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Summer Reading - For Parents!


Our amazing summer reading suggestions are now in place for each of our classes at HTS.  This summer, our faculty will also be undertaking a summer reading assignment, and we thought we'd pose a challenge to you, our parents, as well.  Following are a few titles from our teacher summer reading list, and a few others that come highly recommended... So pick up a couple of these titles, or download them on your eReader... and head to the beach :)


Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success
By Madeline Levine
Psychologist Madeline Levine, author of the New York Times bestseller The Price of Privilege, brings together cutting-edge research and thirty years of clinical experience to explode once and for all the myth that good grades, high test scores, and college acceptances should define the parenting endgame. 
Teach Your Children Well is a toolbox for parents, providing information, relevant research and a series of exercises to help parents clarify a definition of success that is in line with their own values as well as their children’s interests and abilities.

Teach Your Children Well is a must-read for parents, educators, and therapists looking for tangible tools to help kids thrive in today’s high-stakes, competitive culture.

http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Children-Well-Parenting/dp/0061824747/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1369852899&sr=1-1



The Secret of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More

By Bruce Feiler
In The Secrets of Happy Families, New York Times bestselling author Bruce Feiler has drawn up a blueprint for modern families — a new approach to family dynamics, inspired by cutting-edge techniques gathered from experts in the disciplines of science, business, sports, and the military.
The result is a funny and thought-provoking playbook for contemporary families, with more than 200 useful strategies, including: the right way to have family dinner, what your mother never told you about sex (but should have), and why you should always have two women present in difficult conversations… Timely, compassionate, and filled with practical tips and wise advice, Bruce Feiler’s The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More should be required reading for all parents.



Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Kids Roots and Wings

by Kenneth R. Ginsburg

Resilience is also about confronting the overwhelming stress kids face today. This invaluable guide offers coping strategies for facing the stresses of academic performance, high achievement standards, media messages, peer pressure, and family tension. Young people too commonly survive stress by indulging in unhealthy behaviors or by giving up completely The suggested solutions offered here are aimed at building a repertoire of positive coping strategies. Kids who have these healthy strategies in place may be less likely to turn to those quick, easy, but dangerous fixes that adults fear. The book includes a guide for teens to create their own customized positive coping strategies.


Finding Your Element
By Sir Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk video and groundbreaking book, The Elementintroduced readers to a new concept of self-fulfillment through the convergence of natural talents and personal passions. The Element has inspired readers all over the world and has created for Robinson an intensely devoted following. Now comes the long-awaited companion, the practical guide that helps people find their own Element. Among the questions that this new book answers are:
• How do I find out what my talents and passions are?
• What if I love something I’m not good at?
• What if I’m good at something I don’t love?
• What if I can’t make a living from my Element?
• How do I do help my children find their Element?

Finding Your Element comes at a critical time as concerns about the economy, education and the environment continue to grow. The need to connect to our personal talents and passions has never been greater. As Robinson writes in his introduction, wherever you are, whatever you do, and no matter how old you are, if you’re searching for your Element, this book is for you.

“A book that is as relevant and imperative for the parents of a 12-year-old as it is for the CEO of a behemoth corporation. And with luck it will help you to find yours.”— Vanity Fair

http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Your-Element-Transform-ebook/dp/B00AFPVOTG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369853613&sr=1-1&keywords=ken+robinson


Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People who Will Change the World
By Tony Wagner

In this groundbreaking book, education expert Tony Wagner provides a powerful rationale for developing an innovation-driven economy. He explores what parents, teachers, and employers must do to develop the capacities of young people to become innovators. In profiling compelling young American innovators such as Kirk Phelps, product manager for Apple’s first iPhone, and Jodie Wu, who founded a company that builds bicycle-powered maize shellers in Tanzania, Wagner reveals how the adults in their lives nurtured their creativity and sparked their imaginations, while teaching them to learn from failures and persevere. Wagner identifies a pattern—a childhood of creative play leads to deep-seated interests, which in adolescence and adulthood blossom into a deeper purpose for career and life goals. Play, passion, and purpose: These are the forces that drive young innovators.
Wagner shows how we can apply this knowledge as educators and what parents can do to compensate for poor schooling. He takes readers into the most forward-thinking schools, colleges, and workplaces in the country, where teachers and employers are developing cultures of innovation based on collaboration, interdisciplinary problem-solving, and intrinsic motivation. The result is a timely, provocative, and inspiring manifesto that will change how we look at our schools and workplaces, and provide us with a road map for creating the change makers of tomorrow.

Creating Innovators will feature its own innovative elements: more than sixty original videos that expand on key ideas in the book through interviews with young innovators, teachers, writers, CEOs, and entrepreneurs, including Thomas Friedman, Dean Kamen, and Annmarie Neal. Produced by filmmaker Robert A. Compton, the videos are embedded into the ebook edition in video-enabled eReaders and accessible in this print edition via QR codes placed throughout the chapters or via
www.creatinginnovators.com.


http://www.amazon.com/Creating-Innovators-Making-People-Change/dp/1451611498/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1369852841&sr=1-1


And we thought you might enjoy an article from Psychology Today titled A Nation of Wimps by Hara Estroff Marano.  


A book by the same name seems to be out of print, but you might be able to find it at your local library:



Following are a pair from Responsive Classroom:

Power of Our Words, The: Teacher Language That Helps Children Learn
By Paula Denton
(A Responsive Classroom Title)

Thoughtful use of language is an often-overlooked component of the teacher's repertoire. However, the words, phrases, tone, and pace used daily in the classroom have the power to help students develop self-control, build their sense of belonging, and gain skills and knowledge.

In this warm and thought-provoking guide, Paula Denton offers practical tips, real-life anecdotes, and concrete examples, including specific suggestions about language to adopt and language to avoid. Topics include:
  • using language to help children envision success;
  • open-ended questions that stretch children't thinking;
  • listening and using silence skillfully;
  • the three Rs of teaching language: reinforcing, reminding, and redirecting;
  • saying what you mean and meaning what you say
  • giving brief, concrete instructions
  • offering meaningful, specific encouragement
The Power of Our Words advocates a sensible approach to teacher language that is backed by research and prove through decades of successful practice in elementary classrooms nationwide. It offers ideas beginners can try immediately and a wealth of guidance and support for those already engaged in the process of rethinking their practice.

http://www.amazon.com/Power-Our-Words-Language-Children/dp/1892989182


Parents & Teachers Working Together

By Carol Davis and Alice Yang



Build positive relationships with parents and work with them to support their children’s learning.

Carol Davis and Alice Yang offer a wealth of manageable ways, combining the voice of a master teacher with spotlights of a dozen other teachers in action in rural, urban, and suburban schools. Sample letters and forms throughout. 

Topics include:

  • Working with diverse family cultures
  • Setting the stage for a positive relationship during the early weeks of school
  • Keeping in touch all year long
  • Taling with parents about child development
  • Involving all parents, including those who can't make it to school
  • Helping parents understand classroom practices
  • Problem-solving with parents









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