Teaching Outside The Lines

Music Outside the Lines is an informative and practical resource for all who are invested in making music composition an integral part of curriculum. Author Maud Hickey addresses the practical needs of music educators by offering both a well-grounded justification for teaching music composition and also a compendium of useful instructional ideas and classroom activities. Hickey begins with a rationale for teachers to begin composition activities in their own classrooms, with a thoughtful argument that demonstrates that all music teachers possess the skills and training needed to take children along the path toward composing satisfying musical compositions even if they themselves have never taken formal composition lessons. She also addresses some of the stickier issues that plague teaching music composition in schools such as assessment, notation, and technology. Most importantly, she introduces a curricular model for teaching composition, a model which provides an array of composition activities to try in the music classrooms and studios. These activities encourage musical and creative growth through music composition; while they are organized in logical units corresponding to existing teaching modules, they also offer jumping off points for music teachers to exercise their own creative thinking and create music composition activities that are customized to their classes and needs. As a whole, Music Outside the Lines both successfully reasons that music composition should be at the core of school music curriculum and also provides inservice and pre-service educators with an essential resource and compendium of practical tips and plans for fulfilling this goal.

Make Creativity The Center Of The Curriculum! In our fast-changing world, the ability to think independently and innovatively is no longer a “nice extra”—it’s a survival skill. This book delivers surefire strategies for equipping learners across all grades and subjects with the motivation and critical thinking skills to thrive in our high-tech future. Content includes: Why “one right answer” instruction paradigms discourage critical thinking and risk-taking Why merely using the latest technology class does not equate to teaching creatively Projects and prompts that ask the question “So what does this mean in the classroom today?”

So begins this controversial and enlightened book by Roger Schank, Ph.D., a world-renowned expert on teaming, who believes that every day of the school year our children are being failed by an academic system that does nothing to stir a lifelong passion for learning. In this lively, sometimes alarming book, Schank shatters the myths about how children learn and offers candid advice for parents who want to raise kids with gumption, ambition, creativity, inquisitiveness, and analytic and verbal proficiency.

Learning with YOUR purpose in mind -- not your parents', not your teacher's, not your school's Every day, your school, your teachers, and even your peers draw lines to measure and standardize intelligence. They decide what criteria make one person smart and another person stupid. They decide who will succeed and who will just get by. Perhaps you find yourself outside the norm, because you learn differently -- but, unlike your classmates, you have no system in place that consistently supports your ability and desire to learn. Simply put, you are considered lazy and stupid. You are expected to fail. Learning Outside the Lines is written by two such "academic failures" -- that is, two academic failures who graduated from Brown University at the top of their class. Jonathan Mooney and David Cole teach you how to take control of your education and find true success -- and they offer all the reasons why you should persevere. Witty, bold, and disarmingly honest, Learning Outside the Lines takes you on a journey toward personal empowerment and profound educational change, proving once again that rules sometimes need to be broken.

Make Creativity The Center Of The Curriculum! In our fast-changing world, the ability to think independently and innovatively is no longer a “nice extra”—it’s a survival skill. This book delivers surefire strategies for equipping learners across all grades and subjects with the motivation and critical thinking skills to thrive in our high-tech future. Content includes: Why “one right answer” instruction paradigms discourage critical thinking and risk-taking Why merely using the latest technology class does not equate to teaching creatively Projects and prompts that ask the question “So what does this mean in the classroom today?”

Winner of a Sydney Taylor Book Award Honor! A heartfelt novel about a neurodivergent thirteen-year-old navigating changing friendships, a school trip, and expanding horizons for fans of Rain Reign and Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World. Thirteen-year-old Ellen Katz feels most comfortable when her life is well planned out and people fit neatly into her predefined categories. She attends temple with Abba and Mom every Friday and Saturday. Ellen only gets crushes on girls, never boys, and she knows she can always rely on her best-and-only friend, Laurel, to help navigate social situations at their private Georgia middle school. Laurel has always made Ellen feel like being autistic is no big deal. But lately, Laurel has started making more friends, and cancelling more weekend plans with Ellen than she keeps. A school trip to Barcelona seems like the perfect place for Ellen to get their friendship back on track. Except it doesn't. Toss in a new nonbinary classmate whose identity has Ellen questioning her very binary way of seeing the world, homesickness, a scavenger hunt-style team project that takes the students through Barcelona to learn about Spanish culture and this trip is anything but what Ellen planned. Making new friends and letting go of old ones is never easy, but Ellen might just find a comfortable new place for herself if she can learn to embrace the fact that life doesn't always stick to a planned itinerary.

All of us yearn to be creative, but few of us feel we truly are. In this fun-to-read, energy-packed guide to stimulating our ingenuity, Hendricks proposes a nine-step process for unleashing an exciting spark of creativity and innovation in our lives, including creative approaches to problem solving such as mind-mapping, storyboarding, brainstorming, and five-sensing. With dynamic examples and proven concepts, Hendricks helps us to identify roadblocks that may keep us from being creative in our lives and ministries, and helps to unleash our creative potential.

Whether the issue of the day on Twitter, Facebook, or cable news is our sexuality, political divides, or the perceived conflict between faith and science, today’s media pushes each one of us into a frustrating clash between two opposing sides. Polarizing, us-against-them discussions divide us and distract us from thinking clearly and communicating lovingly with others. Scott Sauls, like many of us, is weary of the bickering and is seeking a way of truth and beauty through the conflicts. Jesus Outside the Lines presents Jesus as this way. Scott shows us how the words and actions of Jesus reveal a response that does not perpetuate the destructive fray. Jesus offers us a way forward—away from harshness, caricatures, and stereotypes. In Jesus Outside the Lines, you will experience a fresh perspective of Jesus, who will not (and should not) fit into the sides.