Featured Books

The Essential Renewal of America’s Schools: A Leadership Guide for Democratizing Schools from the Inside Out recently received the 2021 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title Award from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) for contribution to the field of school leadership and overall excellence in scholarship. What can today’s educational leaders do to create schools that are purposeful, moral, and successful? In this book, Glickman and Mette provide a powerful set of guidelines that will lead to true school renewal. Using a practical framework for school, district, and community leaders, their roadmap replaces dependence on top-down state and federal regulations, focusing instead on the creation of locally guided initiatives to address local goals. Filled with real-world examples, charts, and illustrations, the text gives teachers, principals, students, parents, central office personnel, school boards, and community members exactly what is needed to remake their schools. Building on Glickman’s highly acclaimed classic, Renewing America’s Schools (1993), this resource is must-reading for anyone involved with school change in today’s divisive and complex times.

We Must Say No to the Status Quo It takes more than good intentions to make meaningful change. The “spirit slashing” of injustice: that’s what Veronica McDermott calls the psychic toll that marginalized students face every day. Students can be marginalized because of race, economic status, language, sexual orientation, ability, or other factors. So how can you make a difference? McDermott, a longtime educator, gives you the tools to become a powerful ally. Click here to buy the We Must Say No to the Status Quo from Amazon.

The Pedagogy of Confidence In her book, Yvette Jackson, NUA CEO, shows educators how to focus on students’ strengths to inspire learning and high intellectual performance. Jackson asserts that the myth that the route to increasing achievement by focusing on weaknesses (promoted by policies such as NCLB) has blinded us to the strengths and intellectual potential of urban students—devaluing the motivation, initiative, and confidence of dedicated educators to search for and optimize this potential. The Pedagogy of Confidence dispels this myth and provides practical approaches to rekindle educators’ belief in their ability to inspire the vast capacity of their urban students. Click here to buy the Pedagogy of Confidence from Amazon.

Aim High, Achieve More: How to Transform Urban Schools Through Fearless Leadership Many urban educators live in fear: of their schools being labeled failures, of increasingly punitive sanctions, of loss of respect and livelihood. This fear pervades the entire school community, affecting the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of its members.The authors of this guide to transformation in urban schools, Yvette Jackson and Veronica McDermott,  are convinced that the key ingredient for school renewal is fearless leadership. Fearless leaders work in schools under-resourced and overburdened and serve disproportionately large numbers of children who live in poverty and face racism daily. They are ordinary educators committed to proving that demographics need not be destiny. Click here to buy Aim High, Achieve More: How to Transform Urban Schools Through Fearless Leadership from Amazon.

 Cooperation: The Key to Successful Schools Use this step by step guide to support your leadership expectations of every person involved either in the immediate day to day operation of the school or with others who are connected to the success of the school. This is a process of improvement that must be continuously nurtured.

Previous Featured Books
(Click on the title to buy through Amazon.)