The purpose of this guide is to illuminate best practices for meaningful engagement of youth in Community Schools and to recognize youth voice as a community asset that can help advance more equitable school systems. Youth voice plays an important role in redesigning how public education functions. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted education and…

Visible Thinking--a research-based approach developed at Harvard's Project Zero -- prompts and promotes students' thinking. This approach has been shown to positively impact student engagement, learning, and development as thinkers. Visible Thinking involves using thinking routines, documentation, and effective questioning and listening techniques…

YA author Pérez offers encouragement and insight into book challenges today, which are about much more than just a book. Offering tips for how to prepare for challenges and amplify student voices, the reader will also find ideas to help marginalized learners still find their way to targeted books.

How do you organize what may seem like a chaotic mess into a classroom that empowers students to engage with content and pursue their passions? "A Meaningful Mess" offers suggestions and specific tools that can be used to engage this generation of students in meaningful, relevant, and student-driven learning experiences--even if things…

This toolkit provides state and local CTE leaders with actionable resources, guidance and tools to ensure CTE learner voices are elevated and heard for the improvement of CTE policies and practices. The learner voice is often neglected when decisions are made about Career Technical Education (CTE) programs, even though learners themselves are…

Hungry for lively and engaging ways to augment word study? Looking for ways to empower your students and give voice to their ideas? "In Word Study That Sticks," teacher and literacy consultant Pamela Koutrakos provides a step-by-step approach that makes word learning jubilant and fun -- and encourages students to take ownership of word…

Empower your alienated students to cultivate a deep sense of belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity. This fully updated edition of "Reclaiming Youth at Risk" by Larry K. Brendtro, Martin Brokenleg, and Steve Van Bockern merges Native American knowledge and Western science to create a unique alternative for reaching disconnected…

"Place: it's where we're from; it's where we're going. . . . It asks for our attention and care. If we pay attention, place has much to teach us." With this belief as a foundation, "The Power of Place" offers a comprehensive and compelling case for making communities the locus of learning for students of all ages and…

Let's face it--teaching can be stressful. In this generation of Common Core Standards and highstakes testing, educators are often left without the time to plan positive behavioral supports or the sanity to cultivate compassionate relationships with their students. Even though they understand the critical relationship between behavior and…

Fostering Opportunities is an innovative student engagement program for middle school and high school students who have experienced foster care. The goal of the program is to help youth who have experienced foster care be successful in school and ultimately earn a high school credential. Fostering Opportunities was developed because of the clear…

Traditionally, schools have often made decisions about instruction, discipline, and other schoolwide policies without youth involvement. And yet, research suggests that when students have choice, control, and leadership opportunities, their motivation and engagement increase, which in turn is linked with better educational outcomes. This new guide…

The checklist in this document is intended to provide schools, districts, or other stakeholders in secondary transition with a framework for determining the degree to which their program is implementing practices that are likely to lead to more positive post-school outcomes for students with disabilities. A team should consider the definition of…

Although over 80 percent of the 1.5 million students who enter community colleges each year indicate they intend to attain a bachelor's degree or higher, less than 40 percent earn any form of college credential within six years. This discussion starter is designed to help both higher education professionals and the average citizen work through how…

Today's library is still at the heart of all university activities, helping students and faculty become better learners, teachers, and researchers. In recent years there has emerged the formalizing of one or more of these activities into an Academic Commons. These centers of information have been labeled variously but they all share a commonality:…

Most educators agree that children learn better in an honoring and respectful culture. They also know that top-down imposed change rarely sticks. In "Transforming School Climate and Learning", Bill Preble and Rick Gordon show how to accomplish lasting results by engaging both teachers and students in the five-step SafeMeasures[TM] process, a…