Digging Deep Aiming High An Educator S Lifelong Quest To Put Kids First

Digging Deep, Aiming High is a memoir of my career as a teacher and administrator in the New York City public schools. My experiences teaching in the middle school and my tenure working as an assistant principal and principal at the Manhattan Center High School for Science and Mathematics paint a contrasting picture. Both schools were dramatically different in terms of providing job satisfaction and student achievement. It is remarkable how two different schools could produce incredibly different results when teams of dedicated educators truly put kids first. Manhattan Center attracted trailblazers who made it their mission to defy the odds, to raise the bar, to reject mediocrity and encourage all children to succeed. As a team, we decided early on to evaluate all of our programs and academic results by digging deep and aiming high to work toward the highest level of educational achievement for our kids. Failure was never an option, yet we realized that the bureaucratic challenges of working in a large school system and in an impoverished inner-city neighborhood would pose numerous roadblocks in accomplishing our goals. The school was created in 1982 as a collaboration between the high school division and District 4 located in East Harlem. This project was an educational experiment, it being the first high school to accept students from anywhere in the city, as long as they were willing to make a commitment to the rigors of a college bound program and a longer school day. The campus was unique in that the school also housed an elementary school and junior high program in the same building. Working in this environment was especially gratifying for staff to be surrounded by kids of all ages and by students who were accepted regardless of their zip code. The parents and their children were especially grateful for the opportunity to attend a school of their choice, rather than be forced to accept their neighborhood school which, in many cases, had a poor academic rating. What makes this story so noteworthy is that we, the stakeholders in this one special school, recognized that we would need to seek out numerous public and private partnerships to assist us in the task of educating our youngsters. With the abundance of resources and the generosity of time provided by organizations such as General Electric, NBC, Mt. Sinai Hospital, local universities(NYU, COLUMBIA, HUNTER COLLEGE) and the Children's Aid Society, a community based organization, to name a few, we were able to create miracles for kids. With the help of hundreds of mentors and many volunteers, together with teachers and auxiliary personnel working 10-12 hour days and often on weekends, we created a top-notch academic program. Our entire school population was accepted into colleges with prestigious scholarships and financial aid packages, thanks to the dedication of a very talented teaching staff. Building the school from scratch in 1982 was far from easy. The growing pains of attracting competent staff willing to work collaboratively and dedicated leaders who were willing to work tirelessly to provide an environment for teachers to flourish were always a challenge. The explosive issues of funding for public education, desegregation, privatization of schools, the role of law enforcement and the involvement of the unions were very real then, and continue to be current problems facing educators today. Digging Deep, Aiming High will provide the reader with a thorough examination of the ways in which our team dealt with these controversies, as well as with the politicization of diversity, equity, and inclusion issues. It is my hope that our best practices in this one very unique high school will serve as a road map to the resolution of many of the obstacles facing our public schools nationwide today and tomorrow.

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together

A Recommended Read from: Good Morning America • Good Housekeeping • Esquire • Shondaland • Atlanta Journal-Constitution • The Week • Lit Hub • Publishers Weekly An illuminating, poignant, and savagely funny examination of modern marriage from Ask Polly advice columnist Heather Havrilesky If falling in love is the peak of human experience, then marriage is the slow descent down that mountain, on a trail built from conflict, compromise, and nagging doubts. Considering the limited economic advantages to marriage, the deluge of other mate options a swipe away, and the fact that almost half of all marriages in the United States end in divorce anyway, why do so many of us still chain ourselves to one human being for life? In Foreverland, Heather Havrilesky illustrates the delights, aggravations, and sublime calamities of her marriage over the span of fifteen years, charting an unpredictable course from meeting her one true love to slowly learning just how much energy is required to keep that love aflame. This refreshingly honest portrait of a marriage reveals that our relationships are not simply “happy” or “unhappy,” but something much murkier—at once unsavory, taxing, and deeply satisfying. With tales of fumbled proposals, harrowing suburban migrations, external temptations, and the bewildering insults of growing older, Foreverland is a work of rare candor and insight. Havrilesky traces a path from daydreaming about forever for the first time to understanding what a tedious, glorious drag forever can be.

A provocative and urgent essay collection that asks how we can live with hope in “an age of ecocide” Paul Kingsnorth was once an activist—an ardent environmentalist. He fought against rampant development and the depredations of a corporate world that seemed hell-bent on ignoring a looming climate crisis in its relentless pursuit of profit. But as the environmental movement began to focus on “sustainability” rather than the defense of wild places for their own sake and as global conditions worsened, he grew disenchanted with the movement that he once embraced. He gave up what he saw as the false hope that residents of the First World would ever make the kind of sacrifices that might avert the severe consequences of climate change. Full of grief and fury as well as passionate, lyrical evocations of nature and the wild, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist gathers the wave-making essays that have charted the change in Kingsnorth’s thinking. In them he articulates a new vision that he calls “dark ecology,” which stands firmly in opposition to the belief that technology can save us, and he argues for a renewed balance between the human and nonhuman worlds. This iconoclastic, fearless, and ultimately hopeful book, which includes the much-discussed “Uncivilization” manifesto, asks hard questions about how we’ve lived and how we should live.

This antiquarian volume contains a comprehensive treatise on democracy and education, being an introduction to the 'philosophy of education'. Written in clear, concise language and full of interesting expositions and thought-provoking assertions, this volume will appeal to those with an interest in the role of education in society, and it would make for a great addition to collections of allied literature. The chapters of this book include: 'Education as a Necessity of Life'; 'Education as a Social Function'; 'Education as Direction'; 'Education as Growth'; 'Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline'; 'Education as Conservative and Progressive'; 'The Democratic Conception in Education'; 'Aims in Education', etcetera. We are republishing this vintage book now complete with a new prefatory biography of the author.

This book takes a fresh look at programs for advanced studies for high school students in the United States, with a particular focus on the Advanced Placement and the International Baccalaureate programs, and asks how advanced studies can be significantly improved in general. It also examines two of the core issues surrounding these programs: they can have a profound impact on other components of the education system and participation in the programs has become key to admission at selective institutions of higher education. By looking at what could enhance the quality of high school advanced study programs as well as what precedes and comes after these programs, this report provides teachers, parents, curriculum developers, administrators, college science and mathematics faculty, and the educational research community with a detailed assessment that can be used to guide change within advanced study programs.

A Playful Path, the new book by games guru and fun theorist Bernard De Koven, serves as a collection of ideas and tools to help us bring our playfulness back into the open. When we find ourselves forgetting the life of the game or the game of life, the joy of form or the content, the play of brain or mind, body or spirit, this book can help us return to that which our soul is heir.