Archive for the ‘Leadership Books’ Category

Quiet: The Power of Introverts In a World That Can’t Stop Talking

Thursday, April 19th, 2012

Quiet Book

QUIET: The Power of Introverts In a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain (© 2012, Crown Publishers: New York, NY) tells the story of how being introverted has its advantages and how the extrovert ideal is overrated. Learn how forced collaboration can stand in the way of innovation, and how the leadership potential of introverts is often overlooked. This book is passionately argued and draws on cutting-edge research in psychology and neuroscience. Leaders, educators, and parents need to pay attention to Cain’s findings. Also check Susan’s TED talk.Click the icon below to purchase this vital book from Amazon.

Susan Cain

  • Before she became a writer for outlets like the New York Times, Susan practiced corporate law for seven years, representing clients like JP Morgan and General Electric, and then worked as a negotiations consultant, training all kinds of people, from hedge fund managers to TV producers to college students negotiating their first salaries. Her clients have included Merrill Lynch, Shearman & Sterling, One Hundred Women in Hedge Funds, and many more. She is an honors graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School.
  • She prefers listening to talking, reading to socializing, cozy chats to group settings, and likes to think before she speaks (softly). She has never given a speech without being terrified first and explores this paradox in this book.

Rosa Parks Was an Introvert.

  • If Rosa Parks wasn’t an introvert, she may not have made such a big stride for racial equality. Susan starts with this story that shows how the extrovert Martin Luther King was able to use Parks’ example. Studies tell us that 1/3 to 1/2 of Americans are on the introvert side of this spectrum. There is no such thing as a pure introvert or a pure extrovert. Unfortunately, we live in a value system she calls the Extrovert Ideal. This results in parents apologizing for shy children who feel there is something wrong with them. In addition to Parks, Cain lists many other famous introverts.

Basic Descriptions

  • Extroverts tend to tackle assignments quickly. They make fast (sometimes rash) decisions and are comfortable multitasking and risk-taking. They enjoy the thrill of the chase for rewards like money and status.
  • Introverts often work more slowly and deliberately. They like to focus on one task at a time and can have mighty powers of concentration. They are relatively immune to the lures of wealth and fame. They prefer environments that are not overstimulating and 70% are also sensitive. They may be shy, which is a painful condition, but introversion is not. Cain provides a 20 item true/false test so you can determine where you are on this scale. I answered 16 items on the introvert side, which helps explain why I love doing DrDougGreen.Com.
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Reach for Greatness: Personalizable Education for All Children by Yong Zhao

Monday, April 30th, 2018

Reach for Greatness

Reach for Greatness: Personalizable Education for All Children by Yong Zhao argues for a transformation of our schools from a focus on deficits and remediation to a focus on strengths and making every student great in their own way. It makes a short and compelling case for giving students more control and more responsibility for their learning and their futures. Please grab a copy and send one to any policymaker you know.

Introduction

  • Yong uses his own story about how he wasn’t good at farming chores and that his father had the good sense to send him to school. At the time he was also able to avoid subjects he wasn’t good at or not interested in. This allowed him to leave China for the US and to become a college teacher. He compares this to our system that rather than focusing on student strengths focuses on their deficiencies. The system assumes that every student should learn the same knowledge and skills (standards) and that they should all demonstrate the same level of proficiency.
  • While federal mandates have changed a bit, there is still an unreasonable focus on closing achievement gaps. He maintains that achievement gap mania has changed America for the worse. Changes in society continue to redefine the knowledge and skills that will be useful as some skills become obsolete. Humans are differently talented so we need to stop preparing students to become a homogeneous group of average individuals who are mediocre at everything but great at nothing. We need to begin helping everyone become great.

1. The Ambitious Pursuit of Mediocrity: How Education Curtails Children’s Potential for Greatness

  • Our education system is a meritocracy that rewards students who do the best on the tests they take in a limited number of subjects. If you can jump through the required hoops on schedule, you will do fine. If your interests and talents don’t fit the curriculum, it will damage your confidence and self-esteem, and your talents are likely to be wasted. Ironically, meritocracy leads to mediocrity.
  • The tests are norm-referenced so if one student goes up another goes down. (Doug: This is known as a zero-sum game. If you see percentiles, that is what is happening.) The tests only assess the ability to take the tests. As a result, Einstein and your top physics student both get the same grades. (Doug: There is no way to spot outliers.) Merit is defined a one’s ability and interest in performing well on tests in a few subjects. Thankfully, a growing number of schools have begun to implement programs such as genius hours and maker spaces, but they are still limited in scale and reach.

2. All Children Are Above the Average: The Potential for Greatness

  • While all children cannot be above average on any single scale, there are so many ways to be above average on something that Yong believes that all children can be above average at one or more things. It is up to the adults in their lives to help children find out just what their individual strengths and weaknesses are. Since everyone is unique, there really isn’t any such thing as an average person.
  • Yong mentions a number of ways to judge ability. There is Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory, Dan Pink’s left and right brain directed thinking, Goldberg’s personality traits, and Reiss’ passion and intrinsic drives desires. Talent, personality, and passion are foundational sources of strengths and weaknesses and they are enhanced or suppressed by experiences. As you look for potential for greatness, avoid applying a predetermined set of criteria to all students. This includes curriculum standards as a student’s strength may lie outside their narrow definition.
  • All human beings possess creativity. This is the ability to come up with new ideas, methods, theories, concepts, and products. Every student has a combination of innate qualities and environmental experiences that helps turn her or him into a unique individual. When you look hard without preconceived views, you will find them in all children.
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Reframing Organizations – Lee Bolman & Terrance Deal

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership 4th Edition by Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal, is the best textbook for a leadership course that I have seen. I use it for a course I teach for educators at the State University of New York at Cortland. The focus deals with the structural, human relations, political, and symbolic frames found in all organizations. If you analyze complex situations using all four, your are more likely to have success leading and managing. The summary includes activities I do with my class. It should be in every library and professional development collection.

Click here for my summary and activities from Reframing Organizations.

Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools by Diane Ravitch

Monday, March 23rd, 2015

Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools (©2014) by Diane Ravitch takes on the private-sector school leaders and the political officials behind our current reform movement. Diane exposes the many myths that have driven reform, and supplies solutions that we should seriously consider. If you want to know what’s wrong with education reform this book is a must. Be sure to click at the bottom of any page to get copies for concerned educators and parents you know.

Diane Ravitch

  • Diane is a research professor at New York University. She served as Assistant Secretary of Education for Research for George H. W. Bush, and was appointed to the National Assessment Governing Board by Bill Clinton. She is the author of ten previous books. In 2011, she received the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize from the American Academy of Political and Social Science. She has an excellent blog at DianeRavitch.Net and is active on Twitter @DianeRavitch.

Our School Are at Risk

  • Politicians on both sides along with our media seem to agree that public education is broken. This has feed the ideas that we need to close schools and fire a large number of teachers and administrators. It wasn’t until Diane saw the corrosive effects of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation that she recanted her support for high-stakes testing, test-based accountability, competition, and school choice via charter schools and vouchers. NCLB’s unrealistic goals have turned reform into a privatization movement, which was probably the intent of many of the bill’s supporters.
  • Diane claims that what works is what well off parents do and expect schools to do. This includes rich programs in the arts, physical education, libraries, well maintained schools, small classes, and after school programs where students can explore their interests. There should be a joyful pursuit of play, time to sing and dance, and draw. Diagnostics should focus on what students know, and what they need to learn next. These same parents supply learning opportunities before and after their kids start school unlike poor parents who generally have less education themselves.

The Context for Corporate Reform

  • Diane points out that much of the rational for NCLB was based on a Texas Miracle that never existed. The law’s impossible goals guaranteed failing schools that could be closed so the students could be shifted to charter or private schools, and first among the failing schools were those that served poor and minority children. Charters were supposed to innovate and share success with public schools. Due to the competitive nature of the reform movement, however, sharing between schools doesn’t happen much. It wasn’t long after NCLB passed that teaching to the test, narrowing the curriculum, and outright cheating became common proactices.
  • Rather than fix NCLB when it was up for reauthorization in 2007, Congress did nothing, which left an opening for the Obama administration to introduce Race to the Top (RTTT) in a unilateral manner. The only real difference between the two was that RTTT introduced the use of test scores to evaluate teachers. It also put more emphasis on competition as a means of allocating federal funding.
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Reprogramming the American Dream: From Rural America to Silicon Valley – Making AI Serve Us All by Kevin Scott

Monday, April 27th, 2020
American Dream

Reprogramming the American Dream: From Rural America to Silicon Valley – Making AI Serve Us All by Kevin Scott finds a balance between “the robots are coming for our jobs” and “AI is great, nothing to worry about.” Like Kevin, I believe that all citizens need to educate themselves regarding the promises and perils of AI. That is clearly the purpose of this book. It won’t make you an expert in AI, but it will give you many clues. In addition to citizens, AI experts, policymakers, and executives are also Kevin’s intended audiences.

Introduction

  • There are two prevailing stories about AI. For low and middle-skill workers, we hear a grim tale of steadily increasing job destruction. For knowledge workers, we hear an idyllic tale of enhanced productivity and convenience. But neither captures the whole story. The story we need is AI’s potential to create abundance and opportunity for everyone as it helps solve the world’s most vexing problems. Kevin’s story is based on his upbringing in rural Virginia and his life as executive vice president and chief technology officer for Microsoft.
  • We know AI will radically impact economics and employment and we are already seeing it perform very specific, narrow tasks like selecting the ads you see, turning speech to text, and translating languages. He sees a future where workers at all skill levels are served. While AI was invented in the US, China’s goal is to become the leader and thus dictate policy regarding this technology. In order to have a voice in the debate you need to be informed, which is the goal of this book.

PartI: Where We’ve Been – 1. When Our Jobs First Went Away

  • Kevin returns to his rural home and visits old friends who are using simple versions of AI to harvest sod, monitor nursing home patients, and manufacture specialized plastic parts. The latter demonstrates how technology is allowing some manufacturing jobs to return to the US. In the case of the sod farmer, drones using AI are saving human jobs. In essence, AI can empower people rather than replacing them. He also visits a large Microsoft data center that replaced an obsolete prison. The local college even started a program to train workers. The challenge is to convince high school graduates that there is a better future in a technology job than in oil and gas jobs which might pay $60,000 to start, but are heavy labor jobs that over time, pay little more than the initial offer.

2. The Career Choice I Made

  • This chapter is largely autobiographical. Kevin tells his story from home to college to a small engineering company in Lynchburg, VA, to graduate school at the Univerity of Virginia where he met his future wife. When she was accepted to a PhD program in Götingen, Germany he was able to get a job there too. From there he went from Google to AdMob, to Google, to LinkedIn. LinkedIn was acquired by Google in 2016 and ultimately he was chosen by Saya Nadella the CEO to be Microsoft’s chief technology officer (CTO).
  • Along the way Keven stresses the importance of his supportive family and community in rural Virginia. While they were not rich he never lacked for food or housing and hand mentors and role models that supplemented his education. He didn’t have health care until he got to Google but never got sick either. While he doesn’t think you should base all of your career decisions on income, you should consider the economics of the choices you make. Get as much data and good advice as you can and reflect prior to making important life choices. For companies, he stresses the importance of stories. They need to be stories that employees can make their own and they need to be connected to how their work can somehow make the world a better place.

3. Stories of Revival

  • The stories here focus on rural life and opportunities. In 2016 75% of venture funding went to Silicon Valley, New York, and Boston. Kevin tells the success story of Memphis that now has the world’s largest cargo airport. AI is making inroads in agriculture with robots that do precision irrigation and drones that apply fertilizer and pesticides in just the right quantities and locations. Kevin offers some ideas of how the government can incentivize rural entrepreneurship. His big idea is to have an Apollo type program for AI. The Apollo program only cost $200 billion in the 1960s to get to the moon so it should be possible to do the same for AI.
  • We need a system to make rural people better at tech so they can run and debug drones, robots, and other high tech farm equipment. There is some effort in this direction. We also need to break down the stereotypes that urban and rural people have of each other. The media that people currently consume is part of the problem as many people binge on unhealthy information. He switched his consumption to 75% refereed journals like Science and Nature, 25$ to learning something new and different not related to his job, and 5% for everything else. Doing so made him less anxious, irritated, and much better informed.
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Rethinking Value-Added Models in Education: Critical Perspective on Tests and Assessment-Based Accountability by Audrey Amrein-Beardsley

Wednesday, February 11th, 2015
VAM

Rethinking Value-Added Models in Education: Critical Perspective on Tests and Assessment-Based Accountability by Audrey Amrein-Beardsley describes and analyzes the imposition of value added test-based evaluation of teachers, the theory behind it, the real-life consequences, and its fundamental flaws. It contains great detail and should be in the hands of any person or organization fighting this alarming practice. Click at the bottom of any page to get a copy for your school’s professional development library.

Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, PhD

  • Audrey is a former middle and high-school mathematics teacher. She received her PhD in 2002 from Arizona State University in the Division of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. She is an Associate Professor in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University, and one of the top education scholars in the nation who has been honored for contributing to public debates about the nation’s educational system. Audrey’s research interests include educational policy, research methods, and more specifically, high-stakes tests and value-added measurements and systems. In addition, she researches aspects of teacher quality, teacher evaluation, and teacher education. She is the creator and host of an online biographical show titled Inside the Academy during which she interviews top educational researchers. She is also the creator and host of the blog: VAMboozled!.

1. Socially Engineering the Road To Utopia

  • Audrey starts with examples of how governments use policies to socially engineer the societies they govern. It starts with something in the way of a worst case example involving the Cambodian government who had a policy to kill all the intellectuals after the Vietnam War ended. The social engineering currently aimed at schools is traced back to the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983. It began a series of policies that lead to the Measure and Punish or M & P theory of change. Using standardized tests to enforce accountability turns out to be an overly simplistic causal model. A better model would be more difficult to understand and defend as it would have to consider students’ levels of intelligence, social capital, and levels of risk. To this point, empirical evidence shows that the M & P theory is flawed and misguided, and many of it’s early proponents have become its biggest opposition.
  • There many reports of how teachers and administrators have gamed the system and resorted to outright cheating. By some standards, the M & P theory of change and its policy derivatives might be viewed as the greatest failed social engineering project of our time. At the end of each chapter, Audrey includes a box with the top ten assertions made in the chapter. You might consider reading these boxes first and last.
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School-Linked Services: Promoting Equity for Children, Families, and Communities by Laura Bronstein and Susan Mason

Monday, October 9th, 2023

School
School-Linked Services: Promoting Equity for Children, Families, and Communities by Laura Bronstein and Susan Mason contains extensive advice for anyone interested in linking a school with one or more other service providers in their community. It offers summaries of successful programs and demonstrates how schools with linkages out perform schools with similar demographics that lack linkages in many ways. This is a must-read for leaders of any organization that serves schools.

Introduction

  • This book consolidates the available literature on this topic along with a wide range of conversations with diverse key informants. In doing so it illustrates how partnerships between schools and communities support educational success. It covers a wide range of types of school-linked services and how they can break the cycle of poverty.
  • They aim to provide enrichment activities that are often only available at schools serving wealthier populations. The services include after-school and summer programs, early childhood education, health and mental health services, family engagement, youth leadership programs, and others.

1. Making the Case for School-Linked Services

  • A teacher’s ability to teach can clearly be hampered by issues outside their control. We must not view a student’s academic struggles in isolation from external factors. Low academic achievement is highly correlated with poverty. Distracted, hungry, worried, and ill children have a more difficult time learning. Absenteeism and mobility add to these problems. Partnerships must be fruitful, as schools cannot afford to spend resources just to have a partner.
  • The Center for Disease Control has a model called Coordinated School Health (CSH) that integrates health promotion efforts across: health education, physical education, health and nutrition services, counseling, psychological and social services, safe school environments, staff wellness, and family and community involvement. These partnerships are progressive as they aim to do more for students who need more.

2. The School

  • Although state aid to schools serves to reduce unequal funding, the decentralized system in the US results in kids in poor school districts having fewer resources, less experienced teachers, and greater teacher turnover. While teachers and other school personnel are trained to teach and do other jobs, they are not trained to deal with issues that children face beyond school. This needs to be part of their professional development. Administrator vision is vital.
  • Since students are the ones with the most to gain or lose, their voices should be heard when it comes to decisions that will reform what schools do. If you are a school leader, you need to do what you can to create trust with poor and minority families. (Doug: I did this by hiring as many Black people as I could, especially for support staff positions.) Make sure that all of your families know that their input is welcome. Kids only spend about 10% of their time from birth to age 18 in school.

3. School-Linked Services Today

  • The authors start by discussing the nature of school-based health centers, family resource centers, partnerships with businesses, expanded school mental health services, and finally, full-service community schools, which offer all of the other services. Such full-service schools can grow out of nonprofit organizations, school/city districts, or counties. In all cases, it is necessary to rethink how a school is managed, funded, and staffed. It’s important to see community members as customers and to involve students in community projects. Businesses are usually involved as well.
  • The rest of the chapter (64 pages) contains details of three nonprofit initiatives, three school district/city-lead initiatives, and one county-wide initiative. Anyone thinking of starting or expanding a full-service school can draw on this information for ideas and guidance. As each of these exemplars are different from each other, so you should expect yours to be different as well as you strive to meet the unique needs of your community. Flexibility should also act as a guidepost. I suggest you start by reading each of the brief overviews and funding sources for ideas.
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Sexting Panic: Rethinking Criminalization, Privacy, and Consent by Amy Adele Hasinoff

Wednesday, May 18th, 2016

Sexting Panic: Rethinking Criminalization, Privacy, and Consent by Amy Adele Hasinoff takes on common wisdom and shows how it is harmful to many girls as is lets privacy violators off the hook. It sees sexing as a natural part of the process of developing a normal and healthy sex life and promotes the idea of explicit consent when if comes to distributing private media images. This book belongs in every school and in the hands of every teen parent and policy maker.

Sexting Panic

Introduction

  • This is a very well researched a cited scholarly book. Amy looks at how sexting is commonly viewed as child porn and a factor in cyberbullying rather than a normal part of sexual foreplay. She believes that teaching abstinence when it comes to physical sex is as ineffective as teaching abstinence when it comes to sexting. Rather than acknowledge girls’ sexual agency, many see them as weak minded youth who are suffering from raging hormones and blindly following social trends. In fact, sexing is a modern form of foreplay and only becomes problematic when the receiver violates the sender’s privacy. Not only does the media often blame the victim, so do the courts and society at large. It’s about time somebody started this conversation. As you read this book prepare to change your thinking on the subject.

1. The Criminalization Consensus and the Right to Sext

  • The main argument here is that granting young people the right to consensually see, create, and distribute sexual media may be the most effective way to protect them from harm. It is currently criminal with variations in all states. Here Amy discusses a number of specific cases and how laws are designed to punish the person sending sexts. The question arrises as to whether sexting is free speech or not. Also, is it an expression of normal adolescent sexual expression? In some states, sexting has been reduced from felony status to that of a misdemeanor. This makes no sense as depending on your state or country, a variety of consensual sexual behaviors are legal for minors depending on their respective ages. Ironically, it is generally illegal for minors to view many sex acts that they can legally engage in such as Internet porn. Amy also believes that criminalization of sexting will have a disproportionate impact on gays, minorities, poor kids, and girls.
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Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools by Diane Ravitch

Monday, March 16th, 2020
Slaying Goliath

Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools by Diane Ravitch tells the story of how wealthy people like Bill Gates and the Koch brothers aided by politicians and the media have disrupted public schools in an effort to privatize K-12 education. She does an excellent job of showing how their efforts have been seriously misguided and how they have damaged public schools, teachers, and students. She also shows how the underfunded opposition has had a number of victories in their efforts to fight back. If you want ammunition for the fight against charter schools, vouchers, and standardized tests, look no further.

1. Disruption Is Not Reform!

  • In this book Diane documents the failures of what she calls “Corporate Disruption.” This refers to the reforms backed by conservative and liberal wealthy people and adopted by conservative and liberal politicians. At the heart of the programs are high-stakes standardized tests that have been used to evaluate schools and teachers. They have served to demoralize students and teachers, and have resulted in teacher shortages as many teachers leave and fewer desire to enter the profession.
  • Ravitch and many others are convinced that the real problems are poverty and racial segregation rather than failing schools and teachers. Teacher autonomy and creativity have been reduced as they spend abundant time engaging in test preparation. Since the tests only deal with ELA and math, other subjects including recess have been reduced in many schools.

2. The Odious Status Quo

  • It seems that a lot of wealthy people want to reinvent education in spite of their lack of expertise. As such they use their philanthropy to control others under the guise of helping. That’s how we get things like kids too young to read in front of computer screens. Meanwhile, things like the cultivation of character are often ignored. When one looks at the data one can see that the crisis in education was a manufactured one. Here Diane summarizes the history of the reform movement. This includes NCLB with it’s patently absurd goal of having all students be proficient.
  • The NCLB reform brought the fear of punishment, failure, and losing one’s job into our nation’s classrooms. The so-called remedies had no prior evidence of success. The law was insanely punitive and without a global president. Schools cut back on civics, science, the arts, PE, and recess. Obama’s Race to the Top basically bribed states to adopt the untested Common Core, add more charter schools, and use test scores to evaluate teachers. This was essentially an unconstitutional take over by the federal government. Unfortunately, this mess was also bipartisan.

3. What Do the Disrupters Want?

  • They like mayoral control of schools as there is only one person to manipulate. They don’t like teachers’ pensions, which encourage longevity. They like to demonize public schools as failing. They admire disruptive innovations because that is what happens in business. Why would you want to disrupt the lives of our children? They like machine teaching, which they call blended or personalized learning. What they don’t want is any disruption of their private clubs or the exclusive schools that their kids attend.
  • Who are they? They are governmental officials like the Secretary of Education regardless of the party. Governors are also included. They are philanthropists with their foundations like Bill Gates, the Walton family, Michael Bloomberg, and the Koch brothers among others. They are hedge fund managers who believe in competition and the free market. They like start-ups (i.e. charter schools) and they don’t like government regulations. There are organizations that sound like they should pro-student, but are largely funded by rich folks. Journalists are also part of the problem as they often carry water for this crowd. (e.g. editorial writers for The New York Times and The Washington Post.)

4. Meet the Resistance

  • Resisters have some genuine connection to education such as teachers, administrators, students, and their families. They believe that public schools are a foundation stone or a democratic society. They oppose the privatization of public schools and the misuse of standardized tests. They respect teachers and want public schools to have the resources they need. They want to cultivate a joy of learning. They understand that students’ lives are heavily impacted by conditions they face outside of school. The few foundations that support the resistance are lead by the Schott Foundation for Public Education.
  • They are winning because everything the Disruptors have imposed has failed. They are highly motivated and not powered by money. They understand that competition produces few winners and many losers. They are supported by a number of prominent scholars who are listed along with their works. Many resisters like myself have blogs that constantly fight back.
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SMART Strengths: Building Character, Resilience, and Relationships in Youth

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
Smart Strengths

Smart Strengths: Building Character, Resilience, and Relationships in Youth by John M. Yeager, Sherri W. Fisher, and David Shearon (©2011, Kravis Publishing: Putnam Valley, NY) introduces the SMART model for changing a school one person at a time. It’s about bringing positive education to students and maximizing the students’ inherent strengths to foster character and achievement. It is research-supported and loaded with activities, resources, and real-life examples. Any school looking to improve should seriously consider the advice in this important book. Click the icon below to purchase one or more copies from Amazon.

The Authors

  • John M. Yeager, EdD is a nationally known consultant on strengths in schools. He is the Director of the Center for Character Excellence at the Culver Academies where he launched a model program on the integration of character strengths among the entire school community.
  • Sherri W. Fisher, MEd is an education management consultant, worksop facilitator, and coach specializing in creating learning, productivity, and change solutions for students of all ages, their families, and their schools. She is a founder of Flourishing Schools and her Student Flourishing education management practice.
  • David N. Shearon, JD is an expert in public education policy and leadership. For more than two decades he has lead Tennessee’s mandatory professional development program for lawyers. He works with Flourishing Schools on behalf of K-12 education and trains teachers in how to teach resilience to students in programs around the world.

The Big Idea

  • The key idea is that adults and youth need to shift from concentrating on improving weaknesses to focusing on assets. This needs to start with the adults learning about their own strengths, which makes it easier to identify strengths in others. Strengths are natural abilities or assets. They are all good, although they can be used badly as the explanation of strength buttons demonstrates. Strengths are measurable, subject to numerous influences, and some are more malleable than others. Research shows that people who use their strengths are more engaged in their life and work, are happier, and are more productive. You should start by taking the free 20-25 minute Values in Action (VIA) Signature Strengths Test. There is also a version for children 10-17 that you can access with your free adult account.
  • SMART stands for Spotting, Managing, Advocating, Relating, and Training. These are the five steps the authors include along with worksheets in each chapter to help you nurture your strengths and the strengths of those you work with.

Just What are the 24 Strengths in the VIA?

  • When I took the VIA, I found that my five top strengths were: curiosity and interest in the world; love of learning; judgment, critical thinking, and open-mindedness; self-control and self-regulation; and creativity, ingenuity, and originality. I hope this sounds like the right strengths for the work I do on this blog.
  • Here is a list of the other 19 strengths. When you take the VIA you will get this list sorted from top to bottom according to your strengths. Remember all strengths are good and that everyone has a list sorted from 1 to 24. All lists are equally good.
  • Forgiveness and mercy; Industry, diligence, and perseverance; perspective (wisdom); gratitude; hope, optimism, and future-mindedness; humor and playfulness; leadership; caution, prudence, and desecration; honesty, authenticity, and genuineness; fairness, equity, and justice; zest, enthusiasm, and energy; bravery and valor; kindness and generosity; social intelligence; citizenship, teamwork, and loyalty; appreciation of beauty and excellence; capacity to love and be loved; modesty and humility; spirituality, sense of purpose; and faith.
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