An unforgettable memoir in the tradition of The Glass Castle about a young girl, who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University.

Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her “head-for-the-hills” bag. In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged metal in her father’s junkyard.

Her father distrusted the medical establishment, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when an older brother became violent.

When another brother got himself into college and came back with news of the world beyond the mountain, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. She taught herself enough mathematics, grammar, and science to take the ACT and was admitted to Brigham Young University. There, she studied psychology, politics, philosophy, and history, learning for the first time about pivotal world events like the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty, and of the grief that comes from severing one’s closest ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one’s life through new eyes, and the will to change it.

Increasingly, guitar study is offered alongside band, orchestra, and chorus in school music programs. This development has drawn a new population of students into those programs but has left music educators scrambling to developing meaningful, sequential courses of study that both meet the needs of these new students and align with state, county, and national curricula. Few available guitar methods are designed with the classroom in mind, and fewer still take a holistic approach to teaching and learning the instrument. In short, teachers are left to navigate a vast array of method books that cover a variety of styles and approaches, often without the confidence and experience necessary to know 'what to teach when.' The Guitar Workbook: A Fresh Approach to Exploration and Mastery addresses the needs of these educators. Throughout the book's 20 lessons, students are encouraged to explore the ways various guitar styles and notation systems differ, as well as the ways they support and complement each other. Lessons cover myriad topics including pick-style playing, basic open position chords, finger-style technique, and power chords. Suggested 'Mastery Activities' at the end of each lesson support higher-order thinking, contextualize the skills and concepts studied, and provide a jumping off point for further exploration. Additionally, suggestions for further study point teachers and students to resources for extra practice.

Join local scholar Cyndy Bittinger on a journey through the forgotten tales of the roles that Native Americans, African Americans and women-often overlooked-played in Vermont's master narrative and history. Bittinger not only shows where these marginalized groups are missing from history, but also emphasizes the ways that they contributed and their unique experiences.

The Musical Playground is a new and fascinating account of the musical play of school-aged children. Based on fifteen years of ethnomusicological field research in urban and rural school playgrounds around the globe, Kathryn Marsh provides unique insights into children's musical playground activities across a comprehensive scope of social, cultural, and national contexts.
With a sophisticated synthesis of ethnomusicological and music education approaches, Marsh examines sung and chanted games, singing and dance routines associated with popular music and sports chants, and more improvised and spontaneous chants, taunts, and rhythmic movements. The book's index of more than 300 game genres is a valuable reference to readers in the field of children's folklore, providing a unique map of game distribution across an array of cultures and geographical locations. On the companion website, readers will be able to view on streamed video, field recordings of children's musical play throughout the wide range of locations and cultures that form the core of Marsh's study, allowing them to better understand the music, movement, and textual characteristics of musical games and interactions. Copious notated musical examples throughout the book and the website demonstrate characteristics of game genres, children's generative practices, and reflections of cultural influences on game practice, and valuable, practical recommendations are made for developing pedagogies which reflect more child-centred and less Eurocentric views of children's play, musical learning, and musical creativity.
Marsh brings readers to playgrounds in Australia, Norway, the USA, the United Kingdom, and Korea, offering them an important and innovative study of how children transmit, maintain, and transform the games of the playground. The Musical Playground will appeal to practitioners and researchers in music education, ethnomusicology, and folklore.

Making Education Work for the Poor identifies wealth inequality as the gravest threat to the endangered American Dream. Though studies have clearly illustrated that education is the primary path to upward mobility, today, educational outcomes are more directly determined by wealth than innate ability and exerted effort. This accounting directly contradicts Americans' understanding of the promise the American Dream is supposed to offer: a level playing field and a path towards a more profitable future. In this book, the authors share their own stories of their journeys through the unequal U.S. education system. One started from relative privilege and had her way to prosperity paved and her individual efforts augmented by institutional and structural support. The other grew up in poverty and had to fight against currents to complete higher education, only to find his ability to profit from that degree compromised by student debt. To directly counter wealth inequality and make education the 'great equalizer' that Americans believe it to be, this book calls for a revolution in financial aid policy, from debt dependence to asset empowerment. The book examines the evidence base supporting Children's Savings Accounts, including CSAs' demonstrated potential to improve children's outcomes all along the 'opportunity pipeline': early education, school achievement, college access and completion, and post-college financial health. It then outlines a policy that builds on CSAs to incorporate a sizable, progressive wealth transfer. This new policy, Opportunity Investment Accounts, is framed as the cornerstone of the wealth-building agenda the nation needs in order to salvage the American Dream. Written by leading CSA researchers, the book includes overviews of the major children's savings legislation proposed in Congress and the key features of prominent CSA programs in operation around the country today, as well as new qualitative and quantitative CSA research. The book ultimately presents a critical development of the theories that, together, explain how universal, progressive, asset-based education financing could make education work equitably for all American children.

From townships to rural areas to urban centers, South Africa’s educational system faces a complex web of varied social and economic realities. The authors of Parental and Caregiver Involvement in South African Education explore both the challenges and the triumphs involved in shaping educational journeys in these diverse contexts.

Powerful research narratives and practical case studies offer authentic insights, as well as actionable strategies, illustrating the essential role of family partnerships and caregivers in creating equitable learning opportunities.

Reading poetry is almost as much an art form as is writing poetry. You don't just skim the words of one and go on to the next. You read the words, maybe even speak them aloud, and listen to what they have to say. You focus on your own reaction, hear what the words have said to your heart, find that knowing place where Truth lives. You hold that poem for a while, live with it, taste it. Only when you have absorbed all you can for the moment do you set it down gently and rest. Claudia Stuart combines reflective poetry, powerful prose and whimsical penguin illustrations in her latest collection of textual and visual creations, Poetry, Prose & Penguins. Evocative as well as provocative, Poetry, Prose & Penguins features brilliant illustrations that portray the unique qualities of penguins, ever cooperative and communicative. Poetry, Prose & Penguins: Includes an opening section on free verse. Features a unique format that encourages the reader to slowly and carefully navigate the witty ideas which serve as ""food for thought."" Presents reflections on the author's personal life as well as pressing issues of the larger world around us - including human conditions in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and legal immigration.

For fans of Radium Girls and history and WWII buffs, The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line takes you inside the lives and experiences of 15 unknown women heroes from the Greatest Generation, the women who served, fought, struggled, and made things happen during WWII-in and out of uniform, for theirs is a legacy destined to embolden generations of women to come. The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line are the heroes of the Greatest Generation that you hardly ever hear about. These women who did extraordinary things didn't expect thanks and shied away from medals and recognition. Despite their amazing accomplishments, they've gone mostly unheralded and unrewarded. No longer. These are the women of World War II who served, fought, struggled, and made things happen-in and out of uniform. Young Hilda Eisen was captured twice by the Nazis and twice escaped, going on to fight with the Resistance in Poland. Determined to survive, she and her husband later emigrated to the U.S. where they became entrepreneurs and successful business leaders. Ola Mildred Rexroat was the only Native American woman pilot to serve with the Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) in World War II. She persisted against all odds-to earn her silver wings and fly, helping train other pilots and gunners. Ida and Louise Cook were British sisters and opera buffs who smuggled Jews out of Germany, often wearing their jewelry and furs, to help with their finances. They served as sponsors for refugees, and established temporary housing for immigrant families in London. Alice Marble was a grand-slam winning tennis star who found her own path to serve during the war-she was an editor with Wonder Woman comics, played tennis exhibitions for the troops, and undertook a dangerous undercover mission to expose Nazi theft. After the war she was instrumental in desegregating women's professional tennis. Others also stepped out of line-as cartographers, spies, combat nurses, and troop commanders. Retired U.S. Army Major General Mari K. Eder wrote this book because she knew their stories needed to be told-and the sooner the better. For theirs is a legacy destined to embolden generations of women to come.

Noted music education and arts activist Charles Fowler has inspired music educators for more than 60 years. In this reader, editor Craig Resta brings together the most important of Fowler's writings from the journal Musical America for new generations of readers. Here, Fowler speaks to timeless critical advocacy issues from creativity in the classroom, to funding, to reform, to gender and race in music education. The articles are both research-based and practical, and helpful for many of the most important concerns in school-based advocacy and scholarly inquiry today. Resta offers critical commentary with compelling background to these timeless pieces, placing them in a context that clarifies the benefit of their message to music and arts education. Fowler's words speak to all who have a stake in music education: students, teachers, parents, administrators, performers, community members, business leaders, arts advocates, scholars, professors, and researchers alike. Valuing Music in Education is ideal for everyone who understands the critical role of music in schools and society.

This ready-to-use resource contains 15 exciting-and true-stories for kids to read and then write or discuss their predictions about the story's ending. The stories are perfect for building essential reading skills such as making inferences, drawing conclusions, summarizing, and more. Each reproducible nonfiction story comes with a companion teacher page, which includes suggested discussion topics to activate students' prior knowledge, a vocabulary list, and more. Plus, the stories span the curriculum, providing students with valuable reading in the content areas. For use with Grades 48.

How is it that, half a century after Brown v. Board of Education, educational opportunities remain so unequal for black and white students, not to mention poor and wealthy ones?
In his important new book, Five Miles Away, A World Apart, James E. Ryan answers this question by tracing the fortunes of two schools in Richmond, Virginia--one in the city and the other in the suburbs. Ryan shows how court rulings in the 1970s, limiting the scope of desegregation, laid the groundwork for the sharp disparities between urban and suburban public schools that persist to this day. The Supreme Court, in accord with the wishes of the Nixon administration, allowed the suburbs to lock nonresidents out of their school systems. City schools, whose student bodies were becoming increasingly poor and black, simply received more funding, a measure that has proven largely ineffective, while the independence (and superiority) of suburban schools remained sacrosanct. Weaving together court opinions, social science research, and compelling interviews with students, teachers, and principals, Ryan explains why all the major education reforms since the 1970s--including school finance litigation, school choice, and the No Child Left Behind Act--have failed to bridge the gap between urban and suburban schools and have unintentionally entrenched segregation by race and class. As long as that segregation continues, Ryan forcefully argues, so too will educational inequality. Ryan closes by suggesting innovative ways to promote school integration, which would take advantage of unprecedented demographic shifts and an embrace of diversity among young adults.
Exhaustively researched and elegantly written by one of the nation's leading education law scholars, Five Miles Away, A World Apart ties together, like no other book, a half-century's worth of education law and politics into a coherent, if disturbing, whole. It will be of interest to anyone who has ever wondered why our schools are so unequal and whether there is anything to be done about it.

Visualization and mindful breathing for kids helps children recognize and manage their feelings. Young children have so many feelings. Without accessible emotional self-regulation strategies, children may communicate their big feelings with negative behaviors, bullying, or withdrawing. I Remember My Breath provides an introduction to visualization and mindful breathing for kids as an emotional self-regulation strategy. Mindful breathing focuses on breathing and how emotions feel in the body. I Remember My Breath guides young children to identify the emotion they're feeling and use visualization and breathing to calm themselves and manage their feelings. Teaching mindful breathing for kids as an emotional self-regulation strategy also helps children build emotional literacy and body awareness. With its imaginative, vivid imagery and rhythmic writing style that mimics the breath, I Remember My Breath is a book that children who are experiencing big emotions can turn--and return--to for support and comfort. A special section for adults provides additional information and activities to reinforce the book's message.

Make learning essential vocabulary words a favorite daily routine! Students will look forward to each day's new vocabulary cartoon, which identifies the word's part of speech, provides a simple definition, and uses the word in a sentence that is supported in context by the cartoon. The visual cues and humor of these cartoons work hand in hand to make new words fun to learn and easy to remember! For use with Grades 2-3.