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All children deserve the opportunity to practice freedom of thought, voice, and movement in school. Giving students the opportunity to practice freedom--to teach them how to be autonomous, responsible, cooperative and critically literate--should be done in communities and schools across the country, and this book shows how. The key ability of the human brain that cannot be digitized or mechanized is its ability to interpret—that is, to cope with the intentions of another, to understand what was said and what was meant. Humans have the ability to work together as a team toward a common goal (i.e. cooperate), to be altruistic and make sacrifices to help others, to build trust, and to feel empathy or sympathy—and robots do not. Developing and using these interpretive and cooperative skills is essential to having a nation of thoughtful citizens who are capable of seeing themselves as solutions to the problems and issues we face. Empowered Students: Educating Flexible Minds for a Flexible Future is a theory-to-practice story of how students at a segregated and failing New York City high school were released from years of oppressive schooling practices and learned how to practice freedom, told through the voices and the people who built it: the school leaders, teachers and students.

Student Ownership details a specific set of strategies used by a case study school to effectively triple the school's number of college and/or career ready students over a two year period. The school moved from the bottom 5 percent in the state in transition readiness for students to the top 5 percent by implementing strategies that helped the students take ownership of their futures by implementing these strategies. In addition, companion strategies are included that were used to change the minds of the teachers and administrators in order to establish ownership in the minds of their students. This book will help you establish student empowerment and ownership of their learning in your school culture.

These intertwining narratives'beautifully demonstrate... that the people who are excluded and bullied for their offbeat passions and refusal to conform are often the ones who are embraced and lauded for those very qualities in college and beyond'(The New York Times). In a smart, entertaining, reassuring book that reads like fiction, Alexandra Robbins manages to cross Gossip Girl with Freaks and Geeks and explain the fascinating psychology and science behind popularity and outcasthood. She reveals that the things that set students apart in high school are the things that help them stand out later in life. Robbins follows seven real people grappling with the uncertainties of high school social life, including: The Loner, who has withdrawn from classmates since they persuaded her to unwittingly join her own hate club The Popular Bitch, a cheerleading captain both seduced by and trapped within her clique's perceived prestige The Nerd, whose differences cause students to laugh at him and his mother to needle him for not being'normal'The New Girl, determined to stay positive as classmates harass her for her mannerisms and target her because of her race The Gamer, an underachiever in danger of not graduating, despite his intellect and his yearning to connect with other students The Weird Girl, who battles discrimination and gossipy politics in school but leads a joyous life outside of it The Band Geek, who is alternately branded too serious and too emo, yet annually runs for class president In the middle of the year, Robbins surprises her subjects with a secret challenge -- experiments that force them to change how classmates see them. Robbins intertwines these narratives -- often triumphant, occasionally heartbreaking, and always captivating -- with essays exploring subjects like the secrets of popularity, being excluded doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you, why outsiders succeed, how schools make the social scene worse -- and how to fix it.The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth is not just essential reading for students, teachers, parents, and anyone who deals with teenagers, but for all of us, because at some point in our lives we've all been on the outside looking in.

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