Lucky to Be a Teacher: Life-Changing Affirmations for Positive Classrooms Review
This gem of a workbook expands on 33 affirmations and reflection questions to help readers establish goals, maintain a positive perspective, and remain committed to excellence.
Transformative Classroom Management: Positive Strategies to Engage All Students and Promote a Psychology of Success (Jossey-Bass Teacher) Review
The natural condition of any classroom is harmonious, satisfying, and productive, so why do so many teachers struggle with problems of apathy, hostility, anxiety, inefficiency, and resistance?
In this groundbreaking book, education expert John Shindler presents a powerful model, Transformative Classroom Management (TCM), that can be implemented by any teacher to restore the natural positive feelings in his or her classroom—the love of learning, collaboration, inspiration, and giving—and create a productive learning environment in which all students can achieve.
Unlike other classroom management systems that view problems as something to be "handled," TCM offers suggestions for creating optimal conditions for learning, performance, motivation, and growth. This practical book shows teachers how to abandon ineffective short-term gimmicks, bribes, and punishments and adopt the proven management practices and new habits of mind that will transform their classrooms.
Praise for Transformative Classroom Management
"Transformative Classroom Management is a practical resource that explains the how and why of classroom management for novice and veteran teachers. Dr. Shindler recognizes the importance of preserving the teacher's sanity while ensuring the student's development of a personal sense of responsibility and a positive self-esteem."
—Eileen Matus, principal, South Toms River Elementary School, New Jersey
"I have read many other management books by other authors, but Transformative Classroom Management has been the best so far at demystifying the invisible forces in the classroom."
—Will McElroy, 4th grade teacher, Los Angeles United School District
"This book was an invaluable tool for me during my student teaching. It served as a reference book that I found myself continually drawn to while struggling to find ways to effectively manage 29 first graders. The ideas, concepts and suggestions in the book were so innovative and helpful that even my Master Teacher found herself implementing some of the ideas! A must have for all student teachers!"
—Carol Gillon, student teacher, Seattle University
"Insightful and thoroughly researched, Transformative Classroom Management is an invaluable tool to help teachers, newbies and veterans alike, develop fully functional and engaged learning communities."
—Lisa Gamache Rodriguez, teacher, Los Angeles Unified School District
Practicing Positive Psychology Coaching: Assessment, Activities and Strategies for Success Review
Discover proven strategies for applyingpositive psychology within your coaching practice
Written by Robert Biswas-Diener, a respected researcher, psychologist, life and organizational coach, and expert in positive psychology, Practicing Positive Psychology Coaching presents a wide range of practical interventions and tools you can put to use right away in your coaching practice.
Each intervention is clearly outlined and, where appropriate, illustrated by case studies from organizational and life coaching. Providing unique assessments that can be used to evaluate client resources and goals, this practical guide introduces tools unique to this book that every professional can use in their practice, including:
Findings from new research on goal commitment strategies, motivation, growth-mindset theory, and goal revision
A decision tree for working specifically with Snyder's Hope Theory in the coaching context
An easy-to-use assessment of "positive diagnosis," which measures client strengths, values, positive orientation toward the future, and satisfaction
Measures of self-esteem, optimism, happiness, personal strengths, motivation, and creativity
Guidance for leading clients through organizational and common life transitions including layoffs, leadership changes, university graduation, middle age, and retirement
Filled with reflective exercises for use in your own personal and professional development, Practicing Positive Psychology Coaching also includes guidance and recommendations for marketing a positive psychology coaching practice.
Positive Pushing: How to Raise a Successful and Happy Child Review
ow available in paperback, Positive Pushing gives parents clear and balanced instruction on how to encourage children just enough to produce a happy, successful, satisfied achiever. Taylor, an experienced achievement consultant, believes that, pushed properly, children will grow into adults ready to tackle life's many challenges. Using his three-pillared approach, Taylor focuses on self-esteem, ownership, and emotional mastery, and maintains that pushing, rather than being a means of control, is both a source of motivation and a catalyst for growth that can instill important values in children's lives. He teaches parents how to temper their own expectations to suit their children's emotional, intellectual, and physical development, and identifies common red flags that indicate when a child is being pushed too hard-or not enough. Whether a child's potential for achievement lies in academics, the arts, sports, or other areas, Dr. Taylor's insight and guidance will push parents, teachers, and coaches to nurture children into successful and happy adults.
Lift: Becoming a Positive Force in Any Situation Review
Harness the Science of Positive Influence
We all want to have a positive impact, but often, despite our best intentions, we're tripped up by subtle psychological states we're not even aware of. It doesn't have to be that way. In "Lift," Ryan and Robert Quinn combine cutting-edge social science and real-world examples to describe four mindsets that will help you become aware of the unconscious ways you're holding yourself and others back. They offer tested, practical guidelines and practices for exerting positive influence in any situation. The Quinns go beyond mere tactics--if you take the lessons in "Lift" to heart, you will not simply wield positive influence, you will by your very nature become a positive influence.
No More Meltdowns: Positive Strategies for Managing and Preventing Out-Of-Control Behavior Review
It could happen at the grocery store. At a restaurant. At school. At home. Meltdowns are stressful for both child and adult, but Dr. Baker can help!
Author of the award-winning Social Skills Picture Book series, Dr. Jed Baker offers parents and teachers strategies for preventing and managing meltdowns. His 20+ years of experience working with children on the autism spectrum, combined with his personal experiences raising his own children, have yielded time-tested strategies, and results!
Dr. Baker offers an easy-to-follow, 4-step model that will improve your everyday relationships with the children in your life: 1) Managing your own emotions by adjusting your expectations, 2) Learning strategies to calm a meltdown in the moment, 3) Understanding why a meltdown occurs, and 4) Creating plans to prevent future meltdowns.
The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work Review
Our most commonly held formula for success is broken. Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work. This isn’t just an empty mantra. This discovery has been repeatedly borne out by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the globe.
In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor, who spent over a decade living, researching, and lecturing at Harvard University, draws on his own research—including one of the largest studies of happiness and potential at Harvard and others at companies like UBS and KPMG—to fix this broken formula. Using stories and case studies from his work with thousands of Fortune 500 executives in 42 countries, Achor explains how we can reprogram our brains to become more positive in order to gain a competitive edge at work.
Isolating seven practical, actionable principles that have been tried and tested everywhere from classrooms to boardrooms, stretching from Argentina to Zimbabwe, he shows us how we can capitalize on the Happiness Advantage to improve our performance and maximize our potential. Among the principles he outlines:
• The Tetris Effect: how to retrain our brains to spot patterns of possibility, so we can see—and seize—opportunities wherever we look.
• The Zorro Circle: how to channel our efforts on small, manageable goals, to gain the leverage to gradually conquer bigger and bigger ones.
• Social Investment: how to reap the dividends of investing in one of the greatest predictors of success and happiness—our social support network
A must-read for everyone trying to excel in a world of increasing workloads, stress, and negativity, The Happiness Advantage isn’t only about how to become happier at work. It’s about how to reap the benefits of a happier and more positive mind-set to achieve the extraordinary in our work and in our lives.
