Pasi Sahlberg

Interested in a twist on the classic educational leadership tale? Think that schools can be engaging, inviting places that make a difference for not only the students and staff but the greater community as well? Want to discuss what you would do if it was 'your call'? Then consider the story of this school leader who gets it right . . . most of the time! After returning to the junior high he went to, ‘Guitar Principal’ Robinson Spur is having problems in his rookie year as principal. Angry staff, a walled-off stage, demanding parents, budget shortfalls, a vengeful mentor, economic challenges, and community pressure to produce results are all adding up. And now, a looming showdown between his two toughest combatants might actually end his short-lived run in the office. How will he lead his students and staff out of this mess? Is the community right? Is Holfield Junior High really beyond hope? Not if a small group of committed students, staff, and their electric guitars have anything to say about it! Inspired by real events at a midwestern junior high that decided to make a change for the better, this story will entertain and provoke. If using your building's available assets to build staff leadership capacity, encourage community engagement, and increase student voice to improve your school is what you desire . . . then this book is definitely for you!

What would happen if you built one of the world’s most advanced societies inside a forest—and strove to make women full partners in power? After living for twenty-five years in New York, Naomi Moriyama moved with her husband and co-author William Doyle and their seven-year-old child to the vast forest of Finland's Karelia, a mysterious region on the Russian border that helped inspire J.R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth fantasies. She entered a life-altering zone of tranquility, peace, and beauty, the spiritual heart of the nation ranked as the happiest nation on Earth, with among the world's most empowered women. Finland is also the country with cleanest air and water and the best schools, a country where motherhood and fatherhood are championed by law, childhood is revered, schoolchildren are required to play outdoors multiple times a day, and trains contain mini-libraries and mini-playgrounds for children to enjoy. It was here in the Karelian forest that Naomi found a culinary symphony of succulent wild edibles, herbs, berries, mushrooms and fish, all freshly plucked from the moss-carpeted forest and sparkling clear streams. She also found something that changed her life—a tribe of invincible women who became her soul-sisters. As an idyllic summer and fall gave way to a sub-Arctic winter of mind-bending darkness and cold, Naomi faced her fears and her future. Over the course of six unforgettable months with her family and her new “sisters”, she found her life transformed, and discovered the power that lay within her all along. Then she tried to leave. But she kept coming back. Come, take a journey deep into Europe's most distant, magical wilderness, and join the sisterhood of the enchanted forest.

A revolutionary reappraisal of how to educate our children and young people by Ken Robinson, the New York Times bestselling author of The Element and Finding Your Element. Ken Robinson is one of the world’s most influential voices in education, and his 2006 TED Talk on the subject is the most viewed in the organization’s history. Now, the internationally recognized leader on creativity and human potential focuses on one of the most critical issues of our time: how to transform the nation’s troubled educational system. At a time when standardized testing businesses are raking in huge profits, when many schools are struggling, and students and educators everywhere are suffering under the strain, Robinson points the way forward. He argues for an end to our outmoded industrial educational system and proposes a highly personalized, organic approach that draws on today’s unprecedented technological and professional resources to engage all students, develop their love of learning, and enable them to face the real challenges of the twenty-first century. Filled with anecdotes, observations and recommendations from professionals on the front line of transformative education, case histories, and groundbreaking research—and written with Robinson’s trademark wit and engaging style—Creative Schools will inspire teachers, parents, and policy makers alike to rethink the real nature and purpose of education.

The prize-winning PBS correspondent's provocative antidote to America's misguided approaches to K-12 school reform During an illustrious four-decade career at NPR and PBS, John Merrow―winner of the George Polk Award, the Peabody Award, and the McGraw Prize―reported from every state in the union, as well as from dozens of countries, on everything from the rise of district-wide cheating scandals and the corporate greed driving an ADD epidemic to teacher-training controversies and America's obsession with standardized testing. Along the way, he taught in a high school, at a historically black college, and at a federal penitentiary. Now, the revered education correspondent of PBS NewsHour distills his best thinking on education into a twelve-step approach to fixing a K–12 system that Merrow describes as being "addicted to reform" but unwilling to address the real issue: American public schools are ill-equipped to prepare young people for the challenges of the twenty-first century. This insightful book looks at how to turn digital natives into digital citizens and why it should be harder to become a teacher but easier to be one. Merrow offers smart, essential chapters―including "Measure What Matters," and "Embrace Teachers"―that reflect his countless hours spent covering classrooms as well as corridors of power. His signature candid style of reportage comes to life as he shares lively anecdotes, schoolyard tales, and memories that are at once instructive and endearing. Addicted to Reform is written with the kind of passionate concern that could come only from a lifetime devoted to the people and places that constitute the foundation of our nation. It is a "big book" that forms an astute and urgent blueprint for providing a quality education to every American child.