Smart Schools Smart Kids

A revolution in education is sweeping across America. Smart Schools, Smart Kids takes readers into dozens of pioneering schools across the country to describe successful programs and how they work, the problems they have encountered, and the results they have achieved. Innovative reformers are transforming every aspect of the "nineteenth-century factory-model school" into a new kind of public school capable of educating kids for twenty-first century challenges. Smart Schools, Smart Kids shows how. It is a book that is sure to be warmly welcomed by parents, teachers, administrators, and public officials alike who want to improve education for their own and for all of America's children. This nation can no longer afford to wait for change: Smart Schools, Smart Kids will make a real difference now. Book jacket.

Perkins reveals the common misguided strategies students use and offers teachers and parents advice on how they can help their children. Although there has been a great deal of impassioned debate over the sad state of American education today, surprisingly little attention has been paid to how children actually learn to think. But, as David Perkins demonstrates, we cannot solve our problems in this area simply by redistributing power or by asking children to regurgitate facts on a multiple choice exam. Rather we must ask what kinds of knowledge students typically acquire in school. In Smart Schools, Perkins draws on over twenty years of research to reveal the common misguided strategies students use in trying to understand a topic, and then shows teachers and parents what strategies they can use with children to increase real understanding.

In Smart Kids, Bad Schools, award-winning author and educator Brian Crosby draws on his twenty years as a high school English teacher to offer a candid appraisal of why our schools are failing and what we must do to save them. Crosby's no-holds-barred critique of the broken education system leaves no stone unturned: he is unapologetic and uncompromising in his exposé of how teachers, administrators, unions, and parents all play a part in this national tragedy. Crosby offers 38 ideas to save America's future and his proposed remedies are revolutionary. He recommends bold measures, such as lengthening the school day and school year, forcing parents to volunteer at schools, abolishing homework, outlawing teachers unions, and cutting special education funding. The result is a book that is likely to inflame passions on all sides of the political spectrum, and, in the process, introduce new ideas to a debate that is in dire need of them.

Peak Performance for Smart Kids provides success strategies, activities, tools, real-life examples, and checklists for parents to employ to help their kids to achieve their highest potential. Even the most talented child will not succeed if he or she has not developed the mental, psychological, and emotional skills to face the heavy demands of high performance. Maureen Neihart, a psychologist and leading authority on talent development in children, examines seven mental habits of successful kids, providing practical approaches for developing them in talented children of all ages in this easy-to-read guide for parents and teachers. By working with parents to complete the activities included in this book, high-ability kids will learn to manage stress and anxiety, set and achieve goals, use mental rehearsal to improve performance, manage their moods and emotions, practice optimistic thinking, and resolve their frustrations of needing to belong while needing to achieve. With its research-based strategies and unique approach to maximizing potential, this is a book from which every parent of smart kids can benefit! Educational Resource

Why does my child seem to worry so much? Being the parent of a smart child is great—until your son or daughter starts asking whether global warming is real, if you are going to die, and what will happen if they don't get into college. Kids who are advanced intellectually often let their imaginations ruin wild and experience fears beyond their years. So what can you do to help? In Why Smart Kids Worry, Allison Edwards guides you through the mental and emotional process of where your child's fears come from and why they are so hard to move past. Edwards focuses on how to parent a child who is both smart and anxious and brings her years of experience as a therapist to give you the answers to questions such as: •How do smart kids think differently? •Should I let my child watch the nightly news on TV? •How do I answer questions about terrorists, hurricanes, and other scary subjects? Edwards's fifteen specially designed tools for helping smart kids manage their fears will help you and your child work together to help him or her to become more relaxed and worry-free.

For the frustrated parents of "Conundrum Kids", bright children whose overall academic performance does not match their intellectual capabilities. Concise and authoritative, this much-needed guide is a welcome resource for parents, and teachers.

The second edition of Smart Kids With Learning Difficulties is an updated and comprehensive must-read for parents, teachers, counselors, and other support professionals of bright kids who face learning challenges every day. This practical book discusses who these students are; how to identify them; what needs to be implemented; best practices, programs, and services; and specific actions to ensure student success. Along with tools and tips, each chapter includes Key Points, a new feature that will help focus and facilitate next steps and desired outcomes and follow-up for parents and teachers. The new edition includes a look at current definitions of twice-exceptional students, updated research findings and identification methods, a detailed description of the laws and policies impacting this population, what works and what doesn't work, model schools, Response to Intervention, Understanding by Design, comprehensive assessments, social-emotional principles, and new assistive technology. Featured in The Fresno Bee