Location: United States |  Change Location
0
Male flipping through Corwin book

Hands-on, Practical Guidance for Educators

From math, literacy, equity, multilingual learners, and SEL, to assessment, school counseling, and education leadership, our books are research-based and authored by experts on topics most relevant to what educators are facing today.

 

In It Together

How Student, Family, and Community Partnerships Advance Engagement and Achievement in Diverse Classrooms

Systematically build school, family, and community partnerships to dramatically ramp-up academic achievement with this comprehensive guide! Includes detailed examples for teacher-student, peer-peer, teacher-parent, and community-at-large relationships.

Full description


Product Details
  • Grade Level: PreK-12
  • ISBN: 9781483316772
  • Published By: Corwin
  • Year: 2015
  • Page Count: 184
  • Publication date: March 04, 2015
Price: $32.95
Volume Discounts applied in Shopping Cart

Review Copies

Review copies may be requested by individuals planning to purchase 10 or more copies for a team or considering a book for adoption in a higher ed course. To request a review copy, contact sales@corwin.com.

Description

Description

Harness the power of teacher, student, school, family, and community partnerships to promote student success

Teaching effectively in diverse classrooms has become more complex than ever. The authors of this practical, compelling, and inspiring book propose that understanding the spheres of influence that connect students with teachers, peers, family members, and the broader community significantly increases the odds that every student will succeed in school. In clear, practitioner-friendly language with examples from an inspiring range of K-12 educators, the authors explore how tapping into the rich resources of teachers, students, families, the school community and the community-at-large can make the work of learning more successful for all involved. Richly detailed vignettes and concrete, evidence-based strategies help you systematically:

  • Build coalitions of support around learning and engagement
  • Develop positive relationships with students, their families and their communities
  • Foster positive, reciprocal partnerships
  • Promote peer-to-peer relationship building
  • Support students and families from marginalized populations

Learn to draw from the rich resources found within your learning community to build bridges to academic success for all learners. This comprehensive book shows you how!

"Building meaningful relationships in education can be difficult, particularly when the parties involved are different from one another in identity, experience, and other ways. As a result, although in principle collaborations and partnerships in education are universally lauded, in practice they are often ignored. What we need are examples of partnerships that work. In it Together by Debbie Zacarain and Michael Silverstone suggests productive ways to work with, learn from, and form authentic relationships with diverse communities. Combining their abundant experience in classrooms and schools, and using examples from caring teachers in diverse classrooms, the authors demonstrate what it means to really be “in it together.” Teachers, administrators, and everyone who cares about the future of education in a diverse society will benefit from the strategies they suggest."
Sonia Nieto, Professor Emerita
University of Massachusetts


Key features

(1) Presents a compelling case for building effective coalitions between schools, families, and communities that lead to increased student engagement with and success in schools.

(2) Strength-based approach emphasizes the need to explore and leverage the rich diversity of cultural assets of families.

(3) Offers concrete guidance on designing and delivering activities that empower both students and families.

(4) Provides protocols designed around the book's community building framework to assess student and parent engagement.

(5) Includes richly-detailed vignettes of community building in action.

(6) Ideally suited for use by PLCs, book study groups, and a variety of professional learning designs.
Author(s)

Author(s)

Debbie Zacarian photo

Debbie Zacarian

Dr. Debbie Zacarian, founder of Zacarian & Associates, provides professional development, strategic planning, and technical assistance for K-16 educators of culturally and linguistically diverse populations. She has served as an expert consultant for school districts, universities, associations, and organizations including the Massachusetts Parent Information Resource Center and Federation for Children with Special Needs.

Debbie has worked with numerous state and local education agencies and written the language assistance programming policies for many rural, suburban, and urban districts. Debbie served on the faculty of University of Massachusetts-Amherst where she co-wrote and was the co-principal investigator of a National Professional Development grant initiative supporting the professional preparation of educators of multilingual learners. Debbie also designed and taught courses for pre- and in-service administrators and teachers on culturally responsive teaching and supervision practices, multilingual development, and ethnographic research. In addition, she served as a program director at the Collaborative for Educational Services where she provided professional development for thousands of educators of multilingual students and partnered with Fitchburg State University in co-writing and enacting a National Professional Development initiative that supported STEM education. Debbie also directed the Amherst Public Schools bilingual and English learner programming where she and the district received state and national honors.

The author of more than 100 publications, her most recent professional books include: Beyond Crises: Overcoming Linguistic and Cultural Inequities in Communities. Schools and Classrooms; Responsive Schooling for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students; Teaching to Empower: taking action to foster student agency, self-confidence, and collaboration; and Teaching to Strengths: Supporting Students living with Trauma, Violence and Chronic Stress.

Michael Silverstone photo

Michael Silverstone

Michael Silverstone has been a full-time elementary teacher in Massachusetts since 1998. With Debbie Zacarian, he co-authored the Grade 2 chapter in Academic Language in Diverse Classrooms: Promoting Content and Language Learning, Mathematics, Grades K-2 (Corwin). His essay recounting his discovery of the vital importance of maintaining professional autonomy while fostering relationships with students, families and colleagues—in spite of all the pressures to standardize classroom practice—is the closing teacher-essay in the anthology Why We Teach Now, edited by Sonia Nieto (Teacher’s College Press). Silverstone is also the author of a number of Young Adult non-fiction books including Rigoberta Menchú: Defending Human Rights in Guatemala and Winona LaDuke: Restoring Land and Culture in Native America (The Feminist Press at the City University of NY). He is a Teacher Consultant with the Western Massachusetts Writing Project of the National Writing Project. http://www.umass.edu/wmwp/

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1. What It Means to Be “In It Together” in Education

2. An Involved Classroom Community

3. Infusing the Assets of Students and Families Into Classroom Learning

4. Preparing for Classroom Community

5. The Academic Learning Benefits of Being “In It Together”

6. Using Classroom Events to Empower Students and Families

7. Widening the Circle Beyond the Classroom: Service Learning

8. Using Learning Partnerships in Professional Development: Applying the Ideas

Index


Reviews

Reviews

Price: $32.95
Volume Discounts applied in Shopping Cart

Review Copies

Review copies may be requested by individuals planning to purchase 10 or more copies for a team or considering a book for adoption in a higher ed course. To request a review copy, contact sales@corwin.com.