Community Update

Focuses on how communities can learn from each other as they improve their schools. Features best practices and model programs from around the nation. Identifies useful educational resources, services, and publications. Summarizes important educational research, conveys important news from the Secretary of Education, along with the progress of Department Initiatives.

The inspiring and hilarious story of Patch Adams's quest to bring free health care to the world and to transform the way doctors practice medicine • Tells the story of Patch Adam's lifetime quest to transform the health care system • Released as a film from Universal Pictures, starring Robin Williams Meet Patch Adams, M.D., a social revolutionary who has devoted his career to giving away health care. Adams is the founder of the Gesundheit Institute, a home-based medical practice that has treated more than 15,000 people for free, and that is now building a full-scale hospital that will be open to anyone in the world free of charge. Ambitious? Yes. Impossible? Not for those who know and work with Patch. Whether it means putting on a red clown nose for sick children or taking a disturbed patient outside to roll down a hill with him, Adams does whatever is necessary to help heal. In his frequent lectures at medical schools and international conferences, Adams's irrepressible energy cuts through the businesslike facade of the medical industry to address the caring relationship between doctor and patient that is at the heart of true medicine. All author royalties are used to fund The Gesundheit Institute, a 40-bed free hospital in West Virginia. Adams's positive vision and plan for the future is an inspiration for those concerned with the inaccessibility of affordable, quality health care. Today's high-tech medicine has become too costly, impersonal, and grim. In his frequent lectures to colleges, churches, community groups, medical schools, and conferences, Patch shows how healing can be a loving, creative, humorous human exchange--not a business transaction.

SUGAR IS TAKING OVER OUR LIVES. But why? And is it only those sweet, refined white crystals that are causing us problems, or could there be more to the story?Let's be honest: The problem isn't just sugar itself. It's the refined, nutrient-poor carbohydrates that carry tons of calories, but no real nutrition. In our world, these are the easiest foods to grab on the go, but they leave us fat, sick, tired, and downright unhappy.The effect that sugar, "hidden" carbs, and refined, processed foods have on our bodies goes far beyond our waistlines. We can't focus, we can't sleep, we have irrational mid-afternoon cravings, and we can't even make it through the day without wanting—or needing—to prop up our energy levels with caffeine or even more sugar! What can we do to break free from this cycle? The 21-Day Sugar Detox is here to help. The 21-Day Sugar Detox is a clear-cut, effective, whole-foods-based nutrition action plan that will reset your body and your habits! Tens of thousands of people have already used this groundbreaking guide to shatter the vicious sugar stronghold. Now it's your turn! Use the easy-to-follow meal plans and more than 90 simple recipes in this book to bust a lifetime of sugar and carb cravings in just three weeks. Three levels of the program make it approachable for anyone, whether you're starting from scratch or from a gluten-free, grain-free, and/or Paleo/primal lifestyle. The 21-Day Sugar Detox even includes special modifications for athletes (endurance, CrossFit, HIIT-style, and beyond), pregnant/nursing moms, pescetarians, and people with autoimmune conditions. What you'll experience on this program will be different from a lot of other "diet" programs out there that promote extremely restricted eating; encourage you to consume only shakes, juices, or smoothies; or rely heavily on supplements and very-low-calorie or very-low-fat diets to ensure success. The goal of any detox program should be to support your body in naturally cleansing itself of substances that create negative health effects—and that's exactly what The 21-Day Sugar Detox does. By focusing on quality protein, healthy fats, and good carbs, this program will help you change not only the foods you eat, but also your habits around food, and even the way your palate reacts to sweet foods. You'll likely complete the program and continue eating this way much of the time thereafter because you'll feel so amazing. After changing your everyday eating habits, you will begin to gain a new understanding of how food works in your body—and just how much nutrition affects your entire life. There's no reason to wait!

Good measures of student learning are scarce and all institutions are struggling with the challenge of effectively and reliably assessing student learning. Nowhere is this challenge felt more strongly, however, than at the community college, where students enter with diverse education goals and are more likely to transfer, stop out, or even drop out. This makes the need for assessment methods of demonstrated value in the community college setting more critical than ever. This new booklet is designed to address this need, presenting for the first time between two covers some of the strongest illustrations of good practice that have appeared in the pages of the award-winning newsletter, Assessment Update. Articles address such issues of concern to community college faculty and administrators as evaluating transfer success, the community and technical college students’ perceptions of student engagement, assessing learning communities, assessing employer needs, and the role of corporate partnerships in assessment. Drawing on both faculty-created and standard measures, such as the Community College Student Experiences Questionnaire and the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, the authors explore the effectiveness of various approaches and how they can be used to make the kind of curricular changes that can lead to improved student- learning outcomes. Other booklets in Assessment Update Collections: Portfolio Assessment: Uses, Cases, Scoring, and Impact This booklet contains a wealth of information on portfolios made available for the first time in this convenient format. The articles explore how portfolios, including web-based portfolios, have been used at various institutions to assess and improve programs in general education, the major, advising, and overall institutional effectiveness. They describe ways portfolios can be scored, students’ perspectives on portfolios, how portfolios changed the faculty culture at one college, and more. Hallmarks of Effective Outcomes Assessment This booklet brings together the best guidance and practices that have appeared in Assessment Update to illustrate time-tested principles for all aspects of assessment from planning and implementing to sustaining and improving assessment efforts over time. Useful for those new to assessment as well as experienced practitioners, it details the specific hallmarks required for the success of any assessment program—from leadership and staff development to the assessment of processes as well as outcomes, ongoing communication among constituents, and more. And it presents articles revealing what these hallmarks look like in practice.