Adventures in Learning's Recommendations

A Still Quiet Place: A Mindfulness Program for Teaching Children and Adolescents to Ease Stress and Difficult Emotions by Amy Saltzman MD

Summery:

A Still Quiet Place presents an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program that therapists, teachers, and other professionals can use to help children and adolescents manage stress and anxiety in their lives, and develop their natural capacities for emotional fluency, respectful communication, and compassionate action. The program detailed in this book is based on author Amy Saltzman’s original curriculum, which has helped countless children and adolescents achieve significant improvements in attention and reduced anxiety.

One of the easiest ways to find the still quiet place within is to practice mindfulness—paying attention to your life experience here and now with kindness and curiosity. The easy-to-implement mindfulness practices in this guide are designed to help increase children and adolescents’ attention, learning, resiliency, and compassion by showing them how to experience the natural quietness that can be found within.

The still quiet place is a place of peace and happiness that is alive inside all of us, and you can find it just by closing your eyes and breathing.

Find it Here

I am hoping to use some to use this book this year to help create a culture of mindfulness in our classroom. I will be sharing a number of other books on mindfulness that I hope to use in the classroom this year.

3M Peltor X-Series Over-the-Head Earmuffs, NRR 22 dB, One Size Fits Most

Product Features

Over-the-head hearing protection with Noise Reduction Rating (NRR) of 22 dB for low to moderate noise exposures

Twin headband design helps reduce heat buildup with good fit and balance

Wire headband offers comfortable pressure during prolonged usage

Earcups tilt to ensure a customized fit and comfort for individual users

Electrically insulated (dielectric) wire headband helps reduce exposure to electrical hazards

We bought a few pairs of these for our first graders. Do you have successful experience using these in your class to help with students who need help with processing or have sensory needs in the classroom?

Love to hear your thoughts and stories using these in your classroom.

find them here.

Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom by Sylvia Libow Martinez (Author), Gary S. Stager

This is a great resource for any teacher who wants to create a "maker space" in their classroom or begin to incorporate Maker Space learning into your curriculum. 

I have taken a workshop with Gary Stager and know him online (find him on twitter here. His work is really great.

here is a summery:

Join the maker movement! There’s a technological and creative revolution underway. Amazing new tools, materials and skills turn us all into makers. Using technology to make, repair or customize the things we need brings engineering, design and computer science to the masses. Fortunately for educators, this maker movement overlaps with the natural inclinations of children and the power of learning by doing. The active learner is at the center of the learning process, amplifying the best traditions of progressive education. This book helps educators bring the exciting opportunities of the maker movement to every classroom.

Also here is a great article by the author

Top ten ways to start with “maker education”

Two books on Grassroots Organizing that Every Teacher Should Read.

Bridging the Class Divide: And Other Lessons for Grassroots Organizing

summery:

Again and again social change movements--on matter s from the environment to women's rights--have been run by middle-class leaders. But in order to make real progress toward economic and social change, poor people--those most affected by social problems--must be the ones to speak up and lead. It can be done. Linda Stout herself grew up in poverty in rural North Carolina and went on to found one of this country's most successful and innovative grassroots organizations, the Piedmont Peace Project. Working for peace, jobs, health care, and basic social services in North Carolina's conservative Piedmont region, the project has attracted national attention for its success in drawing leadership from within a working-class community, actively encouraging diversity, and empowering people who have never had a voice in policy decisions to speak up for their own interests. The Piedmont Peace Project demonstrates that new ways of organizing can really work. Bridging the Class Divide tells the inspiring story of Linda Stout's life as the daughter of a tenant farmer, as a self-taught activist, and as a leader in the progressive movement. It also gives practical lessons on how to build real working relationships between people of different income levels, races, and genders. This book will inspire and enrich anyone who works for change in our society.

Collective Visioning: How Groups Can Work Together for a Just and Sustainable Future

summery:

In far too many organizational meetings, equal speaking opportunity seldom results in equal say. Factors such as race, class, and personal history too often inhibit open dialogue within and among groups, which can lead to a sense of disenfranchisement within the organization, and subsequently, disillusionment with the movement. Collective Visioning is the first visioning method to address these hurdles in the organizing process and to fully enable members to share their opinions without hesitation. Linda Stout uses her background and her own personal experience of marginalization within the organizing community to show how trainers can be more mindful of the diversity of their members as they strive toward a common goal.

The book features a clear, actionable, step-by-step process to set up and create a welcoming space for activist leaders to collaborate for positive change. Stout details ways in which trainers should reach out to different groups, listen to and understand needs and concerns of the group, create a welcoming space for all voices, foster agreements, ensure the visibility of all members.

Highly recommend each of these books. I have had the pleasure of working with and learning from Linda Stout. These two books changed the way I approach at my role as a teacher; my role as a community organizer and change maker.   Her approach is both straight forward and positive, focusing on giving voice and vision to new leaders and changemakers. Her work is profound and will help teachers understand how to use their role in education to help create positive change in their communities both locally and nationally.

It is also important during the current events in #Ferguson to know how to talk to your students and families about what is happening. Also what is happening their could easily happen in your communities. The visioning method is also just a great way to thinking about approaching a student centered education. I love this work, so feel free to message me if you want to discuss it or have any questions.

Find both books here

I am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up For Education And Was Shot By The Taliban, by Christian Lamb and Malala Yousafzai

find here

Summery:

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive. Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she has become a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest nominee ever for the Nobel Peace Prize. I AM MALALAis the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls' education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons. I AM MALALAwill make you believe in the power of one person's voice to inspire change in the world.

Books about Math for students, and teacher who HATE math!

The Man Who Counted by Malba Tahan

Malba Tahan is the creation of a celebrated Brazilian mathematician who was looking for a way to bring some of the mysteries and delights of mathematics to a wider public. He turned out to be a born storyteller.

Life By the Numbers by Kevin Devlin

In this captivating companion to the landmark PBS series Life by the Numbers, acclaimed author Keith Devlin reveals the astonishing range of creative and powerful ways in which scientists, artists, athletes, medical researchers, and many others are using mathematics to explore our world and to enhance our lives.