A Meaningful Mess

How do you organize what may seem like a chaotic mess into a classroom that empowers students to engage with content and pursue their passions? A Meaningful Mess offers suggestions and specific tools that can be used to engage this generation of students in meaningful, relevant, and student-driven learning experiences—even if things in the classroom may get messy, both literally and figuratively. Such strategies and tools include Genius Hour, Makerspaces, flexible learning spaces, meaningful technology, global learning experiences, critical and creative thinking, collaboration, and reflection. Packed with relevant evidence and research, A Meaningful Mess helps teachers understand why traditional teaching strategies are no longer working and what they can do to engage and empower this generation of learners.

Bestselling author Tom Lichtenheld brings a mad-cap mess ALIVE in this lightly animated interactive format -- perfect for young readers of all ages! Fans are sure to delight in What Mess? Story Synopsis: Why is this room such a mess all the time?What's with that smell, and what's with the grime? What Mess? is a hilarious conversation between a boy and his parents about a room that's such a disaster zone, he'd have to clean it just to call it a mess.

A supportive guide for busy parents who want to connect more and stress less. In our stressed-out culture, too many parents are just coping rather than thriving, juggling demands on their time and energy, and tuning out their inner voices and deeper visions for family life in order to keep their heads above water. There is a better way. Coaching parents through his holistic health practice, Dr. Steven Fonso has helped thousands of families reconnect with what matters most: slowing down to savor authentic moments of connection and letting go of the noise and stress that all too often get in the way. In this reflective and heartfelt guide, you'll find insights and advice for bringing your best self to every parenting challenge, great and small, with greater awareness, authenticity, and grace. Topics include: • recognizing our old patterns--and interrupting them • seeing our kids as teachers, and following their lead to experience more presence and joy • letting go of the need to be perfect--and the expectation that our kids should be, too • reframing challenges as an opportunity to grow--within ourselves and together as a family As calming as a talk with a dear friend, this deceptively simple book turns parenting "truths" upside down to reveal a path to greater presence and connection.

Got a junk drawer? Ever find yourself stuffing stray items in there without thinking? Holding on to incidentals that are no longer needed? Yeah, most of us are there. We can do that same sort of stuffing in our spiritual lives, holding on to so much junk that it becomes tough to fit in the good things the Lord is calling us to. What if we told you there are ways to sort through some of that junk, keep what you need, throw out what's unnecessary and move forward, less hindered, less weighed down, more spiritually organized-more...free? There are powerful truths in the Word of God to get you to that very place. You're invited to take a little journey through the junk drawer, enjoy some chuckles with girlfriends Monica Schmelter, Rhonda Rhea and Kaley Rhea, and find yourself some beautiful...free.

Ready-to-Use Resources for Genius Hour in the Classroom provides practical advice and a wealth of hands-on resources for teachers to implement Genius Hour, or passion projects, in the classroom. This book: Includes everything educators need to help students apply their learning and reach deep understanding. Engages the six P's of Genius Hour: passion, plan, pitch, project, product, and presentation. Features built-in opportunities to to gamify the process. Helps increase students' critical thinking, creativity, and engagement. Is a valuable standalone resource and companion to Genius Hour. Students can "level up," earning badges and points, as they create, design, and carry out projects and develop ideas that impact their classroom, school, community, and world. Through the tools and tips provided, teachers will see Genius Hour as more than an hour, more than a strategy or activity separate from the regular curriculum. When implemented effectively, Genius Hour can be a more meaningful teaching and learning experience than any other.

A memoir of mothers and daughters, hoarding, and healing. Judy Batalion grew up in a house filled with endless piles of junk and layers of crumbs and dust; suffocated by tuna fish cans, old papers and magazines, swivel chairs, tea bags, clocks, cameras, printers, VHS tapes, ballpoint pens…obsessively gathered and stored by her hoarder mother. The first chance she had, she escaped the clutter to create a new identity—one made of order, regimen, and clean white walls. Until, one day, she found herself enmeshed in life’s biggest chaos: motherhood. Confronted with the daunting task of raising a daughter after her own dysfunctional childhood, Judy reflected on not only her own upbringing but the lives of her mother and grandmother, Jewish Polish immigrants who had escaped the Holocaust. What she discovered astonished her. The women in her family, despite their differences, were even more closely connected than she ever knew—from her grandmother Zelda to her daughter of the same name. And, despite the hardships of her own mother-daughter relationship, it was that bond that was slowly healing her old wounds. Told with heartbreaking honesty and humor, this is Judy’s poignant account of her trials negotiating the messiness of motherhood and the indelible marks that mothers and daughters make on each other’s lives.

What Duke Ellington and Miles Davis teach us about leadership How do you cope when faced with complexity and constant change at work? Here’s what the world’s best leaders and teams do: they improvise. They invent novel responses and take calculated risks without a scripted plan or a safety net that guarantees specific outcomes. They negotiate with each other as they proceed, and they don’t dwell on mistakes or stifle each other’s ideas. In short, they say “yes to the mess” that is today’s hurried, harried, yet enormously innovative and fertile world of work. This is exactly what great jazz musicians do. In this revelatory book, accomplished jazz pianist and management scholar Frank Barrett shows how this improvisational “jazz mind-set” and the skills that go along with it are essential for effective leadership today. With fascinating stories of the insights and innovations of jazz greats such as Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins, as well as probing accounts of the wisdom gleaned from his own experience as a jazz musician, Barrett introduces a new model for leading and collaborating in organizations. He describes how, like skilled jazz players, leaders need to master the art of unlearning, perform and experiment simultaneously, and take turns soloing and supporting each other. And with examples that range from manufacturing to the military to high-tech, he illustrates how organizations must take an inventive approach to crisis management, economic volatility, and all the rapidly evolving realities of our globally connected world. Leaders today need to be expert improvisers. Yes to the Mess vividly shows how the principles of jazz thinking and jazz performance can help anyone who leads teams or works with them to develop these critical skills, wherever they sit in the organization. Engaging and insightful, Yes to the Mess is a seminar on collaboration and complexity, against the soulful backdrop of jazz.

The Mess That We Made explores the environmental impact of trash and plastic on the ocean and marine life, and it inspires kids to do their part to combat pollution. Simple, rhythmic wording builds to a crescendo ("This is the mess that we made. These are the fish that swim in the mess that we made.") and the vibrant digital artwork captures the disaster that is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Children can imagine themselves as one of the four multi-ethnic occupants of the little boat surrounded by swirling plastic in the middle of the ocean, witnessing the cycle of destruction and the harm it causes to plants, animals, and humans. The first half of the book portrays the growing magnitude of the issue, and the second half rallies children and adults to make the necessary changes to save our oceans. Facts about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, ocean pollution, and how kids can help are included in the back matter.