LITMIR.BIZ

With beautifully crafted words and exuberant watercolor illustrations, Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty offers a poetic and empowering message for world peace. Recognizing «we are right on the edge of destroying ourselves,» this modern allegory inspires taking joyful steps to end violence. It expands upon the idea that «we are all in the circle together,» and presents a timeless parable for readers of all ages. The Haiku-like text delivers a call to «make a new earth grow beneath our feet.»In the playful style of 12th century Japanese picture scrolls, Mayumi Oda's art depicts humans as animals who lose their way when their leaders become confused and drawn to violence. It is up to each individual?the frog who plants a thriving garden, the cat who supports an elderly neighbor as they walk?to create a better world through simple acts of kindness. The message of this book is the sweet realization that each person can become an agent of goodness and beauty.This twentieth-anniversary, full-color edition, with a new foreword by venerable peacemaker Desmond Tutu, is dedicated to world peace and recovery in the face of world climate crises. All royalties will be donated to community resiliency across boundaries and antinuclear advocacy.

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Shares the voices of students speaking out against the failures of urban education "Our schools suck." This is how many young people of color call attention to the kind of public education they are receiving. In cities across the nation, many students are trapped in under-funded, mismanaged and unsafe schools. Yet, a number of scholars and of public figures have shifted attention away from the persistence of school segregation to lambaste the values of young people themselves. Our Schools Suck forcefully challenges this assertion by giving voice to the compelling stories of African American and Latino students who attend under-resourced inner-city schools, where guidance counselors and AP classes are limited and security guards and metal detectors are plentiful—and grow disheartened by a public conversation that continually casts them as the problem with urban schools.By showing that young people are deeply committed to education but often critical of the kind of education they are receiving, this book highlights the dishonesty of public claims that they do not value education. Ultimately, these powerful student voices remind us of the ways we have shirked our public responsibility to create excellent schools. True school reform requires no less than a new civil rights movement, where adults join with young people to ensure an equal education for each and every student.

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How do economic conditions such as poverty, unemployment, inflation, and economic growth impact youth violence? Economics and Youth Violence provides a much-needed new perspective on this crucial issue. Pinpointing the economic factors that are most important, the editors and contributors in this volume explore how different kinds of economic issues impact children, adolescents, and their families, schools, and communities. Offering new and important insights regarding the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and youth violence across a variety of times and places, chapters cover such issues as the effect of inflation on youth violence; new quantitative analysis of the connection between race, economic opportunity, and violence; and the cyclical nature of criminal backgrounds and economic disadvantage among families. Highlighting the complexities in the relationship between economic conditions, juvenile offenses, and the community and situational contexts in which their connections are forged, Economics and Youth Violence prompts important questions that will guide future research on the causes and prevention of youth violence. Contributors: Sarah Beth Barnett, Eric P. Baumer, Philippe Bourgois, Shawn Bushway, Philip J. Cook, Robert D. Crutchfield, Linda L. Dahlberg, Mark Edberg, Jeffrey Fagan, Xiangming Fang, Curtis S. Florence, Ekaterina Gorislavsky, Nancy G. Guerra, Karen Heimer, Janet L. Lauritsen, Jennifer L. Matjasko, James A. Mercy, Matthew Phillips, Richard Rosenfeld, Tim Wadsworth, Valerie West, Kevin T. Wolff

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In Class Dismissed, John Marsh debunks a myth cherished by journalists, politicians, and economists: that growing poverty and inequality in the United States can be solved through education. Using sophisticated analysis combined with personal experience in the classroom, Marsh not only shows that education has little impact on poverty and inequality, but that our mistaken beliefs actively shape the way we structure our schools and what we teach in them.Rather than focus attention on the hierarchy of jobs and power—where most jobs require relatively little education, and the poor enjoy very little political power—money is funneled into educational endeavors that ultimately do nothing to challenge established social structures, and in fact reinforce them. And when educational programs prove ineffective at reducing inequality, the ones whom these programs were intended to help end up blaming themselves. Marsh’s struggle to grasp the connection between education, poverty, and inequality is both powerful and poignant.

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In an age when innovative scholarly work is at an all-time high, the academy itself is being rocked by structural change. Funding is plummeting. Tenure increasingly seems a prospect for only the elite few. Ph.D.'s are going begging for even adjunct work. Into this tumult steps Cary Nelson, with a no- holds-barred account of recent developments in higher education. Eloquent and witty, Manifesto of a Tenured Radical urges academics to apply the theoretical advances of the last twenty years to an analysis of their own practices and standards of behavior. In the process, Nelson offers a devastating critique of current inequities and a detailed proposal for change in the form of A Twelve-Step Program for Academia.

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Sixteen year old Josephine Adams was fast approaching her seventeenth birthday. She was the first child of a second marriage who, together with her brother, had grown up in a favoured position with everything that money could buy, including her horse, Prince. Her half brothers and sisters, on the other hand, were treated appallingly. As a result they despised Josephine and were jealous, not only of her possessions, but also of the love that she received from their father and step mother.
The hatred came to a head following the grand celebrations laid on for Josephine’s seventeenth birthday, and her belief that she had been chosen by God to perform some special task. The gift of a gleaming red four-by-four and matching horse trailer became symbols of the favoured position she held in her father’s eyes. Such was the level of hatred that built up that eventually Josephine fled, fearing for her life.
It was during the difficult time that followed, that Josephine experienced a closeness to God and a relevance of her childhood Christian faith that she could never have imagined possible. As a result, she lived out her faith by demonstrating honesty and conscientiousness in her new work and home situations – and beyond.
Whilst in prison, after being unjustly accused, Josephine recognised God’s calling to her. After becoming aware of the amount of power that the media had over society – for good or harm, she confronted the editor of a publication concerning the irresponsible way in which he was publishing material that was unhelpful to people. As a result, together they were able to harness some of the media’s power for good, and use it to help build up society. After her release from prison, Josephine organised a huge community initiative through the magazine, and before long people’s lives were being touched in an amazing ways through Christ-like love in action – a love which seems to be contagious. As for the family – Could such a family ever be reconciled?

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This book provides an overview of some of the coolest and most exciting tech projects happening today – all pioneered by badass women, who saw a problem that needed solving, and wouldn't take no for an answer. It should inspire, excite, and encourage young minds to think about how they could make a difference too.

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Examines the roles of historical, cultural, and personal identities in the classroom Can whites teach African-American literature effectively and legitimately? What is at issue when a man teaches a women's studies course? How effectively can a straight woman educate students about gay and lesbian history? What are the political implications of the study of the colonizers by the colonized? More generally, how does the identity of an educator affect his or her credibility with students and with other educators? In incident after well-publicized incident, these abstract questions have turned up in America's classrooms and in national media, often trivialized as the latest example of PC excess. Going beyond simplistic headlines, Teaching What You're Not broaches these and many other difficult questions. With contributions from scholars in a variety of disciplines, the book examines the ways in which historical, cultural, and personal identities impact pedagogy and scholarship. Essays cover such topics as the outsider's gaze as it applies to the study of non-white literature; an able-bodied woman's reflections on teaching literature by disabled women; and the challenges of teaching the Western canon at an African American college.

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Design and teach effective learning goals and objectives by following strategies based on the strongest research available. This book includes a summary of key research behind these classroom practices and shows how to implement them using step-by-step hands-on strategies. Short quizzes help readers assess their understanding of the instructional best practices explained in each section.

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