of the transition from school or homeschooling to unschooling, how single parents and people facing financial challenges unschool successfully, and the ways unschooling allows us to address generational trauma and unlearn the habits we mindlessly pass on to children. In these detailed and unabashed stories and insights, Richards examines the ways that her relationships to blackness, decolonization, and healing work all combine to form relationships and enable community-healing strategies rooted in an unschooling practice. This is how millions of families center human connection, practice clear and honest communication, and raise children who do not grow up to feel that they narrowly survived their childhoods.

Gold Medal Winner, General Business, 2012 Axiom Business Book Awards Understanding the post-crisis consumer In Spend Shift, John Gerzema, world-renowned expert on consumer values, and Pulitzer prizewinning author Michael D'Antonio document the rise of a vibrant, values-driven post-recession economy. To tell the story of this movement, the authors travel to large cities and small towns across eight bellwether states, to examine the value shifts sweeping the nation. Through in-depth observation, proprietary data from Young & Rubicam, and interviews with experts, the authors analyze the changing consumer psyche, document the five shifting values and consumer behaviors that are remaking America and the world, and explain what it means to businesses and leaders. Explores a movement in society where the majority of American consumers are embracing both value and values Shows how post-crisis consumer expectations and behaviors will drive business decisions Draws on interviews with CEOs and entrepreneurs to reveal how companies like Ford and Etsy are reconnecting with the post-crisis consumer Compelling and insightful, Spend Shift is essential reading for anyone interested in how values are changing and how businesses can connect with consumers after the recession.

"It's not that you're lazy, and its not that you lack motivation. No-you have plenty of motivation, but it always seems to fade away just when you need it. The problem is not that you don't have motivation, it's that that motivation doesn't stick around long enough. So what kind of book is this? It's the kind that takes knowledge and inspiration from motivation specialists and distills it into something easy to understand. Thirteen execises and seventeen techniques illustrate points to help you take the steps to keep, bring back, or find the motivation you need to make the shift into who you want to be."--Publisher's description.