Education Philosophy

Born in 1870 in Chiaravalle, Italy, Maria Montessori would grow up to embody almost every trait men of her era detested in the fairer sex. She was self-confident, strong-willed, and had a fiery temper at a time when women were supposed to be soft and pliable. At around age thirty, Montessori was struck by the condition of children in the slums of Rome's San Lorenzo neighborhood, and realized what she wanted to do with her life: change the school, and therefore the world, through a new approach to the child's mind.

Culturally Responsive School Leadership focuses on how school leaders can effectively serve minoritized students - those who have been historically marginalized in school and society. The book demonstrates how leaders can engage students, parents, teachers, and communities in ways that positively impact learning by honoring indigenous heritages and local cultural practices.

While social and emotional learning (SEL) is most familiar as compartmentalized programs separate from academics, the truth is, all learning is social and emotional. What teachers say, the values we express, the materials and activities we choose, and the skills we prioritize all influence how students think, see themselves, and interact with content and with others.

Ron Ritchhart's new book, Cultures of Thinking in Action, takes the next step in helping listeners not only understand how a culture of thinking looks and feels, but also how to create it for themselves and their learners. Arguing that no set of practices or techniques alone is sufficient to create a culture of thinking in and of itself, Ritchhart explores the underlying beliefs that motivate the creation of cultures of thinking, presenting key mindsets every educator and leader needs to embrace.

Leadership in Higher Education explains the fundamental principles that support these practices and provides case examples of people in higher education who demonstrate each one. Drawing on the same pioneering research that formed the foundation of their classic best seller The Leadership Challenge, James Kouzes and Barry Posner offer a set of leadership skills and practices that will make a significant difference in every area of higher education - faculty, administration, library services, career counseling, auxiliary services, campus safety, and more.

Recharge the optimism that made you an educator in the first place! Choosing optimism—even in the face of tough challenges—helps restore the healthy interactions and positive relationships necessary for enacting real school change. This inspiring, humorous book is filled with research-based strategies, practical examples, and thought-provoking scenarios.

Growing up in middle-class suburban Los Angeles in the 1980s, Rina Bliss was saw intelligence as her ticket out. Like height and stature, intelligence was said to run in families. The prevailing idea was that mental capacity was determined by our DNA and could be measured; a simple IQ test could predict a child’s future.

Discover the magic of the Indonesian island of Bali in this captivating book on its history, from the origins of Bali’s geological formation until modern times. Bali is known as “the Island of the Gods”, with its tens of thousands of temples and shrines dating back more than a millennium to the exotic Indianized empires of Java that influenced Bali greatly. Although it bore witness to the ancient Maritime Silk Road of Southeast Asia, Bali mysteriously avoided complete domination by ocean traders and European colonizers until as late as the 20th century.

The Unteachables examines the overrepresentation of Black students in special education over the course of the twentieth century. As African American children integrated predominantly white schools, many were disproportionately labeled educable mentally retarded (EMR), learning disabled (LD), and emotionally behavioral disordered (EBD). Keith A. Mayes charts the evolution of disability categories and how these labels kept Black learners segregated in American classrooms.

Whether teaching your child how to ride a bike or teaching 200 people how to use a new data entry system, this book will give you practical ways to make the learning environment conducive to all learners.

From a highly regarded feminist cultural critic and professor comes a polemic arguing that the stifling sense of sexual danger sweeping American campuses doesn't empower women, it impedes the fight for gender equality. Feminism is broken, argues Laura Kipnis, if anyone thinks the sexual hysteria overtaking American campuses is a sign of gender progress.

Do you admire those who seem to have it figured out and keep their cool, no matter what’s happening all around them? Here’s how you can do it too. The fact is modern living can be confusing, physically and mentally taxing as well as emotionally draining. For everyone. Don’t worry, it isn’t just you. For millennia, Stoicism has cleared a path for practitioners through the maze of difficulties and distractions that make living such a challenge. The good news is that Stoicism is a practical philosophy. It is immediately applicable to any situation.

En 1907, Maria Montessori, l'une des premières femmes médecins d'Italie, ouvre une école d'un nouveau genre au service d'une vision inédite de l'enfant, envisagé comme une personne libre et épanouie, qui apprend spontanément. Sa méthode ? Une pédagogie qui respecte ce qu'est l'enfant, les étapes de son développement, ses exigences, ses besoins. Ce projet d'une éducation nouvelle, qui s'inscrit dans la promotion de la paix universelle et du progrès, repose sur trois piliers.

How do you close the achievement gap? Start by changing the question. When we use the achievement gap to define success, we shortchange our students. It’s time to recognize that the potential for greatness lies in a unique form within each child—and that the goal of education should be to encourage and develop it. This inspiring manifesto brings in research from different disciplines and demonstrates how to uncover individual greatness by giving students control of their learning.

Grounded in extensive research and reporting, Spy Schools reveals how academia has emerged as a frontline in the global spy game. In a knowledge-based economy, universities are repositories of valuable information and research, where brilliant minds of all nationalities mingle freely with few questions asked. Intelligence agencies have always recruited bright undergraduates, but now, in an era when espionage increasingly requires specialized scientific or technological expertise, they're wooing higher-level academics.

Since the early Egyptians, human beings have formalized the business of learning, setting up a designated environment of some form to pass knowledge and learning on to groups of students. In this second edition of his Very Short Introduction, Gary Thomas explores how and why education has evolved as it has, examining the ways in which it has responded over the centuries to various influences in politics, philosophy, and the social sciences.

In this classic 1948 memoir, now in its fourth edition, Caroline Pratt recounts, in a wry authorial voice much closer to Will Rogers than John Dewey, how she founded what is now the dynamic City and Country School in New York City; invented the maple "unit blocks” that have become a staple in classrooms and children’s homes around the globe; and came to play an important role in reimagining preschool and primary-school education in ways that resound in the tumultuously creative age before us.

These are strange times. A time of climate crises. Health crises. Collapsing systems. Influencers. And yes—Jordan Peterson. We are currently living in a (Post) Peterson Paradigm. This book–12 Rules for (Academic) Life—explores what has happened to teaching, learning and politics through this odd and chaotic time. Deploying feminism, this lens offers a glass-sharpened view of this moment in international higher education. It is organized through twelve mantras for a university sector searching for a purpose in this interregnum.

In Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools, Ron Ritchhart, author of Making Thinking Visible, explains how creating a culture of thinking is more important to learning than any particular curriculum, and he outlines how any school or teacher can accomplish this by leveraging eight cultural forces: expectations, language, time, modeling, opportunities, routines, interactions, and environment.

The alpha male is the kind of guy who gets first class treatment in high places even when hasn't really paid for premium treatment. He has an aura of power and exerts authority by the way he looks, the way he carries himself when alone or around other people. Being an alpha male is more than just getting laid whenever and wherever you want, and is more about taking responsibility for your actions. Being an alpha male isn't a one day kind of thing.