Tiphani is the oldest of four and she has not had the best life growing up. Her father in in prison, her step-father died in a tragic accident and her family is dirt poor. For the past four years Tiphani has kept her head down and worked hard to make a future for herself. She knows that college is her only way out and she will do whatever it takes to get there. A boyfriend was not part of the plan though. Could this guy really be interested in a girl like Tiphani or is this just another trick so the popular kids have more to laugh about?

This book can help foster parents and caseworkers get into the shoes of birthparents. Foster parents may use it as a self-help guide. Case workers will find it helps attune them to the tasks both foster parents and birthparents face. Agencies will find it especially effective for use in the separate and joint training of caseworkers and foster parents and for use by teachers and students in learning about birthfamilies.

"I am not moving to Iraq to teach." How does a liberal American girl in red suede boots end up teaching English to conservative Muslim Iraqis in headscarves? Gretchen Berg has met the recession: she has eaten cereal for dinner, given up the gym membership, and come face to face with looming unemployment. To cope, she decided to uproot her life and move to the Middle East. She expected to make some good money, pay off some bad debt, and take some photos of camels. She did not expect to feel at home. She did not expect to fall for a student. She did not expect Diet Coke withdrawal. Irreverent, hilarious, and completely relevant, I Have Iraq in My Shoe takes a single, broke, fashion-conscious American female who prefers Project Runaway to CNN and tosses her into Iraq in exchange for cash and vacation time. Watch the desert sand fly!

It's a story about balancing competition with compassion, about focusing on individual goals without losing sight of life's bigger picture, and realizing the great influences that can be made by people who would rarely be considered great. A modern twist on the classic underdog, it's high school track meets Rocky...or Rudy. Rae had lived a tumultuous young life. Having lost both parents by the age of eleven, she was sent to live with her Uncle Joe. Joe was both polarizing and unfiltered, but under his guidance, Rae found solid footing, not just in life, but also on the track, where she had become a captain and a standout miler for the Morris High School track team. As Morris' head track coach, Joe was as unconventional as he was successful. Not only had he won dozens of team titles, at some point throughout his career, he'd coached a state champion in every event...except the mile. Rae was determined to win it for him, during this, her senior season. Rae's single-minded approach was thrown for a loop when Izzy showed up at Morris. As a student with autism, joining the track team could be Izzy's path to inclusion. Rae wanted to take the new girl under her wing, but Joe was against it, knowing the distraction would affect Rae's training and her pursuit of her own personal glory. What transpired was a season full of laughter and tears, triumph and heartbreak, reminding us all that in life's great race, the winner isn't always determined by a stopwatch.

Casey Ready combines the personal and the political to ask: What is neoliberalism? How does it harm women? And what can be done about it? Her book looks at how three YWCA women’s shelters in Ontario were affected by the neoliberal policies of Mike Harris’s Progressive Conservative government and the subsequent “new-neoliberal” policies of Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government. In particular, it focuses on how the Liberal government built upon its predecessors’ neoliberal policies to try to control the shelters’ organizational structures and services, and even to neutralize the language used to describe violence against women. Drawing on interviews with forty-one shelter staff, clients, volunteers, and activists, Shelter in a Storm exposes the dangers for women that are embedded in neoliberal policies and reveals the value of revitalizing feminism to counteract this powerful ideology.

Amid the ongoing national conversation regarding campus sexual assault, this book thoughtfully explores existing programmatic interventions while wrestling with fundamental questions regarding the cultural shifts in our nation’s higher education institutions. Stressing the critical importance of student inclusion in policy decisions and procedures, scholars and experts provide complex and nuanced analyses of institutional practices, while exploring themes of race, sexuality, and sexual freedom. This volume addresses many of the unanswered questions in the present dialogue on campus sexual violence, including: What’s working and not working? How can outcomes be assessed or measured? What resources are needed to ensure success? This volume provides a truly fresh contribution for higher education and student affairs practitioners seeking to alter, design, or implement effective sexual assault prevention resources at their universities and colleges.