Spotlighting The Strengths Of Every Single Student

This book explains how a teaching system focused on identifying and stoking each student's strengths--rather than concentrating on deficits--can bring remarkable academic improvement and achievement. It's a familiar and seemingly logical model: to improve performance, identify weaknesses and target these problem areas. Could doing the opposite be a better way? Licensed clinical psychologist Elsie Jones-Smith argues that strengths-based systems are indeed more effective--not just in social work, where the philosophy became popular; or in the business world, where the concept is increasingly being embraced--but in the academic setting as well. Spotlighting the Strengths of Every Single Student: Why U.S. Schools Need a New, Strengths-Based Approach explains how and why a system that focuses on students' strengths enables kids to be self-confident, goal-directed, and to possess a stronger sense of self-efficacy, self-control, and academic achievement. Jones-Smith also explains how such a system spurs appreciation and advancement of multiple intelligences, which in turn gives students the ability to address weaknesses--on their own. Another plus: this approach has also been shown to generally reduce school disciplinary actions and increase class attendance time.

This book explains how a teaching system focused on identifying and stoking each student's strengths—rather than concentrating on deficits—can bring remarkable academic improvement and achievement. It's a familiar and seemingly logical model: to improve performance, identify weaknesses and target these problem areas. Could doing the opposite be a better way? Licensed clinical psychologist Elsie Jones-Smith argues that strengths-based systems are indeed more effective—not just in social work, where the philosophy became popular; or in the business world, where the concept is increasingly being embraced—but in the academic setting as well. Spotlighting the Strengths of Every Single Student: Why U.S. Schools Need a New, Strengths-Based Approach explains how and why a system that focuses on students' strengths enables kids to be self-confident, goal-directed, and to possess a stronger sense of self-efficacy, self-control, and academic achievement. Jones-Smith also explains how such a system spurs appreciation and advancement of multiple intelligences, which in turn gives students the ability to address weaknesses—on their own. Another plus: this approach has also been shown to generally reduce school disciplinary actions and increase class attendance time.

Helping students improve doesn't have to mean remediating their deficits. In this important book, Steven Baron shows the benefits of a strength-based approach that instead emphasizes students' assets and capabilities, making them feel more connected to teachers and peers and more engaged in learning. You’ll learn practical, research-backed ways to help students of all grade levels identify and celebrate their strengths, develop self-confidence and a growth mindset, build intrinsic motivation, overcome a fear of making mistakes, manage their feelings, focus on gratitude, and more. You’ll also discover ways to create a more strength-based Individual Education Plan (IEP), increase your own resilience as a teacher, and build a strength-based culture throughout your school and district. The appendix provides a variety of exercises you can use to help students focus on their strengths, foster kindness, and understand the impact of bullying. Students spend approximately 1300 hours during the year with teachers; this resource will help you make this time as affirming as possible so students are ready to learn and grow.

Combining both the theory and practice of strengths-based therapy, Elsie Jones-Smith introduces current and future practitioners to the modern approach of practice—presenting a model for treatment as well as demonstrations in clinical practice across a variety of settings. This highly effective form of therapy supports the idea that clients know best about what has worked and has not worked in their lives, helps them discover positive and effective solutions through their own experiences, and allows therapists to engage their clients in their own therapy. Drawing from cutting-edge research in neuroscience, positive emotions, empowerment, and change, Strengths-Based Therapy helps readers understand how to get their clients engaged as active participants in treatment.

Culturally Diverse Counseling: Theory and Practice by Elsie Jones-Smith adopts a unique strengths-based approach in teaching students to focus on the positive attributes of individual clients and incorporate those strengths, along with other essential cultural considerations, into their diagnosis and treatment. With an emphasis on strengths as recommended in the 2017 multicultural guidelines set forth by the American Psychological Association (APA), this comprehensive text includes considerations for clinical practice with twelve groups, including older adults, immigrants and refugees, clients with disabilities, and multiracial clients. Each chapter includes practical guidelines for counselors, including opportunities for students to identify and curb their own implicit and explicit biases. A final chapter on social class, social justice, intersectionality, and privilege reminds readers of the various factors they must consider when working with clients of all backgrounds.

A step forward from the traditional textbook on counseling theories, Theories of Counseling and Psychotherapy: An Integrative Approach offers students a comprehensive overview of past and current approaches to psychotherapy and counseling, with a modern approach to theories of psychotherapy. An extensive array of mainstream theories, as well as contemporary approaches such as narrative, feminist, LGBT, and post-modern, are covered. Author Elsie Jones-Smith helps readers to construct their integrated approach to psychotherapy by learning how to develop a broad range of therapeutic expertise to meet the needs of a culturally diverse clientele. In addition to listing and describing theories, this text compares and contrasts them to show their strengths and weaknesses. The Third Edition includes a new chapter on trauma-informed counseling/psychotherapy and provides updated references, sections, and studies reflecting the latest developments within the helping professions. Included with this title: The password-protected Instructor Resource Site (formally known as SAGE Edge) offers access to all text-specific resources, including a test bank and editable, chapter-specific PowerPoint® slides.

This handbook provides foundational, conceptual, and practical knowledge and understanding of inclusive education and special needs education. It highlights the need for preparing special educators and teachers for inclusive classrooms to effectively cater to the needs of students with diverse needs in various low-, middle-, and high-income countries globally. It demonstrates various evidence-based and practice-based strategies required to create classrooms inclusive of diverse learners. While tracing the historical trajectory of the foundational underpinnings, philosophical bases, and crucial issues associated with inclusive education, this book presents a future roadmap and pathways through case instances and in-depth discussions to share with educators how they can strengthen their bases and make learning more inclusive in their context. It also provides an overview of the different models of assessment and their applications in the analysis of children in inclusive classroom settings. Comprehensive, accessible, and nuanced, this handbook will be of immense interest and benefit to teachers, educators, special educators, students, scholars, and researchers in the areas of social inclusion, education, special needs education, educational psychology, technology for inclusion, disability studies, among other related disciplines. It will be extremely beneficial for academicians, teacher educators, special educators, and those interested in professional teacher training courses.

Much has been written about special education and about inclusive education, but there have been few attempts to pull these two concepts and approaches together. This book does just that: sets special education within the context of inclusive education. It posits that to include, effectively, all children with special educational needs in schools requires an integration of both concepts, approaches, and techniques. It has never been more timely to publish a book that helps professionals who work with schools, such as psychologists, special education professionals, and counselors, to identify effective practices for children with special needs and provide guidelines for implementing these in inclusive schools.