High Expectations

For over a quarter of a century the problem of losing church members has progressively increased. Today the situation is so bad that less than one-third of the members in some churches attend worship services. Church leaders are crying for help.In an effort to help church leaders, the Billy Graham School of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary conducted a massive research project involving nearly 287 churches. The most revealing aspect of the study was that the higher expectations placed on members, the greater the likelihood that the members would stay and be involved with the church. Using the data gathered from this project, Thom Rainer presents the first-ever comprehensive study about 'closing the back door.' Rainer looks at why people are leaving the church and how church leaders can keep the members.

The myth of fixed intelligence debunked For all the productive conversation around “mindsets,” what’s missing are the details of how to convince our discouraged and underperforming students that “smart is something you can get.” Until now. With the publication of High-Expectations Teaching, Jon Saphier reveals once and for all evidence that the bell curve of ability is plain wrong—that ability is something that can be grown significantly if we can first help students to believe in themselves. In drill-down detail, Saphier provides an instructional playbook for increasing student confidence and agency in the daily flow of classroom life: Powerful strategies for attribution retraining, organized around 50 Ways to Get Students to Believe in Themselves Concrete examples, scripts, and classroom structures and routines for empowering student agency and choice Dozens of accompanying videos showing high-expectations strategies in action All children in all schools, regardless of income or social class, will benefit from the strategies in this book. But for children of poverty and children of color, our proficiency with these skills is essential . . . in many ways life saving. Jon Saphier challenges us all—educators, students, and parents—to get started today. About Jon Saphier The author of nine books, including The Skillful Teacher, Jon Saphier is founder and president of Research for Better Teaching, Inc. (RBT), a professional development organization dedicated since 1979 to improving classroom teaching and school leadership throughout the United States and internationally.

The myth of fixed intelligence debunked For all the productive conversation around “mindsets,” what’s missing are the details of how to convince our discouraged and underperforming students that “smart is something you can get.” Until now. With the publication of High-Expectations Teaching, Jon Saphier reveals once and for all evidence that the bell curve of ability is plain wrong—that ability is something that can be grown significantly if we can first help students to believe in themselves. In drill-down detail, Saphier provides an instructional playbook for increasing student confidence and agency in the daily flow of classroom life: Powerful strategies for attribution retraining, organized around 50 Ways to Get Students to Believe in Themselves Concrete examples, scripts, and classroom structures and routines for empowering student agency and choice Dozens of accompanying videos showing high-expectations strategies in action All children in all schools, regardless of income or social class, will benefit from the strategies in this book. But for children of poverty and children of color, our proficiency with these skills is essential . . . in many ways life saving. Jon Saphier challenges us all—educators, students, and parents—to get started today. About Jon Saphier The author of nine books, including The Skillful Teacher, Jon Saphier is founder and president of Research for Better Teaching, Inc. (RBT), a professional development organization dedicated since 1979 to improving classroom teaching and school leadership throughout the United States and internationally.

This book explores meaningful and effective use of student voice in urban school renewal efforts through strategies that include: surveys, interviews, focus groups, visual and video projects, social media, and student participation in governance. Chapters provide a definition of student voice, context for public schooling in the United States, and introduce a framework for including student voice in school renewal processes. Examples guide readers to implementation of the framework to include student voices in diverse educational settings. Authentic voices of approximately 175 students interviewed by the authors express what it is that they really want from public schools and how pre K-12 educators can provide a structure for ongoing student participation in governance and the work of the school. The existing literature explores student characteristics such as poverty, cultural diversity, and what the experts believe students need public schools to provide. Within the research, urban public schools and technical reform are often explored and examined separately from conversations about what students want from schools, excluding opportunities for their voices and diverse perspectives to be heard. Listening to students describe instances of bullying or teachers’ low academic expectations provides educators with opportunities to address issues that impede student learning. The uniqueness of this framework for including student voice is that it provides multiple opportunities for students in any grade level to tell us what it is they want from public schools, and to make meaningful and lasting contributions to school renewal efforts.

Despite growing evidence that all students will benefit from engaging and challenging instruction, many struggling students continue to experience a circumscribed curriculum that emphasizes low-level skills. Featuring contributions from emerging and well-known researchers, this important volume is about the enactment of high-expectation curricula in everyday practice. Chapters document specific classroom strategies that make a difference in the learning of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and cultural and linguistic minority communities. While the book focuses on language and literacy instruction, key chapters on math and science also demonstrate high-expectation teaching across the curriculum. Book Features: A broad framework for creating high-expectation curricula in underperforming K12 schools, clear illustrations of what alternative literacy practices look like, powerful examples of rich math and science instruction, research-based strategies for second language learners, students with disabilities, and struggling readers, an incisive critique of the deficit-driven curricula that dominates in underachieving schools and classrooms.

Calls for the integration of social emotional learning into school curricula, providing assistance for the process and including sample programs from which to model.

How our colleges and universities can respond to the changing hopes and needs of society In recent decades, cognitive psychologists have cast new light on human development and given colleges new possibilities for helping students acquire skills and qualities that will enhance their lives and increase their contributions to society. In this landmark book, Derek Bok explores how colleges can reap the benefits of these discoveries and create a more robust undergraduate curriculum for the twenty-first century. Prior to this century, most psychologists thought that creativity, empathy, resilience, conscientiousness, and most personality traits were largely fixed by early childhood. What researchers have now discovered is that virtually all of these qualities continue to change through early adulthood and often well beyond. Such findings suggest that educators may be able to do much more than was previously thought possible to teach students to develop these important characteristics and thereby enable them to flourish in later life. How prepared are educators to cultivate these qualities of mind and behavior? What do they need to learn to capitalize on the possibilities? Will college faculties embrace these opportunities and make the necessary changes in their curricula and teaching methods? What can be done to hasten the process of innovation and application? In providing answers to these questions, Bok identifies the hurdles to institutional change, proposes sensible reforms, and demonstrates how our colleges can help students lead more successful, productive, and meaningful lives.

Is great teaching a gift that only a few of us are born with, or is it a skill that can be learned? In Never Work Harder Than Your Students, Robyn Jackson makes a radical assertion: Any teacher can become a master teacher by developing a master teacher mindset, The master teacher mindset can be achieved by rigorously applying seven principles to your teaching until they become your automatic response to students in the classroom. The more you practice these principles, the more you begin to think like a master teacher. The seven principles are 1. Start where your students are. 2. Know where your students are going. 3. Expect to get your students to their goal. 4. Support your students along the way. 5. Use feedback to help you and your students get better. 6. Focus on quality rather than quantity. 7. Never work harder than your students. Using these seven principles, Jackson shows you how to become a master teacher no matter where you are in your practices. Each chapter provides a detailed explanation of one of the mastery principles, the steps you need to take to apply them to your own practice, and suggestions for how you can begin practicing the principle in your classroom right away. Jackson offers stories from her own teaching practice as well as from other teachers she has helped to show you how each principle works. Teaching is a hard job, but using JacksonÆs principles will help you and your students reap the rich rewards of that hard work. Book jacket.