This provocative and accessible text is addressed to prospective and practicing teachers who believe schools must be fundamentally reformed to meet student needs in an information age. Drawing on interviews with frontline educators, the authors integrate descriptive accounts of learning and teaching in schools today with emerging multicultural curricula, information technologies, organizational structures that support innovations, and democratic dialogue. Jones and Maloy offer analytic perspectives for rethinking the social, historical, and philosophical foundations of education along with strategies for teacher renewal and organizational change.

Adopting a constructivist-developmental approach to learning, the authors identify endemic dilemmas that increasingly handicap industrial-era schools. A stagnant economy heightens tensions due to class, race, and gender inequities. Hierarchically structured corporations and representative politics perpetuate business domination. Computers offer possibilities for more open communication, flexible organizations, and democratic discourse. Alternative visions of the future that engage students can renew cooperation, collaboration, and community in schools and society.

There are so many ideas in this book that choosing a few to highlight here is as difficult as tasting only three items from a smorgasborg after a fast. . . . [Jones and Maloy's] comments will prompt knowing nods of the head from most who have experience with partnerships, and they provide starting points for novices' serious consideration. For example, the book raises critical questions about different approaches to partnerships. Should partnerships be primarily grass-roots efforts with little top-down control? If so, what issues are off limits to governance bodies? If partnerships can bring about improvements suggested, should they become a way of life for university-school relations? If so, how can long-term partnerships maintain the insider-outsider perspectives Jones and Maloy argue for so persuasively? . . . Partnerships for Improving Schools addresses these and many other questions. Most importantly, perhaps, it forcefull and directly reminds us that equity is the central criterion agains which to measure educational progress. Teachers College Record In this volume Jones and Maloy present a comprehensive framework for viewing, understanding, and participating in school improvement partnerships. Based on their fifteen years of experiences with various collaborative projects, the authors demonstrate ways to sustain agreements over time through mutually beneficial activities between teachers and members of outside organizations. Interactive partnerships generate formal and informal learning for participants that lead to evolving understandings about personal behaviors and organizational climates, and the new purposes yield strategies and structures for educational reform.

Throughout the country, a growing number of college students, recent college graduates, and mid-career adults are thinking about becoming teachers. Teaching in middle and high schools combines a lifelong pursuit of learning, a long-held dream of joining a field that they respect, a chance to work with young people, and an opportunity to make a difference in society.

"The Essential Career Guide to Becoming a Middle and High School Teacher" offers a step-by-step guide to preparation, certification, and employment as a teacher. It provides guidance about issues and choices facing prospective educators, including making the decision to teach, assessing the differences between middle schools and high schools, identifying an excellent teacher education program, understanding alternative pathways to certification, taking state-mandated teacher tests, succeeding as a student teacher, and finding a first job in the profession. A complete state-by-state listing of programs, including current "U.S. News & World Report" Top Fifty rankings and certification requirements rounds out this valuable guide.

You can open up a world of imagination and learning for children when you encourage the expression of ideas through writing. Kids Have All the Write Stuff: Revised and Updated for a Digital Age shows you how to support children's development as confident writers and communicators, offering hundreds of creative ways to integrate writing into the lives of toddlers, preschoolers, and elementary school students -- whether at home or at school. >You'll discover: * how to implement writing as a part of daily life with family and friends;* processes and invitations fit for young writers;* strategies for connecting writing to math and coding;* writing materials and technologies; and* creative and practical writing ideas, from fiction, nonfiction, and videos to blogs and emails. In order to connect writing to today's digital revolution, veteran educators Sharon A. Edwards, Robert W. Maloy, and Torrey Trust reveal how digital tools can inspire children to write, and a helpful companion Website brings together a range of resources and technologies. This essential book offers enjoyment and inspiration to young writers!

This provocative and accessible text is addressed to prospective and practicing teachers who believe schools must be fundamentally reformed to meet student needs in an information age. Drawing on interviews with frontline educators, the authors integrate descriptive accounts of learning and teaching in schools today with emerging multicultural curricula, information technologies, organizational structures that support innovations, and democratic dialogue. Jones and Maloy offer analytic perspectives for rethinking the social, historical, and philosophical foundations of education along with strategies for teacher renewal and organizational change.

Adopting a constructivist-developmental approach to learning, the authors identify endemic dilemmas that increasingly handicap industrial-era schools. A stagnant economy heightens tensions due to class, race, and gender inequities. Hierarchically structured corporations and representative politics perpetuate business domination. Computers offer possibilities for more open communication, flexible organizations, and democratic discourse. Alternative visions of the future that engage students can renew cooperation, collaboration, and community in schools and society.