Become a better advocate—for your students, for your coworkers, and for yourself—with the valuable strategies in this accessible guidebook. Written with a candid and humorous style, this tool kit reinforces why effective early childhood education matters and the positive impact an effective advocate can have on a child’s classroom experience. Chapters explore how to explain and support best practices, build relationships with students and families, speak up for English language learners and students with exceptionalities, reduce coworker conflict and negativity, and reach out for the help you need. Equipping readers with practical takeaways and everyday examples of what advocacy in early childhood education actually looks like, Advocacy for Early Childhood Educators is perfect for teachers, coaches, and anyone seeking effective strategies to become a relentless advocate for their students, for each other, and for themselves.

Rekindle your love for teaching with these attitude-adjusting tips and strategies for self-reflection. Among district demands, peer expectations, and a fierce schedule in a sometimes thankless industry, it's understandable how teachers can lose the love of teaching. It's time to take a breath and reflect. With "Crisscross Applesauce" you'll learn what you can do to progress as an effective teacher for the sake of both you and your students. It's set up in familiar, quick lesson plans perfect for the busy teacher. Each objective illustrates a relatable story followed by advice and examples that will help you examine your own experiences as an educator. Reflection questions at the end of each lesson help you answer the question, "How can I further develop my teaching style to rediscover the fun in teaching?"

A raw and rampaging debut novel from the author of the “inventive, unsparing, irreverent and consistently entertaining” (NYTBR) memoir Eat the Apple--the last phase of war for US veterans: returning home. What was it like? It's the only thing anyone wants to know about war--and the last thing Corporal Dean Pusey wants to talk about, at least not with one of these fat and happy civilians crowding the bar. Dean is two months free from the Marine Corps, and life back in his Indiana hometown is anything but peaceful. That's when the woman next to him offers to buy him a drink. Max is nice--gorgeous, funny, easy to talk to. Dean doesn't dare tell her about the sheep he took care of on his first deployment, only to watch it get torn to shreds by a pack of wild dogs; or the naked, shivering Iraqi teenager his platoon detained after an IED blast. He needs to leave all that behind and become a new person-the kind who sticks around when Max gets pregnant. He's white-knuckling it, trying to keep calm, and it's not easy. Harder still when his friend and comrade Ruiz starts showing up all over the place like he's been invited--like he didn't die a year ago. He has Max now, he has his baby daughter, River. He doesn't have time for ghosts. With his signature black humor, hard-eyed honesty, and stylistic ingenuity, Matt Young delivers a novel that turns the typical war story on its head--beginning not with enlistment but with retirement, and locating the life-or-death stakes not in battle, but in the domestic theaters of fatherhood, family, forgiveness, and love.

"Worst Vacation Ever—Five Stars, Would Recommend." — Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House White Lotus meets Kevin Wilson in this whip-smart social satire about a man who finds himself trapped on an island resort after the sun explodes, and suddenly must choose whether to save himself from the chaos, or help the fellow guests make it off the island alive... Vacation Checklist: Pack swim trunks. Apply sunscreen. Survive the apocalypse? Professional underachiever Dan Foster is finally taking a vacation. Sure, his life has been average at best, and yeah, he's never quite lived up to his potential. But after a few Miller Lites in paradise with his girlfriend, Mara, things are starting to look up. Then the sun explodes. With the island resort suddenly plunged into darkness (he really should've sprung for the travel insurance), Dan's holiday goes from bad to worse when elite guests stage a coup and commandeer supplies. As temperatures drop and class tensions rise, revolution begins to brew on the island, and Dan accidentally becomes a beacon of hope for the surviving vacationers. But when one six-person plane is discovered that could get them back to the mainland, Dan realizes he has a choice to make. Does he escape the island with Mara? Or does he stay and fight to become the most unlikely hero of the end of the world?

These are the confessions of the Bitch Posse. Cherry, Rennie, and Amy were outcasts, rebels, and dreamers. And their friendship was so all-encompassing that some would call it dangerous. This is the story of three women-as seniors in high school and as women in their mid-thirties---who formed a bond in order to survive the pitfalls and perils of their lives. In the present day, one of them is a wife and mother-to-be, trying to live a "normal" life. One of them is a writer who engages in a number of self-destructive relationships. And one of them is in a mental hospital---and has been ever since that one fateful night fifteen years ago, when a heart-wrenching betrayal and the unraveling of relationships led them to a point of no return, where their actions triggered unimaginable consequences. These secrets have torn them apart while inextricably binding them to one another. What happened to them? And can they survive their shared history, even today? The Bitch Posse is an anthem for friendships that defy society's approval or disapproval. It's a novel of secrets, courage, sacrifice, and hope against the odds. It is both a journey back to being a girl on the verge of adulthood, and a journey forward, showing how the events of our past can unearth the best in us today. Dare to jump in. "The Bitch Posse is a riveting and emotionally charged read. No fluff here." --Chicago Tribune

Their name? The objectors. Their job? To break off weddings as hired. Their dilemma? They might just be in love with each other. When Sophie Steinbeck finds out just before her nuptials that her fiancé has cheated yet again, she desperately wants to call it off. But because her future father-in-law is her dad’s cutthroat boss, she doesn’t want to be the one to do it. Her savior comes in the form of a professional objector, whose purpose is to show up at weddings and proclaim the words no couple (usually) wants to hear at their ceremony: “I object!” During anti-wedding festivities that night, Sophie learns more about Max the Objector’s job. It makes perfect sense to her: he saves people from wasting their lives, from hurting each other. He’s a modern-day hero. And Sophie wants in. The two love cynics start working together, going from wedding to wedding, and Sophie’s having more fun than she’s had in ages. She looks forward to every nerve-racking ceremony saving the lovesick souls of the betrothed masses. As Sophie and Max spend more time together, however, they realize that their physical chemistry is off the charts, leading them to dabble in a little hookup session or two—but it’s totally fine, because they definitely do not have feelings for each other. Love doesn’t exist, after all. And then everything changes. A groom-to-be hires Sophie to object, but his fiancée is the woman who broke Max’s heart. As Max wrestles with whether he can be a party to his ex’s getting hurt, Sophie grapples with the sudden realization that she may have fallen hard for her partner in crime.

Zeke Marcus, who has always fantasized about life as a runaway, is found living under a bridge. Danny Winters had been living a reclusive and truant life with his agoraphobic mother. Their travelogues after being taken from the only lives they knew bring you front and center to their fight as they’re forced into an adult world they weren’t ready for. The boys, upon meeting at their first foster home, begin manifesting their own individual symptoms of surviving their situation and the complexities and paradoxes of being bastard and estranged adolescent boys. Shock, defiance, spiraling humiliation, and an incurable insanity all begin for Zeke and Danny when they realize the indefinite futures that wait for them. As impressionable teens full of rage, separation, and distrust, they continue their path to self-destruction. There are some comparisons to Sapphire’s PUSH, while this book tells a similar story that, for some, will heighten awareness and expose adults and youths today to the plight so many less fortunate kids face. Their sometimes humorous and other times heart-wrenching lives are unraveled through a series of vignettes narrated by Zeke and Danny, as they merge throughout the novel to become one story.