Teacher Appreciation Week: 20% OFF a Selection of Books from our Contributors

Just click on the book title and you’ll be brought to the special discount webpage for ordering. And check out our authors’ blog posts by clicking on the links below their names.

Meena Srinivasan, author of SEL Every Day: Integrating Social and Emotional Learning with Instruction in Secondary Classrooms (SEL Solution Series), $19.95 $15.96

“With Appreciation: For the Love Teachers Bring to Their Work”

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Gift-Giving: Discounts for Educators

In the spirit of gift-giving for the holiday season, Norton is offering a discount on some popular titles for educators.  Please enjoy!

We will be taking a vacation for the holidays, but K-12Talk will be back with new posts from your fellow educators in January.  With best wishes for a restorative and joyful break,

Carol Collins

Education Editor, Norton Professional Books

Gift-Giving: Features of K-16 Service Learning

Five stages or steps for engaging students in a service-learning project have been identified by the RMC Research Corporation (2009)*. Here we look at each stage and include an example from Whittier College in Whittier, CA, which engaged in a service-learning project that involved multilingual students and addressed a community need.  

Investigation: The first phase of a service-learning project involves engaging students in exploring a community need they might address as they engage in an academic learning experience. This initial phase should include a range of activities to spark students’ interest in addressing the problem and develop consensus in the ways that it will be addressed. These might include a classroom brainstorming discussion (e.g., where students engage in pairs, small groups, and/or as a whole class); engaging in research about the problem and solutions that have occurred (such as reading newspaper accounts); and collaboratively developing an observation protocol for students to see the need firsthand. These might also occur as part of a specific course of study that is designed to provide a structured, systematized program of service-learning study as well as a less formal program. Both can be highly successful. Let’s look at the nationally recognized service-learning efforts at Whittier College.

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Gift-Giving: Students Tackling Real-World Problems

When I think of the holidays, my mind wanders to gift giving. Red ribbon. Bows. Metallic wrapping paper. However, the greatest gifts are not those you hold, but those that are felt in the heart. You and I have the opportunity to give a powerful gift to the students we teach. Purpose. To give them a sense of feeling needed and a chance to give back to the world. All people long for purpose. Purpose motivates us and pushes us to go further and do more. People spend their lives searching for it. Just as my students were searching for it, in the lessons I taught. 

“Why should I learn this?” “When am I ever going to use it?” â€śHow is this information important for my life?” Students would ask these questions year after year in my classroom. They longed to see how our content connected to the world. 

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