School Culture

In Reconnect: Building School Culture for Meaning, Purpose, and Belonging, a team of distinguished educators from Teach Like a Champion and Uncommon Schools deliver practical guidance and concrete advice for teachers, administrators, and community members who seek to dramatically improve the lives of children and young people by fostering a sense of belonging in schools. In the book, you'll find hands-on solutions to build or rebuild students' sense of shared work and community in an era of increasing isolation and disconnections.

After defeating the terrifying Necromuse and his mysterious orchestra, all Amelia Jones hopes for is a return to normal. But to her surprise, her class is sent to Europe for a month of study abroad. This seems like the perfect escape from all her problems, but not long after they land in Salzburg, Austria, danger haunts their steps. A street musician claims there is something wrong with Amelia’s magic, odd visions of the past appear around the city, and Amelia finds a strange message preserved in a museum—a message she fears was left by the Necromuse.

In Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools, Ron Ritchhart, author of Making Thinking Visible, explains how creating a culture of thinking is more important to learning than any particular curriculum, and he outlines how any school or teacher can accomplish this by leveraging eight cultural forces: expectations, language, time, modeling, opportunities, routines, interactions, and environment.

Transforming School Culture provides a school improvement plan for leaders to overcome staff division, improve relationships, and transform toxic school cultures into healthy ones. Dr. Anthony Muhammad contends that in order to transform school culture, we must understand why teachers continue to hold on to models or beliefs contrary to those put forth by their school or district. He explores the human behavior, social conditions, and history that cause the underlying conflict among the four different types of teachers in a school.

New London, Texas, 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them. They know the people who enforce them. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive.

From the Emmy Award-winning Squid Game to streaming sensations like The Glory and Crash Landing on You, Korean television has emerged onto the global pop culture scene as compelling television—but what exactly makes these shows so irresistibly bingeable? And what can we learn about our societies and ourselves from watching them? From stand-up comedian and media studies PhD Grace Jung comes a rollicking deep dive into the cultural significance of Korean television.

Are you or your teachers frustrated with carrots and sticks, detention rooms, and suspension-antiquated school discipline practices that simply do not work with the students entering our classrooms today? Our kids have complex needs, and we must empower and embrace them with restorative practices that not only change behaviors but transform students into productive citizens, accountable for their own actions.

This book explores the array of principles and practices that have evolved and make up the rich culture that has permeated the school. The Sudbury school model is unique in creating a community that extends to all students the same rights, privileges, and responsibilities available to every adult American for the enjoyment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of a meaningful life. All we did was turn the clock back - or, better, forward - and finish the job the Founding Fathers began...by including children in the ringing phrases of the Declaration of Independence.

Jummy has won a place at the River School, the finest girls' boarding school in Nigeria. Nothing can dampen her spirits, not even when she learns that her best friend Caro won’t be joining her. By the Shine-Shine River, school is everything Jummy dreamt of, with friendly new girls, midnight feasts and sporting prizes—but when Caro suddenly arrives at the school to work, not to learn, Jummy must bring all her friends together to help.

From the author of Newbery Medal winner Moon Over Manifest comes the odyssey-like adventure of two boys’ incredible quest on the Appalachian Trail. When Jack Baker’s father sends him from his home in Kansas to attend a boys’ boarding school in Maine, Jack doesn’t know what to expect. Certainly not Early Auden, the strangest of boys. Early keeps to himself, reads the number pi as a story, and refuses to accept truths others take for granted. Jack, feeling lonely and out of place, connects with Early, and the two become friends.

Discover design strategies for using your own unique social identities and experiences as inspiration to challenge the status quo and create the kind of lasting change that leads to greater equity and social justice, from Stanford University's d.school.

Are your kids unable to step away from the screens? Here is a practical, step-by-step guide that gives parents the tools to teach children, from toddlers to teens, how to gain control of their technology use.

Belonging brings out the best in everyone. Whether you’re a parent, teacher, community organizer, or leader of any sort, your group is unlikely to thrive if the individuals don’t feel welcomed, included, and valued for who they are. The good news is that you can use design to create feelings of inclusion in your organization: rituals that bring people together, spaces that promote calm, roles that create a sense of responsibility, systems that make people feel respected, and more.

While sleeping on the roof of his father's hotel-spy school, 13-year-old Lucas Benes finds a baby alone and learns that the Good Company has restarted its profitable brainwashing business. Brainwashed (Crime Travelers Spy Series book number one) tracks the secret urban adventures of the new resistance, a school of international teenage spies. Lucas leads a group of friends through the hotspots of Paris - from the catacombs to the Eiffel tower - in an all-out effort to sabotage a brainwashing ceremony that could potentially turn them all into "good" kids.

Time and again, teachers of color have been blamed for every conceivable wrong in urban schools, a tactic that ignores the history of racism and bolsters the expansion of charter schools that lack community roots. Covering the rich, fifty-year legacy of George Washington Carver Senior High School from 1958-2005, What We Stand to Lose investigates how public school closures have impacted predominantly Black urban neighborhoods in New Orleans.

The media and politicians have been sounding the alarm for years, and with every fresh tragedy involving a young perpetrator comes another flurry of articles about the dangers of violent media. The problem is this: Their fear isn't supported by the evidence. In fact, unlike the video game-trained murder machines depicted in the press, school shooters are actually less likely to be interested in violent games than their peers. In reality, most well-adjusted children and teenagers play violent video games, all without ever exhibiting violent behavior in real life.

Elementary Geography was originally written by educator Charlotte Mason in the 1880s, yet this beloved book for elementary-aged students still garners attention today. Blue Sky Daisies brings you the same classic book, completely re-typeset in a pleasing and fresh format. Miss Mason’s conversational tone teaches children about their world, from its place in the solar system to their place in its lands. Elementary Geography also includes over a dozen poetry selections throughout the book, chosen by Miss Mason to complement the chapter topics.

This book chronicles the long and tortured history of the NCAA's attempt to maintain the myth of amateurism and the student-athlete, along with the attendant fiction that the players academic achievement is the top priority of Division-I athletic programs. It is an indictment of the current system, making the case that big-time college sports cannot continue its connection to universities without undermining the mission of higher education. It concludes with bold proposals to separate big-time college sports from the university, transforming them into on-campus business operations.

Some true crimes reveal themselves in bits and pieces over time. One such case is the Florida School for Boys, a.k.a. the Dozier School, a place where - rather than reforming the children in their care - school officials tortured, raped, and killed them. Opened in 1900, the school closed in 2011 after a Department of Justice investigation substantiated allegations of routine beatings and killings made by about 100 survivors. Thus far, forensic anthropologist Dr. Erin Kimmerle and her team from the University of South Florida have uncovered 55 sets of human remains.

Dale Dougherty, creator of MAKE: magazine and the Maker Faire, provides a guided tour of the international phenomenon known as the Maker Movement, a social revolution that is changing what gets made, how it’s made, where it’s made, and who makes it. Free to Make is a call to join what Dougherty calls the “renaissance of making,” an invitation to see ourselves as creators and shapers of the world around us.