Product Description: This book asserts that efforts to reform schools, particularly urban schools, are events that engender a host of issues and conflicts that have been interpreted through the conceptual lens of community.

Product Description: This book is a collage of ideas designed for eighth through twelfth grade students and their parents to have better relationships with one another and with the entire school community, to help and support their communities in different ways, and to appreciate the value of the experiences offered within and outside their communities...read more

Product Description: Service-learning, the integration of classroom instruction with community service projects, is rapidly gaining momentum as a successful teaching and learning strategy that benefits both students and their communities. Quick Hits for Service-Learning presents more than 80 examples of innovative curricula, developed by educators in a wide range of disciplines, designed to combine community service with instruction and reflection...read more

Product Description: In this book, author and teacher Katy Ridnouer focuses on the potentially overwhelming, sometimes puzzling, often delicate work of engaging both students and parents in the pursuit of learning and achievement. Structured around the questions teachers ask themselves about engagement goals and challenges, Everyday Engagement offers specific strategies to try in your classroom, with your students, and with their parents that will help you* Connect with students and parents as individuals...read more

Product Description: Classroom teachers and youth program leaders looking for material on service-learning will treasure this comprehensive how-to guide. This practical handbook takes a step-by-step approach through every stage of a service-learning project: from choosing the appropriate assignment to planning, organizing, and evaluating results upon completion...read more

Product Description: Creating Effective Partnerships for School Improvement places the school within the community which is composed of a number of key players, including school leaders, classroom teachers, private foundations, higher education institutions, business and community based organizations, and government agencies...read more

Youth Community Inquiry offers a detailed look at how young people use new media to help their communities thrive. Chapters address questions about learning, digital technology, and community engagement through the theory of community inquiry. The settings range from a small farming town, to a mostly immigrant community, to inner-city Chicago, and include youth from ages eight to 20. Going beyond works on social media in a narrow sense, the projects in these settings involve the use of varied technologies, such as GPS/GIS mapping tools, video production, use of archives and databases, podcasts, and Internet radio. The development of inquiry-based activities serves as a record of the diverse experiences and a guide to future projects. The book concludes with an overview of a curriculum that readers may adapt for their own settings.

Product Description: Youth in Education explores the multiple, interrelated social contexts that young people inhabit and navigate, and how educational institutions cope with increasing ethnic, cultural and ideological diversity. Schools, families and communities represent important settings in which young people must make successful transitions to adulthood, and the classroom often becomes a battleground in which these contexts and values interact...read more

Product Description: The theory, vision, and implementation of a multidisciplinary collaborative approach to social learning The academy is often described as an ivory tower, isolated from the community surrounding it. Presenting the theory, vision, and implementation of a socially engaged program for the Department of Human and Organizational Development (HOD) in Peabody's College of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University, Academics in Action! describes a more integrated model wherein students and faculty work with communities, learn from them, and bring to bear findings from theory and research to generate solutions to community problems...read more

Product Description: Building and Maintaining Collaborative Communities: Schools, University, and Community Organizations is a new and noteworthy volume in the literature on collaboration among schools and universities. It expands the playing field to include both publically and privately funded community organizations and the effects of the interaction of the three on projects in a multitude of settings both domestically and in international venues...read more

Product Description: The evidence-based strategies in this volume close the achievement gap among students from all sociological backgrounds. Designed according to local needs assessments, they provide the services, programs, initiatives, and relationships that are crucial for children's success in school and life...read more