It is imperative that teachers build community in their classrooms and across their academic teams and grades in order to make school a safe and supportive place for adolescents. Teachers must help their students acknowledge that they belong to a group together, that they are part of a “we” or “us,” and that any differences—divergent talents, backgrounds, experiences, cultures, and skills—only make “us” stronger and better. No More “Us” and “Them” delineates what steps educators can take to create an atmosphere where adolescent students feel accepted, included, and valuable to themselves and to their peers. The goal of this book is to change adolescent attitudes to lead to not just acceptance and tolerance, but toward an expansion of “us” and respect for their classmates that will serve to spread an even wider net of respect. This book provides ideas for lessons and activities that can be integrated into existing curricula and that meet a variety of content area standards in language arts, social studies, science, mathematics, foreign languages, physical education, art, and music, while also proposing ideas for advisory or homeroom periods and class, team, and grade gatherings to build respect in our classrooms, our schools, and our communities.

No More "Us" and "Them" delineates what steps educators can take to create an atmosphere where adolescent students feel accepted, included, and valuable to themselves and to their peers. This book provides ideas for lessons and activities that can be integrated into existing c...

For a life to come together, sometimes it first has to fall completely apart. Isabel is a regular seventeen-year-old girl, still reeling from the pain of her boyfriend's tragic death exactly one year ago. Carlos is a regular seventeen-year-old guy, loves red licorice and his friends, and works at a fancy art museum for some extra cash. The two have no connection until they both meet Vanessa, an intriguing new transfer student with a mysterious past. While Vanessa is the link that brings these two very different lives together, will she be the one that can also tear them apart? In his stunningly beautiful second novel, David Hernandez gives his readers a poetic and profound story that tells of two completely different teenagers and how through everyday life and monumental tragedy lies endless possibility.

This book provides a theoretical framework for understanding polarised politics. Contrary to the common understanding that polarisation is associated with populism and illiberal democracies, this book demonstrates that polarisation is by no means the result of one anti-democratic side of the conflict. By proposing this analytical inquiry, this book advances a new theoretical framework to characterise politics as either polarised or not. This framework is a unique approach that integrates people’s agency and socio-historical constraints to explain polarisation in depth. Drawing on Foucault’s concept of discourse, subject, and governmentality, and Laclau’s concept of logics and hegemony, this framework focuses on how to distinguish polarised politics from another form of politics. As a technology of power, polarisation can be performed by a variety of actors and is governed by a broad, conscious end, that is organising society by reducing the possibilities of alternative ways of thinking, speaking and doing politics to two options. This study takes a deep dive into the political polarisation in Venezuela, a country with almost two decades of conflict between Chavismo and the Opposition disputing the meaning of democracy, and with the most critical crisis in the Americas as a result of polarisation. With close attention paid to the logics or rationalities of power to explain what lies behind definitions of democracy. This analysis allows us to observe the rationalities and dynamics beyond what is said, in particular, the book explores hegemonic logics (myths, fantasies of threats and promises) used by both political groups to create a political identity.

Now a National Bestseller! From coronavirus lockdowns to critical race theory in the classroom, it has become crystal clear that America’s schools aren’t working for America’s students and parents. No one knows this better than Betsy DeVos. Long before she was tapped by President Trump to serve as secretary of education, DeVos established herself as one of the country’s most influential advocates for education reform, from school choice and charter schools to protecting free speech on campus. She’s unflinching in standing up to the powerful interests who control and benefit from the status quo in education – which is why the unions, the media, and the radical left made her public enemy number one. Now, DeVos is ready to tell her side of the story after years of being vilified by the radical left for championing common-sense, conservative reforms in America’s schools. In Hostages No More, DeVos unleashes her candid thoughts about working in the Trump administration, recounts her battles over the decades to put students first, hits back at “woke” curricula in our schools, and details the reforms America must pursue to fix its long and badly broken education system. And she has stories to tell: DeVos offers blunt insights on the people and politics that stand in the way of fixing our schools. For students, families and concerned citizens, DeVos shares a roadmap for reclaiming education and securing the futures of our kids – and America.

This groundbreaking and eloquently written book explains how and why people are wedded to the notion that they belong to differing human kinds--tribe-type categories like races, ethnic groups, nations, religions, casts, street gangs, sports fandom, and high school cliques.

Moving beyond mere tolerance Us-versus-them is the costly mind-set in which organizations, communities, and whole nations too often find themselves trapped. In fact, recognizing difference as a positive force can bring astonishing value to even the most diverse organizations. In Us Plus Them, leadership scholar Todd Pittinsky introduces a groundbreaking new science of diversity that: • Debunks the assumption that wherever there is difference there will be inherent tension and animosity • Challenges the effectiveness of our standard attempts to fight prejudice and combat hate in our schools and workplaces, our civic and religious lives • Reveals how we benefit from the mixing of different ethnic, racial, national, social, and religious groups in a globalized world Through a wide range of examples—from Maine and Michigan to Rwanda and Bhutan, and from small-town classrooms to corporate boardrooms—Pittinsky opens our eyes to misunderstood yet useful aspects of us-and-them relations, including many of the neglected positive dimensions of difference. He provides a bold new assessment of the popular and scientific approaches to the issue, proving that it’s time to move beyond mere tolerance to build communities in which the two sides of the us-and-them equation engage each other because they both want to. Much as Martin Seligman and positive psychology have shifted the focus from mental illness to mental healthiness, this book shifts our mind-set to diversity as a positive force. Understanding the science and practical use of that energy will help us build the schools, neighborhoods, companies, and nations we want, and not simply avoid the ugliest problems of the past. Pittinsky shows us that our great diversity experiment hasn’t failed—it hasn’t even begun.