Building on extensive evidence that school-based teacher learning communities improve student outcomes, this book lays out an agenda to develop and sustain collaborative professional cultures. McLaughlin and Talbert—foremost scholars of school change and teaching contexts—provide an inside look at the processes, resources, and system strategies that are necessary to build vibrant school-based teacher learning communities.

Making Music and Enriching Lives fills an important niche in the very large world of books about music. It's unlike any other instructional book in the way it addresses comprehensive, across-the-board issues that affect all teachers, students, and musicians. In this book, you will find specifics not only about how to teach music, but also about how to motivate and inspire students of any age.

Teaching is as much about students as it is about curriculum, and no one understands this better than middle and high school teachers. But even the most dedicated teacher can sometimes feel defeated by the challenge of reaching distracted, disconnected, and defiant adolescents.Drawing on her own experience as a high school teacher, Katy Ridnouer shares an approach to classroom management that will help you spend less time "dealing with" your adolescent learners and more time inspiring them to be their best selves in school and beyond.

"Every student is a genius," declares author Thomas Armstrong, and an educator's most important job is to discover and nurture the "genius qualities" that all students were born with but that may no longer be obvious. Urging readers to look beyond traditional understandings of what constitutes genius, Armstrong describes 12 such qualities: curiosity, playfulness, imagination, creativity, wonder, wisdom, inventiveness, vitality, sensitivity, flexibility, humor, and joy. He cites research in various fields that supports this broader understanding of genius and explains how influences in the home, the popular media, and the school itself "shut down" the genius in students.