Books and Resources for Teachers

Better Conversations

By: Jim Knight

You don’t want this book—you need this book. Why this confident claim? Think about how many times you’ve walked away from school conversations, sensing they could be more productive, but at a loss for how to improve them.

Enter instructional coaching expert Jim Knight, who in Better Conversations honors our capacity for improving our schools by improving our communication. Asserting that our schools are only as good as the conversations within them, Jim shows us how to adopt the habits essential to transforming the quality of our dialogues.

As coaches, as administrators, as teachers, it’s time to thrive. Learn how to:

• Coach ourselves and each other to become better communicators

• Listen with empathy

• Find common ground

• Build Trust

Hard Conversations UNPACKED

By: Jennifer Abrams

In Having Hard Conversations, Jennifer Abrams showed educators how to confront colleagues about work-related issues through a planned, interactive, and personal approach. In this sequel, readers move deeper into preparing for those conversations while building expectations for meaningful outcomes. Emphasizing what needs to happen before, during, and after hard conversations, this resource explores

• What humane, growth-producing, and “other-centered” conversations sound like

• How to recognize and account for culture, gender, and generational filters

• How to spot and work with organizational dynamics that could influence discussions

• How to conduct hard conversations with supervisors

Engage Every Family

By: Steve Constantino

Family engagement increases student achievement but how do schools connect with families who don’t participate yet? Educators can easily become frustrated trying to reach the disconnected and often fall back to engaging the already engaged. Is it possible to win over everyone? Discover how to move beyond theory to change your culture for better family engagement and student achievement. Through practical steps, reflections, and case studies, you will discover and address:

• How and where family engagement breaks down, and

• How to create a truly inviting culture for successful community and family partnerships

The Behavior Code

By: Jessica Minehan

Based on a collaboration dating back nearly a decade, the authors—a behavioral analyst and a child psychiatrist—reveal their systematic approach for deciphering causes and patterns of difficult behaviors and how to match them with proven strategies for getting students back on track to learn.

How to Reach and Teach Children with Challenging Behavior

By: Kaye Otten

Interventions for students who exhibit challenging behavior

Written by behavior specialists Kaye Otten and Jodie Tuttle--who together have 40 years of experience working with students with challenging behavior in classroom settings--this book offers educators a practical approach to managing problem behavior in schools. It is filled with down-to-earth advice, ready-to-use forms, troubleshooting tips, recommended resources, and teacher-tested strategies. Using this book, teachers are better able to intervene proactively, efficiently, and effectively with students exhibiting behavior problems. The book includes research-backed support for educators and offers:

• Instructions for creating and implementing an effective class-wide behavior management program

• Guidelines for developing engaging lessons and activities that teach and support positive behavior

• Advice for assisting students with the self-regulation and management their behavior and emotions

PRIM

By: Stephen McCarney, Kathy Cummins Wunderlich, and Samm House

The Pre-Referral Intervention Manual (PRIM) provides a direct response to state mandated pre-referral intervention activities. It may be used by a teacher or group of educators, such as a Teacher Assistance Team, to develop a comprehensive plan of intervention strategies for a student.

The Differiented Classroom

By: Carol Ann Tomlinson

• Today's classroom is more diverse, more inclusive, and more plugged into technology than ever before. And it's led by teachers under enormous pressure to help decidedly unstandardized students meet an expanding set of rigorous, standardized learning targets. In this updated second edition of her best-selling classic work, Carol Ann Tomlinson offers these teachers a powerful and practical way to meet a challenge that is both very modern and completely timeless: how to divide their time, resources, and efforts to effectively instruct so many students of various backgrounds, readiness and skill levels, and interests.

Anxiety and Depression in the Classroom

By: Nadja Reilly

• Anxiety and depression are two of the most common mental health problems for young students and can be particularly hard to detect and support. In this book, the first of its kind for teachers, Nadja Reilly lays out with richly detailed examples the signs to look for so educators can direct their students to help and ensure emotional wellness in the classroom. Grounded in recent psychological research and practical self-regulation tools, Reilly opens her study out onto nourishing emotional wellness in all students, communicating with parents, and school-wide mental health advocacy.