Learn how to use denial to help you when you are facing tragedy and how to recognize and move past denial when it becomes counterproductive. Denial is often seen as an inability or unwillingness to face unpleasant or difficult realities--from financial losses, to illnesses like alcoholism, to larger social issues like climate change. In some instances, denial can be detrimental because it can keep you stuck in a cycle of destructive behaviors. However, denial can also be very useful for helping you get through hard times, allowing you to tap into your resiliency for emotional survival. With great insight and originality, author Holly Parker shows you how to use denial as a buffer in the face of tragedy and how to know when your use of denial has become counterproductive or detrimental. Through a fresh, comforting, and clinically-based perspective, Parker takes the shame out of denial with practical and relatable solutions to uncovering, reframing, and harnessing this very normal coping technique. Hands-on exercises and compelling personal stories help you apply this information to your situation and come to accept your need for denial when it helps, and break through it to face life’s challenges with courage when it hurts.

Gaby’s had it with “The Chelsea Show.” So she embarks on her own attention-seeking campaign, and claims the boy on a Survivor-type TV program for teens is her brother. At first this seems like the perfect getpopular- quick scheme. That is, until the boy wins the competition and is awarded the grand prize: a trip to Australia, leaving immediately, WITH HIS ENTIRE FAMILY!!! Forget popularity—unless Gaby figures out a way to convince her bunkmates that she’s on the next flight out to Australia, she’ll never be able to show her face at Lakeview again.

"An analysis of truth claims in contemporary U.S. political rhetoric through a series of case studies--including the PolitiFact fact-checking project, the Planned Parenthood "selling baby parts" scandal, the Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden cases, Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Cosmos, and the Black Lives Matter movement"--

Nearly every night on every major network, “unscripted” (but carefully crafted) “reality” TV shows routinely glorify retrograde stereotypes that most people would assume got left behind 35 years ago. In Reality Bites Back, media critic Jennifer L. Pozner aims a critical, analytical lens at a trend most people dismiss as harmless fluff. She deconstructs reality TV’s twisted fairytales to demonstrate that far from being simple “guilty pleasures,” these programs are actually guilty of fomenting gender-war ideology and significantly affecting the intellectual and political development of this generation’s young viewers. She lays out the cultural biases promoted by reality TV about gender, race, class, sexuality, and consumerism, and explores how those biases shape and reflect our cultural perceptions of who we are, what we’re valued for, and what we should view as “our place” in society. Smart and informative, Reality Bites Back arms readers with the tools they need to understand and challenge the stereotypes reality TV reinforces and, ultimately, to demand accountability from the corporations responsible for this contemporary cultural attack on three decades of feminist progress.

"Three small groups of people trying to stay sane and survive in a world controlled by chaos"--Cover, p. [4].

Transform teaching and learning with AR and VR in your classroom. We're at the dawn of an incredible transformation in education. Augmented reality and virtual reality--technologies that were once the province of science fiction and fantasy--are faster, better, and more affordable than ever. These tools have the potential to not only inspire students but to redefine how we teach and collaborate. But widespread adoption of AR and VR in K-12 classrooms requires taking risks, investing money and time, and training educators. Reality Bytes makes the case for taking this leap by showing how educators are using these amazing technologies, and it provides a powerful framework to help anyone, in any school, join them. The innovative educators profiled are already designing learning experiences using AR and VR that supercharge student motivation, encourage creativity, and make otherwise impossible educational adventures accessible to all. You can do the same, using easy-to-implement resources that will revolutionize how you approach instruction. Equip your students with the skills they'll need in the future--today. Reality Bytes opens the doors to tools for meeting every student no matter where they are. This book outlines the power that AR and VR have in building empathy and growing critical worldviews and perspectives. Christine, Jesse, and Micah cast an exciting vision for the future of education! --Ken Shelton, educational strategist, equity and inclusion consultant Creating engaging lessons that successfully integrate technology can be challenging. Reality Bytes is here to help with tons of images, classroom stories, and ideas that will help you create student-centered lessons that allow your students to experience content in a whole new way. No matter the grade level, there is something for everyone in this wonderfully immersive book. --Alice Keeler, teacher, edtech expert, Google Certified Innovator While you won't see Winona Ryder's name on the cover of this book, you will find some star power in it--the power to create star learners in our classrooms using cutting-edge tools! Reality Bytes will you give you the tools, the pedagogy, and a practical framework to bring the new reality of learning into your classroom. --Kasey Bell, author of Shake Up Learning: Practical Ideas to Move Learning from Static to Dynamic

A new strain of realism has emerged in France. The novels that embody it represent diverse fears—immigration and demographic change, radical Islam, feminism, new technologies, globalization, American capitalism, and the European Union—but these books, often best-sellers, share crucial affinities. In their dystopian visions, the collapse of France, Europe, and Western civilization is portrayed as all but certain and the literary mode of realism begins to break down. Above all, they depict a degenerative force whose effects on the nation and on reality itself can be felt. Examining key novels by Michel Houellebecq, Frédéric Beigbeder, Aurélien Bellanger, Yann Moix, and other French writers, Christy Wampole identifies and critiques this emergent tendency toward “degenerative realism.” She considers the ways these writers draw on social science, the New Journalism of the 1960s, political pamphlets, reportage, and social media to construct an atmosphere of disintegration and decline. Wampole maps how degenerative realist novels explore a world contaminated by conspiracy theories, mysticism, and misinformation, responding to the internet age’s confusion between fact and fiction with a lament for the loss of the real and an unrelenting emphasis on the role of the media in crafting reality. In a time of widespread populist anxieties over the perceived decline of the French nation, this book diagnoses the literary symptoms of today’s reactionary revival.