High Impact Practices With Urban Youth Circles At The Center

High impact practices are evidence-based educational practices that have been shown to increase student learning and raise levels of performance, retention, and success. The circle--commonly known as a discussion circle--is a key high impact practice linked to positive outcomes for urban youth. Circles are effective tools for enhancing communication, promoting emotional support and healing, and encouraging problem-solving and creativity. In High Impact Practices with Urban Youth--Circles at the Center: A Guidebook for Practitioners and Scholar-Activists, Yan Dominic Searcy and Troy Harden provide research-based best practices in an accessible format to bridge the gap between practitioners and researchers who are specifically working to improve the life outcomes of urban youth. Targeted to assist front-line practitioners, program directors, and those training to be practitioners, this book reflects Searcy and Harden's combined over five decades of work with urban youth and imparts high impact practices to influence interventions and program design. Each chapter begins with a brief narrative from a discussion circle, reflective of the authors' interactions with youth or program staff that is germane to a high impact practice. The best youth work combines art and science, emotion and skill. High Impact Practices with Urban Youth effectively blends both to ground the next generation of interventions aimed at improving youth program outcomes whether the programs are targeting juvenile justice, health promotion, education, sports, leadership, or mentoring.

"The interior of the high school was a cruel April Fool's joke. The outside bragged manicured landscaping and a sturdy, three-story exterior supported with a sextet of limestone Greek columns that simultaneously nodded in three directions - the city's celebration of ancient wisdom, the prosperity of the early 20th century, and the promise of the future. But inside captured what is wrong with many urban high schools: poorly maintained cinder block walled hallways and classrooms that tilted toward a correctional facility more so than an instructional facility. There were guards on every floor, a roving police officer, metal detectors at the entrance, and analog loudspeakers crackling orders to students"--

Social studies is a discipline unique to K-12 education and tasked with the preparation of democratic citizens. Social studies educators work with concepts, theories, and ideas from multiple disciplines across the social sciences and humanities, which makes discourse through shared language complex. Specialization in content areas that comprise the social studies can further complicate shared understanding of essential terms. The Language of Social Studies Education offers essential information for key concepts organized to reflect the contemporary context of K-12 social studies education. The concepts found within this volume reflect the breadth of the discipline while also providing the foundational knowledge needed to develop deeper understanding. Each entry is based on multiple sources that invite the reader to pursue their interests through further inquiry. This book will appeal to those who are looking for concise information based on respected scholarship from disciplines across the social studies. Even seasoned social studies practitioners will find its entries helpful for incorporating new concepts, ideas, and approaches into their discourses on citizenship education.

"This toolkit presents a wide range of guidelines, strategies, templates and case studies for those who work with Aboriginal youth."--Page 4 of cover.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Make workplace conflict resolution a game that EVERYBODY wins! Recent studies show that typical managers devote more than a quarter of their time to resolving coworker disputes. The Big Book of Conflict-Resolution Games offers a wealth of activities and exercises for groups of any size that let you manage your business (instead of managing personalities). Part of the acclaimed, bestselling Big Books series, this guide offers step-by-step directions and customizable tools that empower you to heal rifts arising from ineffective communication, cultural/personality clashes, and other specific problem areas—before they affect your organization's bottom line. Let The Big Book of Conflict-Resolution Games help you to: Build trust Foster morale Improve processes Overcome diversity issues And more Dozens of physical and verbal activities help create a safe environment for teams to explore several common forms of conflict—and their resolution. Inexpensive, easy-to-implement, and proved effective at Fortune 500 corporations and mom-and-pop businesses alike, the exercises in The Big Book of Conflict-Resolution Games delivers everything you need to make your workplace more efficient, effective, and engaged.