Dream Class

"I always believe that we should never stop dreaming because it is the first step to achieve something big in life. When we dream for something sincerely, we start taking small steps towards that direction. Each small step takes us nearer to our dream provided we maintain our patience and perseverance. When we sow a seed, we have to water it, nurture it until it becomes a tree. We can’t expect a seed to become a tree overnight.” - From this book

In Dream Class, you will learn the 15 keys that make the greatest difference in the classroom. Written from the unique perspective that everything you do affects classroom management, each key will help you create the class you've always wanted: your dream class. They will free you to love your job, build effortless and influential relationships with your students, and enable you to become a happier, calmer, and more confident teacher.--

(2nd Edition: July 6, 2012) In The Chinese Dream, a groundbreaking book about the rising middle class in China, Forbes columnist and China expert Helen Wang challenges us to recognize that some of our fears about China are grossly misplaced. As a result of China's new capitalist paradigm, a burgeoning middle class-calculated to reach 800 million within the next fifteen years-is jumping aboard the consumerism train and riding it for all it's worth-a reality that may provide the answer to America's economic woes. And with China's increasing urbanization and top-down governmental approach, it now faces increasing energy, environmental, and health problems-problems that the U.S. can help solve. Through timely interviews, personal stories, and a historical perspective, China-born Wang takes us into the world of the Chinese entrepreneurial middle class to show how a growing global mindset and the realization of unity in diversity may ultimately provide the way to creating a saner, safer world for all.

Dream Hoarders sparked a national conversation on the dangerous separation between the upper middle class and everyone else. Now in paperback and newly updated for the age of Trump, Brookings Institution senior fellow Richard Reeves is continuing to challenge the class system in America. In America, everyone knows that the top 1 percent are the villains. The rest of us, the 99 percent—we are the good guys. Not so, argues Reeves. The real class divide is not between the upper class and the upper middle class: it is between the upper middle class and everyone else. The separation of the upper middle class from everyone else is both economic and social, and the practice of “opportunity hoarding”—gaining exclusive access to scarce resources—is especially prevalent among parents who want to perpetuate privilege to the benefit of their children. While many families believe this is just good parenting, it is actually hurting others by reducing their chances of securing these opportunities. There is a glass floor created for each affluent child helped by his or her wealthy, stable family. That glass floor is a glass ceiling for another child. Throughout Dream Hoarders, Reeves explores the creation and perpetuation of opportunity hoarding, and what should be done to stop it, including controversial solutions such as ending legacy admissions to school. He offers specific steps toward reducing inequality and asks the upper middle class to pay for it. Convinced of their merit, members of the upper middle class believes they are entitled to those tax breaks and hoarded opportunities. After all, they aren't the 1 percent. The national obsession with the super rich allows the upper middle class to convince themselves that they are just like the rest of America. In Dream Hoarders, Reeves argues that in many ways, they are worse, and that changes in policy and social conscience are the only way to fix the broken system.

History teacher Kevin Lee is retiring from Seneca Falls High School, where he has worked for the past forty years. He decides to use the freedom of his pending exit to toss the state curriculum and teach the U.S. survey as the story of the alluring, inspiring, murderous concept we know as the American Dream—which, he understands, his students regard with justified, if instinctive, skepticism. Lee discusses the rise, fall, and legacy of the Dream with these smart, funny, and irreverent eleventh graders, in a narrative peppered with memos, email exchanges, text messages, student journalism, and other documents from beyond the walls of his classroom. The result is the best history class you never had. A chronological history of the United States, this compelling novel also offers a snapshot of American education, written by a veteran teacher who slices through the arid literature of pedagogy to vividly depict the life of the classroom. Finally, it offers a deeply affectionate and patriotic vision of American life—one fully aware of the nation’s limits and failures while honoring the longings so many of us have to believe in our country, even as we harbor deepening doubts about our nation.

A Wall Street Journal and Washington Post Bestseller "Tyler Cowen's blog, Marginal Revolution, is the first thing I read every morning. And his brilliant new book, The Complacent Class, has been on my nightstand after I devoured it in one sitting. I am at round-the-clock Cowen saturation right now."--Malcolm Gladwell Since Alexis de Tocqueville, restlessness has been accepted as a signature American trait. Our willingness to move, take risks, and adapt to change have produced a dynamic economy and a tradition of innovation from Ben Franklin to Steve Jobs. The problem, according to legendary blogger, economist and best selling author Tyler Cowen, is that Americans today have broken from this tradition—we’re working harder than ever to avoid change. We're moving residences less, marrying people more like ourselves and choosing our music and our mates based on algorithms that wall us off from anything that might be too new or too different. Match.com matches us in love. Spotify and Pandora match us in music. Facebook matches us to just about everything else. Of course, this “matching culture” brings tremendous positives: music we like, partners who make us happy, neighbors who want the same things. We’re more comfortable. But, according to Cowen, there are significant collateral downsides attending this comfort, among them heightened inequality and segregation and decreased incentives to innovate and create. The Complacent Class argues that this cannot go on forever. We are postponing change, due to our near-sightedness and extreme desire for comfort, but ultimately this will make change, when it comes, harder. The forces unleashed by the Great Stagnation will eventually lead to a major fiscal and budgetary crisis: impossibly expensive rentals for our most attractive cities, worsening of residential segregation, and a decline in our work ethic. The only way to avoid this difficult future is for Americans to force themselves out of their comfortable slumber—to embrace their restless tradition again.

Create Your Dream Classroom, the perfect resource for Christian teachers, provides tips and strategies to help you do just what the title suggests: create the classroom you've always wanted. This book contains fifty daily readings designed to help new teachers conquer the learning curve and to bring fresh ideas to veterans. Included are hands-on activities, journal prompts, and an interactive experience with a growing community of Christian teachers.