In 2011, Jana Mathews's career took a surprising turn. What began as an effort for a newly minted college professor to get to know her students turned into an invitation to be initiated into a National Panhellenic Conference sorority and serve as its faculty advisor. For the next seven years, Mathews attended sorority and fraternity chapter meetings, Greek Week competitions, leadership retreats, and mixers and formals. She also counseled young men and women through mental health crises, experiences of sexual violence, and drug and alcohol abuse. Combining her personal observations with ethnographic field analysis and research culled from the fields of sociology, economics, and cognitive psychology, this thought-provoking book examines how white Greek letter organizations help reshape the conceptual boundaries of society's most foundational relationship categories-including friend, romantic partner, and family. Mathews illuminates how organizations manipulate campus sex ratios to foster hookup culture, broker romantic relationships, transfer intimacy to straight same-sex friends, and create fictive family units that hoard social and economic opportunity for their members. In their idealized form, sororities and fraternities function as familial surrogates that tether their members together in economically and socially productive ways. In their most warped manifestations, however, these fictive familial bonds reinforce insularity, entrench privilege, and-at times-threaten physical safety.

In 2011, Jana Mathews's career took a surprising turn. What began as an effort for a newly minted college professor to get to know her students turned into an invitation to be initiated into a National Panhellenic Conference sorority and serve as its faculty advisor. For the next seven years, Mathews attended sorority and fraternity chapter meetings, Greek Week competitions, leadership retreats, and mixers and formals. She also counseled young men and women through mental health crises, experiences of sexual violence, and drug and alcohol abuse. Combining her personal observations with ethnographic field analysis and research culled from the fields of sociology, economics, and cognitive psychology, this thought-provoking book examines how white Greek letter organizations help reshape the conceptual boundaries of society's most foundational relationship categories-including friend, romantic partner, and family. Mathews illuminates how organizations manipulate campus sex ratios to foster hookup culture, broker romantic relationships, transfer intimacy to straight same-sex friends, and create fictive family units that hoard social and economic opportunity for their members. In their idealized form, sororities and fraternities function as familial surrogates that tether their members together in economically and socially productive ways. In their most warped manifestations, however, these fictive familial bonds reinforce insularity, entrench privilege, and-at times-threaten physical safety.

The purpose of this book is to provide readers with an overview of basic group dynamics and techniques that are effective in Higher Education and Student Affairs settings. Student affairs professionals frequently engage in group work and team projects that require them to engage undergraduate students in ways that are unlike the classroom or less formal social setting. To help these individuals navigate their new roles, this book will provide an overview of basic group dynamics and leadership skills that facilitate productive group functioning. The book will be both a textbook that provides content regarding group dynamics, group theory, and group leadership, and a workbook/guidebook that provides information and scenarios that encourage readers to consider how the basic group principals can be applied in various areas within student affairs.

White teachers in multiracial schools are looking for ways to understand how to make a difference with their students of color in their classrooms. This book will help teachers make that difference.

Connect and Involve: How to Connect with Students and Involve Them in Learning is a practical handbook of strategies and procedures for teaching at all grade levels-elementary, middle, and high school. The secret to increasing teaching effectiveness is to make small changes in what teachers think and do-and to get their students to make small changes in what they think and do. Every time teachers connect with students and involve them in learning, teachers engage them in powerful ways that make it more likely that they will choose to learn and to do quality work. This book shows how to be a more effective teacher through small changes in planning and classroom procedures. Each chapter focuses on a key strategy, and each chapter head and its subheads are an outline of how to put the strategy into practice. Teachers can preview all the ideas by reading the chapter titles, heads, and subheads. There are no prescriptions here; teachers bring their expertise on the age group, the subjects they teach, and the big ideas and key skills students need to achieve on high-stakes testing. The strategies and procedures provide ways for teachers to evaluate where small changes can make a difference in achievement for their students.

Using assessment systems to improve student outcomes requires shared understanding and collaboration among education stakeholders at multiple levels. Assessment Education: Bridging Research, Theory, and Practice to Promote Equity and Student Learning presents a powerful call to action for an assessment system that advances equity and offers educators practical applications that promote sound instructional decision making. Each section outlines a research-based approach that supports classroom teaching and student learning. We then draw on the expertise of various education leaders (most notably members of the National Taskforce on Assessment Education) to provide case studies of on-the-ground examples of what these strategies look like in different settings. Every chapter includes stories from the field from various perspectives-teachers, principals, district administrators, and other educational leaders. We conclude with reflection questions that provide an opportunity for readers to examine how the chapter connects to their own context.

Ensuring Learning: Supporting Faculty to Improve Student Success is the second book in a two-book series. This book highlights the importance of teaching and learning in student success reform and is a deep dive into the fourth pillar, ensuring learning, of Guided Pathways which is a national movement focused on increasing the number of college students who earn a degree or credential. It emphasizes how institutional strategies such as investing in faculty development through Centers for Teaching and Learning and revising reward structures can significantly improve student achievement and completion rates. This book calls for colleges to prioritize teaching and learning and provides college leaders with guidance on how to do so. For example, strategies to develop and enhance Centers for Teaching and Learning and increase professional development programming that provides ongoing, substantial support to faculty are shared. Readers will benefit from numerous practical suggestions on how to help faculty improve teaching and learning practices and ultimately improve student success outcomes.

If we want our students to be prepared for a life involved with artificial intelligence, global awareness, cultural understanding, racial, religious and lifestyle diversity, and changing economic and political realities, then we have to change what we are doing in our schools from pre-school to graduate school. We can no longer wait for large-scale reforms to develop, because those reforms will only occur due to some kind of tragedy. If schools are going to reform proactively, educators in each school and in each district have to lead the way.

This book feasibly translates validated research and best practices in assessment so that the reader can incorporate the best practices of assessment into practical routines in schools and the classroom. Readers of this book will strengthen their knowledge and skills in selecting, designing, and using assessments that enable all learners to actively participate and monitor their own progress towards learning objectives. This book is intended to be a hands-on guide for educators and students on the best and most effective practices for supporting students in their role as self-assessors. It develops sequentially from ensuring that students are assessment ready, to engaging students in assessment, and ultimately empowering students as assessors. Readers can also rely on the book to help them improve specific aspects of self-assessment that are most important in their setting and for their students.