A perfect picture book to share with children starting school or those riding the school bus for the first time. It's the first day of school for Tess, and it's also her very first ride on a school bus. Waiting at the bus stop with her older friend Gus, Tess eagerly asks, "Is this the bus for us, Gus?" as each vehicle passes by. Award-winning author and illustrator Suzanne Bloom introduces young readers to a diverse cast of characters and a variety of vehicles in this charming book that makes a great gift for any child about to start school.

Although assistant principals are key influences in our nation's schools and represent the next generation of school principals, little has been done to address professional development for these administrators. At the local level, assistants often spend their time handling student activities and discipline with little opportunity to exercise more sophisticated leadership. At the state and national levels, the position has not received much attention. Positioning the partnership between principals and assistant principals as a coaching-based relationship serving the best interests of both students and schools, Powerful Partnerships presents specific tools to help principal/assistant principal teams define and strengthen their significant collaboration and to nurture the development of future school leaders. Through discussion questions and shared activities, this resource provides opportunities for principals and assistant principals to develop a shared vision for their relationship and school, and to design a plan for communication and professional growth. The author examines aspects of instructional leadership including supervising and supporting teachers, classroom walkthroughs, professional learning communities, and using data for school improvement. Principals and assistant principals are invited to study this book together, addressing critical topics such as: - leadership as stewardship - unique leadership challenges involved in working with people - key instructional leadership responsibilities that are shared by both administrators

In this picture book perfect for social emotional learning, a group of young animals shows readers that even though others might look, talk, or walk differently, we can like each other just as we are. With a subtle message of tolerance and acceptance, this irresistibly sweet book features animal friends who like each other despite--and because of--their differences. An elephant and a cat might look different from each other, a lemur and a stork might enjoy different activities, and a lion and a mouse might have different hairstyles, but all the animals value and appreciate one another, as shown by exuberant scenes of playing together. The short, simple text will hold the attention of young children and the artwork includes clever and funny details for them to look for as they listen. I Just Like You also models the ways young children make friends, with simple conversation starters of sharing opinions and trading compliments.

This book presents findings from the Reading First Impact Study, a congressionally mandated evaluation of the federal government's $1.0 billion-per-year initiative to help all children read at or above grade level by the end of third grade. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (P.L. 107-110) established Reading First (Title I, Part B, Subpart 1) and mandated its evaluation. This evaluation is being conducted by Abt Associates and MDRC with RMC Research, Rosenblum-Brigham Associates, Westat, Computer Technology Services, DataStar, Field Marketing Incorporated, and Westover Consulting under the oversight of the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences (IES). The present book is the first of two; it examines the impact of Reading First funding in 2004-05 and 2005-06 in 17 school districts across 12 states and one state-wide program (18 sites). The book examines program impacts on students' reading comprehension and teachers' use of scientifically based reading instruction.

Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year This simple and endearing story about friends learning to understand each other's differences is filled with author/illustrator Suzanne Bloom's gentle humor and trademark pastel illustrations. Sometimes Bear likes quiet time by himself. But his friend Fox has a very different idea of what "quiet" means. Can Bear's quiet aloneness and Fox's noisy togetherness ever result in a satisfying compromise? "This title offers a winning combination of earnestness and flippancy, sweetness, and saltiness. Readers will gain insight into the rewards of contemplation and quiet. The book will inspire rich discussions about what it means to be alone and together and what the experience of "alone togetherness" might mean for friends." -School Library Journal

Gamma-ray bursts are the brightest--and, until recently, among the least understood--cosmic events in the universe. Discovered by chance during the cold war, these evanescent high-energy explosions confounded astronomers for decades. But a rapid series of startling breakthroughs beginning in 1997 revealed that the majority of gamma-ray bursts are caused by the explosions of young and massive stars in the vast star-forming cauldrons of distant galaxies. New findings also point to very different origins for some events, serving to complicate but enrich our understanding of the exotic and violent universe. "What Are Gamma-Ray Bursts?" is a succinct introduction to this fast-growing subject, written by an astrophysicist who is at the forefront of today's research into these incredible cosmic phenomena.

Joshua Bloom gives readers a concise and accessible overview of gamma-ray bursts and the theoretical framework that physicists have developed to make sense of complex observations across the electromagnetic spectrum. He traces the history of remarkable discoveries that led to our current understanding of gamma-ray bursts, and reveals the decisive role these phenomena could play in the grand pursuits of twenty-first century astrophysics, from studying gravity waves and unveiling the growth of stars and galaxies after the big bang to surmising the ultimate fate of the universe itself.

"What Are Gamma-Ray Bursts?" is an essential primer to this exciting frontier of scientific inquiry, and a must-read for anyone seeking to keep pace with cutting-edge developments in physics today.

Bear wishes he could fly. He wants to swoop and glide and feel the wind in his fur. Yet no matter how hard he flaps his arms, he can't get off the ground. Goose and Fox offer support, but Bear remains earthbound--until he hears music. Suddenly, Bear is gliding and swooping and light on his feet. In Suzanne Bloom's lovable story, the seventh in the popular Goose and Bear series, Bear discovers that not getting what you want isn't always a bad thing. In fact, it may lead to something surprising.

The various possibilities for the origin ("progenitors") of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) manifest in differing observable properties. Through deep spectroscopic and high-resolution imaging observations of some GRB hosts, I demonstrate that well-localized long-duration GRBs are connected with otherwise normal star-forming galaxies at moderate redshifts of order unity. Using high-mass binary stellar population synthesis models, I quantify the expected spatial extent around galaxies of coalescing neutron stars, one of the leading contenders for GRB progenitors. I then test this scenario by examining the offset distribution of GRBs about their apparent hosts making extensive use of ground-based optical data from Keck and Palomar and space-based imaging from the Hubble Space Telescope. The offset distribution appears to be inconsistent with the coalescing neutron star binary hypothesis (and, similarly, black-hole--neutron star coalescences); instead, the distribution is statistically consistent with a population of progenitors that closely traces the ultra-violet light of galaxies. This is naturally explained by bursts which originate from the collapse of massive stars collapsars''). This claim is further supported by the unambiguous detections of intermediate-time (approximately three weeks after the bursts) emission bumps'' which appear substantially more red than the afterglows themselves. I claim that these bumps could originate from supernovae that occur at approximately the same time as the associated GRB; if true, GRB 980326 and GRB 011121 provide strong observational evidence connecting cosmological GRBs to high-redshift supernovae and implicate massive stars as the progenitors of atleast some long-duration GRBs.

This book will addresses critical issues such as: - the importance of sustained, stable, and effective site leadership for school improvement - the growing shortage of qualified candidates for the headteachership - the inadequacy of traditional pre-service programs - the need for quality headteacher induction programs which include a mentoring or coaching component This book, while grounded in research and theory, will provide readers with practical skills and strategies for leadership coaching that are explicitly tied to the needs of headteachers. It will make sense of the often contradictory literature on coaching by promoting a new approach, that of "Blended Coaching," which recognizes that effective coaches move between facilitative and instructional approaches in their practice.