The evolution of Taylor Mali the poet could be measured in the number of people his poetry has directly inspired to be teachers. Or the increasing cast of high school and college-age students who perform his words in forensic competitions. This is Taylor in his element: performing in front of live and writhing audiences demanding and receiving all the rough, raw, and authentic passion of Taylor Mali's poetry.

Gerry Brooks is an elementary school principal turned YouTube celebrity who entertains K-12 teachers, administrators, and parents across the country. He tells jokes with the kind of mocking humor that gets a laugh yet can be safely shared in school. After all, even great schools have bad days - when lesson plans fall through, disgruntled parents complain, kids throw temper tantrums because they have to use the same spoon for their applesauce and mashed potatoes, and, of course, dealing with...The Horror! The Horror!...dreaded assessments.

In this stunning audiobook, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers" - the best and the brightest, the most famous, and the most successful. He asks the question: What makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: That is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing.

In this must-listen book for anyone striving to succeed, pioneering psychologist Angela Duckworth shows parents, educators, students, and businesspeople - both seasoned and new - that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a focused persistence called "grit". Why do some people succeed and others fail? Sharing new insights from her landmark research on grit, MacArthur "genius" Angela Duckworth explains why talent is hardly a guarantor of success.

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave - "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" - wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have... and you may find one day that you have less than you think").

This groundbreaking inspirational manifesto contains more than 30 hooks specially designed to captivate your class and 170 brainstorming questions that will skyrocket your creativity. Once you learn the Teach Like a Pirate system, you'll never look at your role as an educator the same again.

Every teacher will tell you the first years are the hardest, and even the most confident of the pack sometimes ask themselves, Am I cut out for this? Kelly Treleaven, the teacher behind Love, Teach, wants you to know that you're not alone, and that yes, she has cried under her desk, too. Treleaven's blog has become a sensation in the education world, known for its heartfelt, high-spirited dispatches straight from the trenches and its practical advice. Here, she gives rookie teachers the advice she wishes she'd had when she started out in a large district in Houston.

How do other countries create "smarter" kids? In a handful of nations, virtually all children are learning to make complex arguments and solve problems they've never seen before. They are learning to think, in other words, and to thrive in the modern economy.What is it like to be a child in the world's new education superpowers? In a global quest to find answers for our own children, author and Time magazine journalist Amanda Ripley follows three Americans embed­ded in these countries for one year.

After publishing the New York Times best seller The Essential 55, award-winning teacher Ron Clark took his rules on the road and traveled to schools and districts in 49 states. He met amazing teachers, administrators, students, parents, all kinds of people involved in bringing up great kids. In the best of these people, he noticed the same qualities that he'd observed in so many of the teachers, children, and parents he'd worked with during his time teaching in North Carolina and Harlem.

In The Book Whisperer, Miller takes us inside her sixth grade classroom to reveal the secrets of her powerful but unusual instructional approach. Rejecting book reports, comprehension worksheets, and other aspects of conventional instruction, Miller embraces giving students an individual choice in what they read, combined with a program for independent reading. She also focuses on building a classroom library of high-interest books, and above all on modeling appropriate and authentic reading behaviors.

When Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin signed up for Teach for America right after college and found themselves utter failures in the classroom, they vowed to remake themselves into superior educators. They did that and more. In their early twenties, by sheer force of talent and determination never to take no for an answer, they created a wildly successful fifth-grade experience that would grow into the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), which today includes 66 schools in 19 states and the District of Columbia.

It all began as an attempt by Debbie Stier to help her high-school age son, Ethan, who would shortly be studying for the SAT. Aware that Ethan was a typical teenager (i.e., completely uninterested in any test) and that a mind-boggling menu of test-prep options existed, she decided - on his behalf - to sample as many as she could to create the perfect SAT test-prep recipe.

In these affectionate letters to Francesca, a first-grade teacher at an inner-city school in Boston, Jonathan Kozol vividly describes his repeated visits to her classroom while, under Francesca's likably irreverent questioning, also revealing his own most personal stories of the years that he has spent in public schools.

Tim Gunn, America's favorite reality TV cohost, is known for his kind but firm approach in providing wisdom, guidance, and support to the scores of design hopefuls on Project Runway. Having begun his fashion career as a teacher at Parsons The New School for Design, Tim knows more than a thing or two about mentorship and how to convey invaluable pearls of wisdom in an approachable, accessible manner.

In Thinking Differently, David Flink, the leader of Eye to Eye - a national mentoring program for students with learning and attention issues - enlarges our understanding of the learning process and offers powerful, innovative strategies for parenting, teaching, and supporting the 20 percent of students with learning disabilities. An outstanding fighter who has helped thousands of children adapt to their specific learning issues, Flink understands the needs and experiences of these children firsthand.

Best-selling author Rafe Esquith, the only teacher to receive the National Medal of Arts, has garnered the American Teacher Award and numerous other honors. Still teaching fifth graders in a small, leaky classroom in downtown Los Angeles, Esquith fosters a wholesome climate where character, humility, and diligence matter and support is unconditional. For his mostly poor and Hispanic students, Esquith models two maxims: Be nice and work hard, and There are no shortcuts. And his students thrive!

How do other countries create "smarter" kids? In a handful of nations, virtually all children are learning to make complex arguments and solve problems they've never seen before. They are learning to think, in other words, and to thrive in the modern economy.What is it like to be a child in the world's new education superpowers? In a global quest to find answers for our own children, author and Time magazine journalist Amanda Ripley follows three Americans embed­ded in these countries for one year.

In these affectionate letters to Francesca, a first-grade teacher at an inner-city school in Boston, Jonathan Kozol vividly describes his repeated visits to her classroom while, under Francesca's likably irreverent questioning, also revealing his own most personal stories of the years that he has spent in public schools.

Tim Gunn, America's favorite reality TV cohost, is known for his kind but firm approach in providing wisdom, guidance, and support to the scores of design hopefuls on Project Runway. Having begun his fashion career as a teacher at Parsons The New School for Design, Tim knows more than a thing or two about mentorship and how to convey invaluable pearls of wisdom in an approachable, accessible manner.

What would it take?That was the question that Geoffrey Canada found himself asking. What would it take to change the lives of poor children, not one by one, through heroic interventions and occasional miracles, but in big numbers, and in a way that could be replicated nationwide? The question led him to create the Harlem Children's Zone, a 97-block laboratory in central Harlem where he is testing new and sometimes controversial ideas about poverty in America.

A profound expansion of David McCullough, Jr.’s popular commencement speech - a call to arms against a prevailing, narrow, conception of success viewed by millions on YouTube - You Are Not Special is a love letter to students and parents as well as a guide to a truly fulfilling, happy life. By acknowledging that the world is indifferent to them, McCullough takes pressure off of students to be extraordinary achievers and instead exhorts them to roll up their sleeves and do something useful with their advantages.

At 22, Dan Brown came to the Bronx's P.S. 85 as an eager, fresh-faced teacher. Unbeknownst to him, his assigned class, 4-217, was the designated "dumping ground" for all fourth-grade problem cases, and his students would prove to be more challenging than he could ever anticipate. Intent on being a caring, dedicated teacher but confronted with unruly children, absent parents, and a failing administration, Dan was pushed to the limit time and again: he found himself screaming with rage, punching his fist through a blackboard out of sheer frustration, often just wanting to give up and walk away.

A bold challenge to the conventional wisdom about early childhood, with a pragmatic program to encourage parents and teachers to rethink how and where young children learn best by taking the child's eye view of the learning environment.

Part memoir, part manifesto, Radical is this fearless advocate's incisive, intensely personal call-to-arms. Rhee combines the story of her own extraordinary experience with dozens of compelling examples from schools she's worked in and studied-from students from unspeakable home lives who have thrived in the classroom to teachers whose radical methods have produced unprecedented leaps in achievement. Radical chronicles Rhee's awakening to the potential of every child, her rage at the special interests blocking badly-needed change, and her recognition that it will take a grassroots movement to create outstanding public schools.

David Menasche lived for his work as a high school English teacher. His passion inspired his students, and between lessons on Shakespeare and sentence structure, he forged a unique bond with his kids, buoying them through personal struggles while sharing valuable life lessons.

Up the Down Staircase is the funny and touching story of a committed, idealistic teacher whose clash with school bureaucracy is a timeless lesson for students, teachers, parents – anyone concerned about public education. Bel Kaufman lets her characters speak for themselves through memos, letters, directives from the principal, comments by students, notes between teachers, and papers from desk drawers and wastebaskets, evoking a vivid picture of teachers fighting the good fight against all that stands in the way of good teaching.

In his commencement address to the graduating class of 2016, James E. Ryan, dean of the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, offered remarkable advice to the crowd of hopeful men and women eager to make their marks on the world. The key to achieving emotional connections and social progress, he told them, can be found in five essential questions.

The story we usually tell about childhood and success is the one about intelligence: success comes to those who score highest on tests, from preschool admissions to SATs. But in How Children Succeed, Paul Tough argues that the qualities that matter most have more to do with character: skills like perseverance, curiosity, conscientiousness, optimism, and self-control. How Children Succeed introduces us to a new generation of researchers and educators who, for the first time, are using the tools of science to peel back the mysteries of character.

We all learn at least one language as children. But what does it take to learn six languages...or seventy? In Babel No More, Michael Erard, "a monolingual with benefits," sets out on a quest to meet language superlearners and make sense of their mental powers. On the way he uncovers the secrets of historical figures like Italian cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti, who was said to speak seventy-two languages; Emil Krebs, a pugnacious German diplomat, who spoke sixty-eight languages; and Lomb Kat, a Hungarian who taught herself Russian by reading Russian romance novels.

When Duke University gave free iPods to the freshman class in 2003, critics said they were wasting their money. Yet when the students in practically every discipline invented academic uses for the music players, suddenly the idea could be seen in a new light - as an innovative way to turn learning on its head. Using cutting-edge research on the brain, Cathy N. Davidson show how attention blindness has produced one of our society's greatest challenges.