This book illustrates how middle level English language arts teachers can draw upon young adult literature to facilitate students’ understanding of issues of oppression and allow them opportunities for social action. Each chapter centers on one novel that represents a contemporary topic including the refugee crisis, Indigenous rights, trauma, and bullying. In each, authors provide pre-, during-, and after reading strategies for teaching that connect the social issues in the texts to students’ lives and to the world around them. Research, writing, and digital literacies are emphasized throughout. Authors also include topics for teaching at the intersections of the focal topic with other areas of social justice. Finally, they provide a multitude of avenues for student action, emphasizing the need to move readers from understanding and awareness to asserting their own agency and capacities to effect change in their local, national, and global communities. Additional resources are also included as extensions, such as documentaries, young adult literature companions for study, connected music, and supplementary lesson plans.

This book shows educators why and how to put well-being in its rightful place beside learning at the very heart of schooling. A blend of practical activities and research-based approaches empowers Grade 7-12 teachers to cultivate positive wellness not just for themselves and their students, but for the entire school community. Classroom teachers will appreciate the over 100 ready-to-use cross-curricular wellness activities, spread across nine domains of well-being, in their Grades 7-12 classrooms Educational leaders can adopt the sharing strategies, including school-wide extensions, “lifeplay� and shareable activities, to spread wellness practices across schools, districts and into the community.

The 2nd edition of Gifted or Just Plain Smart? was revised to address the vast changes in the post COVID educational environment. It is designed to be a useful guide for all who work with gifted school-age children: parents, teachers, principals, and pre-service teachers in university settings. It covers gifted education from its origins and theories to the practical use of current technology at home or in the school. It also addresses strategies to recognize and develop overlooked gifted students such as those who are twice exceptional, those from diverse underserved populations, and those with a variety of gender issues, including students who identify with LGBTQ+ communities. It is an updated practical how-to manual with examples, anecdotes, real-life comments, and includes a guide to free resources.

Practicing equity in our schools can ensure all students master rigorous standards and graduate high school college and/or career ready. The author, a long-time public-school educator, helps her colleagues understand more deeply what the practice of equity involves and how to use it to create cultures and systems in our current schools that go beyond a rudimentary education for some students to ensuring even the most marginalized of students achieve at the highest levels. This book encourages teachers, principals, and district leaders to each maximize the practice of equity in their various positions so that together we ensure a bright future for our children and our country. Equity practices in nurturing school culture, reading instruction, content area literacies, effective instructional practices, student supports, social services, and distribution of resources is required to ensure equality in outcomes so that education truly becomes the great equalizer Horace Mann proclaimed it to be.

In Experiences from First Generation College Graduates, 31 alumni who were the first in their family to obtain a college degree share their experiences in college. These stories illuminate how the struggles of first-generation students are primarily due to a combination of multiple social inequities that are ignored, reinforced, and perpetuated by exclusive college systems. These authors speak directly to current and future first generation students, offering tips and advice for success, along with powerful words of encouragement in their emotionally rich narratives. College faculty and staff are challenged to shift their perspectives from viewing these students from a deficit lens or attempting to make them more like continuing-generation students, to instead having deeply honest confrontations with the pedagogies and structures of college, which are frequently so ingrained that they are invisible, and that cater to continuing-generation students, who are often predominantly white, middle- and upper-class. Colleges can create a more equitable system in which universities are enriched by the wisdom, experiences, and talents of first-generation students while promoting a generative culture for all students.

Title IX prohibits federally funded educational institutions-- from elementary to university level-- from discriminating against students or employees based on sex. Title IX applies to pregnant and parenting students. It prohibits discrimination against pregnant and parenting students and protects their right to an education equal to their peers. Although Title IX has improved opportunities for female students and is credited with decreasing the dropout rate of girls from high school, this same progress does not ring true for pregnant and parenting students. Fifty years after the passage of Title IX, the dropout rate for this student population is still 50%. This is in large part because educational barriers exist that push students out of school and schools are in direct violation of Title IX. What if those educational barriers exist at your school? What if your school is in direct violation of Title IX? Wouldn't you want to know? Helping Teen Moms Graduate will help make sure your school is in compliance and will help you to learn practical strategies for reducing the dropout rate for this student population.

This book provides background, strategies, and tips for higher education faculty and instructors interested in incorporating meditation in their classrooms. The work is based on research involving introducing brief meditation practices to college students and developing a detailed guide. Readers will learn how to develop their own meditation practice as an academic, to set the stage of introducing practice to students, to create ideal conditions for meditation in the classroom, specific, classroom-friendly meditation methods, ways to advance meditation practice with students and keep it interesting, and how to spread the culture of meditation across campus. A detailed script is provided.

This book provides background, strategies, and tips for higher education faculty and instructors interested in incorporating meditation in their classrooms. The work is based on research involving introducing brief meditation practices to college students and developing a detailed guide. Readers will learn how to develop their own meditation practice as an academic, to set the stage of introducing practice to students, to create ideal conditions for meditation in the classroom, specific, classroom-friendly meditation methods, ways to advance meditation practice with students and keep it interesting, and how to spread the culture of meditation across campus. A detailed script is provided.

Adolescent substance use is a serious-and potentially deadly-problem with many repercussions for the adolescent, the family, and society at large. It is also an issue that too few education professionals feel prepared to address even as they see it playing out in their schools and classrooms. Struggling with Substance Use: Supporting Students' Social Emotional Learning presents evidence on the magnitude of the problem and the many underlying factors and commonly co-occurring disorders associated with student substance use. It covers the risk factors for adolescent substance use (e.g., trauma, ADHD, peer pressure, and family dysfunction) and contrasts each with specific protective factors that education professionals need to consider when designing schoolwide programs and classroom initiatives. Each chapter concludes with an example of an evidence-based program that has made a difference for students and families. Armed with knowledge, understanding, and examples of proven programs, school professionals can incorporate the necessary protective factors to provide hope and help for struggling students and their families.