What School Social Workers Are Reading

October 2018
Wonder
by R. J. Palacio
from Goodreads:
I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse.

August Pullman was born with a facial difference that, up until now, has prevented him from going to a mainstream school. Starting 5th grade at Beecher Prep, he wants nothing more than to be treated as an ordinary kid-but his new classmates can't get past Auggie's extraordinary face. WONDER, now a #1 New York Times bestseller and included on the Texas Bluebonnet Award master list, begins from Auggie's point of view, but soon switches to include his classmates, his sister, her boyfriend, and others. These perspectives converge in a portrait of one community's struggle with empathy, compassion, and acceptance.

 

September 2018
No House to Call My Home: Love, Family, and Other Transgressions
By Ryan Berg

Goodreads: Underemployed and directionless, Ryan Berg took a job in a group home for disowned and homeless LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning) teenagers. His job was to help these teens discover their self worth, get them back on their feet, earn high school degrees, and find jobs. But he had no idea how difficult it would be, and the complexities that were involved with coaxing them away from dangerous sex work and cycles of drug and alcohol abuse, and helping them heal from years of abandonment and abuse.

In No House to Call My Home, Ryan Berg tells profoundly moving, intimate, and raw stories from the frontlines of LGBTQ homelessness and foster care.

June, July, August 2018
Grand Challenges for Social Work and Society

Rowena Fong, EdD, MSW, James Lubben, PhD/DSW, MPH, MSW, & Richard P. Barth, PhD, MSW, eds.

Grand Challenges for Social Work and Society details the origins of the initiative and includes a chapter on each of the 12 Grand Challenges:
• Ensure healthy development for all youth
• Close the health gap
• Stop family violence
• Advance long and productive lives
• Eradicate social isolation
• End homelessness
• Create social responses to a changing environment
• Harness technology for social good
• Promote smart decarceration
• Build financial capability for all
• Reduce extreme economic inequality
• Achieve equal opportunity and justice

This comprehensive review of the initiative provides a roadmap for the Grand Challenges, giving readers an overview of each of the issues, making a case for social work's unique position to address it, offering ideas for directions to take, and ways to get involved.

 

May 2018
Why Are They Angry With Us? Essays on Race
by Larry E. Davis, Dean, School of Social Work, University of Pittsburgh

"Why Are They Angry With Us?: Essays on Race is a stunningly poignant and personal book by an exceptionally thoughtful academic...there is something about the way that Davis is able to see race and racism in contemporary society that demonstrates the distinctive analytical and empathic gifts of social work practice, gifts that he has distilled into eight clear, courageous, and often moving chapters on our country's ongoing obsession with racial discrimination." -- John Jackson, Dean, University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice, Research on Social Work Practice

 

April 2018
Learning a New Land: Immigrant Students in American Society
by Carola Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco & Irina Todorova

One child in five in America is the child of immigrants, and their numbers increase each year. Very few will return to the country they barely remember. Who are they, and what America do they know?

Based on an extraordinary interdisciplinary study that followed 400 newly arrived children from the Caribbean, China, Central America, and Mexico for five years, this book provides a compelling account of the lives, dreams, and frustrations of these youngest immigrants. Richly told portraits of high and low achievers are packed with unexpected ironies. When they arrive, most children are full of optimism and a respect for education. But poor neighborhoods and dull--often dangerous--schools can corrode hopes. The vast majority learn English-but it is the English of video games and the neighborhood, not that of standardized tests...

The children of immigrants, here to stay, are the future--and how they adapt will determine the nature of America in the twenty-first century.

 

March 2018
The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Anxiety
by Alexander Chapman, Kim Gratz & Matthew Tull

These easy-to-learn skills are at the heart of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), a
cutting-edge therapeutic approach that can help you better manage the panic attacks, worries, and fears that limit your life and keep you feeling stuck. This book will help you learn these four powerful skills:

• Mindfulness helps you connect with the present moment and notice passing thoughts and feelings without being ruled by them.
• Acceptance skills foster self-compassion and a nonjudgmental stance toward your emotions and worries.
• Interpersonal effectiveness skills help you assert your needs in order to build more fulfilling relationships with others.
• Emotion regulation skills help you manage anxiety and fear before they get out of control.

 

February 2018
Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States 5th edition
by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

Good Reads: The first edition of this best-selling book showed that alongside the subtle forms of discrimination typical of the post-Civil Rights era, new powerful ideology of "color-blind racism" has emerged. Bonilla-Silva documented how beneath the rhetorical maze of contemporary racial discourse lies a full-blown arsenal of arguments, phrases, and stories that whites use to account for and ultimately justify racial inequities.

In the new edition Bonilla-Silva has added a chapter dealing with the future of racial stratification in America that goes beyond the white / black dichotomy. He argues that the U.S. is developing a more complex and apparently "plural" racial order that will mimic Latin American patterns of racial stratification. Another new chapter addresses a variety of questions from readers of the first edition. And he has updated the book throughout with new information, data, and references where appropriate. The book ends with a new Postscript, "What is to be Done
(For Real?)". As in the highly acclaimed first edition, Bonilla-Silva continues to challenge colorblind thinking.

 

January 2018
Shorties: Stories from Life
by Dennis R. Oulahan
“Shorties is a collection of stories about things that have happened to me and to people close to me over the course of my life. These stories aren't earth-shattering or shocking. They are about everyday experiences that can take on greater meaning when they are examined closely. I believe that everyone has stories like these about things that have happened in their lives. Reliving these experiences in order to write them down has been a joy for me. I hope that some of those who read Shorties: Stories from Life will be encouraged to record their own stories so that they can feel that same joy."

 

December 2017
101 Social Work Clinical Techniques
Francis J. Turner & William S. Rowe, eds.

The New Social Worker: Where has this book been throughout my social work career? Dr. Turner and Dr. Rowe have created an encompassing list of techniques that is timeless and is unrivaled in any previous texts I have ever seen. These techniques are clearly described in a useful manner for the consumer to adequately assess the skill level required and to carefully consider the risk analysis of implementing the technique for the client. The multiple scenarios offer another mechanism to envision how the technique would be applied. The scenarios also appeal to different learning preferences, in contrast to the description of a technique.

 

November 2017
Using Stories to Build Bridges with Traumatized Children: Creative Ideas for Therapy, Life Story Work
by Kim Golding

Golding leads the reader through the basics of understanding the history and importance of storytelling for successful practice application.
The book begins with an introductory chapter focusing on the power of storytelling in the practice of healing. Chapter 2 is written with the practitioner in mind, encouraging the creation of personal or imaginary stories to introduce into practice. In this chapter, Golding explains the different types of stories, and then provides the reader with step-by-step suggestions for story development, focusing on theme, setting, main characters, making sense of the story, helpers throughout the story, and the resolution.

 

October 2017
Mapping and Monitoring Bullying and Violence
by Ron Avi Astor and Rami Benbenishty

Mapping and Monitoring Bullying and Violence is a guidebook for district and school education leaders and professionals to reduce incidents of violence and bullying and enhance students' well-being. Written in a step-by-step format, the text is designed to assist in collecting and making better use of data on non-academic issues in schools, such as reports of victimization, weapon and drug possession, theft of personal property, suicide ideation, and other areas. The authors advocate an ongoing monitoring approach that involves collecting information from multiple audiences about what is taking place in and around schools. One part of this process is mapping, which gives school leaders, students, and staff members a visual record of areas of the campus considered safe, alongside those that students view to be places where they might encounter bullying, harm, or trouble. Other common parts of such systems are surveys among students, educators, and parents. The authors include practical examples of how to design such a system, gather current information, analyze and display the data, share it with different audiences, and use it to find solutions. Ultimately, this timely guidebook is a musthave for social workers, educators, psychologists, counselors, nurses, and others working to improve safety in schools.

 

September 2017
Suicide in Schools: A Practitioner's Guide to Multi-level Prevention, Assessment, Intervention, and Postvention (School-Based Practice in Action)
by Terri A. Erbacher, Jonathon B. Singer & Scott Poland

The New Social Worker: This book evidences the authors' attempt to confront...fear through the provision of practical, evidence-based strategies to prevent youth suicide "where our youth spend the majority of their day--at school" (p. 4). Taking the view of the school as a system, the authors provide information useful to all personnel working in our schools--from the janitor serving as gatekeeper needing to know the warning signs of suicide; to the school administrator developing district wide crisis policies; to the school social worker assessing risk, intervening in a crisis, or assisting in the aftermath. The book is comprehensive in breadth and depth on the topic of school system response to youth suicide...School mental health providers will find this book invaluable in the planning process aimed at ensuring that their school districts are following best practices in the field in the areas of prevention, intervention, and postvention. The book also serves as a quick reference guide for practitioners should a crisis occur.

 

August 2017
Belonging and Becoming: The Power of Social and Emotional Learning In High Schools
by Barbara Cervone and Kathleen Cushman

Despite growing attention to the importance of grit and other character traits for achievement, developing them in students rarely finds its way into secondary school curricula. Authors Barbara Cervone and Kathleen Cushman investigate the exceptions, telling the stories of five high schools with a national reputation for infusing rigorous academics with social and emotional learning, which results in demonstrable benefits for students.
Based on extensive interviews and on-site visits, the book identifies six elements that all of these schools have in common, including advisories and other structural supports for students and teachers; rituals and other means for establishing an intentional, reflective, and respectful community as well as a firm commitment to restorative justice; and a broad and engaging curriculum that includes service learning.

 

July 2017
Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
by Sam Quinones

From a small town in Mexico to the boardrooms of Big Pharma, an explosive and shocking account of addiction and black tar heroin in the heartland of America.

...With a great reporter's narrative skill and the storytelling ability of a novelist, acclaimed journalist Sam Quinones weaves together two classic tales of capitalism run amok whose unintentional collision has been catastrophic. The unfettered prescribing of pain medications during the 1990s reached its peak in Purdue Pharma's campaign to market OxyContin, its new, expensive--extremely addictive--miracle painkiller. Meanwhile, a massive influx of black tar heroin--cheap, potent, and originating from one small county on Mexico's west coast, independent of any drug cartel--assaulted small town and mid-sized cities across the country, driven by a brilliant, almost unbeatable marketing and distribution system. Together these phenomena continue to lay waste to communities from Tennessee to Oregon, Indiana to New Mexico.

 

June 2017
The Crossroads of Should and Must: Find and Follow Your Passion
by Elle Luna

Who hasn't asked the question "How can I find and follow my true calling?" Elle Luna frames this moment as "standing at the crossroads of Should and Must." "Should" is what we feel we ought to be doing, or what is expected of us. "Must" is the thing we dream of doing, our heart's desire. And it was her own personal journey that inspired Elle Luna to write a brief online manifesto that, in a few short months, has touched hundreds of thousands of people who've read it or heard Elle speak on the topic. Now Ms. Luna expands her ideas into an inspirational, highly visual gift book for every recent graduate, every artist, every seeker, every career changer.

The Crossroads of Should and Must has a universal message--we get to choose the path between Should and Must. And it gives every reader permission to embrace this message. It's about the difference between jobs, careers, and callings. . .

 

May 2017
Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things
by Jenny Lawson

Lawson (Let's Pretend This Never Happened) returns with another autobiographical work, this one focused on her experiences living with mental illness. The title comes from a hashtag Lawson started on Twitter after a friend's death to encourage people living with depression and anxiety to stockpile ridiculous, joyful memories "to take into battle with us when our brains declare war on our very existence." Her own furiously happy exploits lead to stories about her collection of odd taxidermy, the time she rented a sloth and a wallaby to surprise her husband and daughter, and a trip to Australia, where she donned a kangaroo costume in an effort to get closer to wild kangaroos. As delightful as much of the book is, Lawson is also candid about her struggles with depression, self-harm, and crippling anxiety, the difficulties of nailing down the right combination of medications to treat her conditions, and her fears about the effects of her illness on her family. VERDICT The stigma surrounding mental illness can only be lifted if people affected are willing to talk about their experiences and everyone else is willing to listen. This book is a profane, hilarious, touching, and essential part of that conversation. Recommended for all public libraries. --Stephanie Klose, Library Journal 9/1/2015

 

April 2017
Social Work Practice with African Americans in Urban Environments
by Halaevalu F.O. Vakalahi, Rhonda Wells-Wilbon, Anna R. McPhatter

The experiences of African Americans in urban communities are distinct from those of other ethnic groups, and to be truly understood require an in-depth appreciation of the interface between micro- and macro-level factors. This sweeping text, an outgrowth of a groundbreaking urban social work curriculum, focuses exclusively on the African American experience through field education, community engagement, and practice. It presents a framework for urban social work practice that encompasses a deep understanding of the challenges faced by this community. From a perspective based on empowerment, strengths, resilience, cultural competence, and multiculturalism, the book delivers proven strategies for social work practice with the urban African American population. It facilitates the development of creative thinking skills and the ability to "meet people where they are" skills that are often necessary for true transformation to take root.

 

Handbook of Evidence Based Interventions for Children and Adolescents
A step-by-step resource for treating more than 40 prevalent issues with proven strategies Lea A. Theodore, PhD, ed.

This comprehensive handbook for evidence-based mental health and learning interventions with children and adolescents is distinguished by its explicit yet concise guidance on implementation in practice. With a compendium of proven strategies for resolving more than 40 of the most pressing and prevalent issues facing young people, the book provides immediate guidance and uniform step-by-step instructions for resolving issues ranging from psychopathological disorders to academic problems. Busy academics, practitioners, and trainees in schools and outpatient clinical settings will find this resource to be an invaluable desktop reference for facilitating well-informed decision making.

 

March 2017
The Bully Society: School Shootings and the Crisis of Bullying in America's Schools
by Jessie Klein

The Bully Society is a reclaim America's schools from the vicious cycle of aggression that threatens our children and our society at large.
Heartbreaking interviews illuminate how both boys and girls obtain status by acting"masculine"-displaying aggression at one another's expense as both students and adults police one another to uphold gender stereotypes. Klein shows that the aggressive ritual of gender policing in American culture creates emotional damage that perpetuates violence through revenge, and that this cycle is the main cause of not only the many school shootings that have shocked America, but also related problems in schools, manifesting in high rates of suicide, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-cutting, truancy, and substance abuse. After two decades working in schools as a school social worker and professor, Klein proposes ways to transcend these destructive trends-transforming school bully societies into compassionate communities.

 

February 2017
White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era
by Shelby Steele

In 1955 the killers of Emmett Till, a black Mississippi youth, were acquitted because they were white. Forty years later, despite the strong DNA evidence against him, accused murderer O. J. Simpson went free after his attorney portrayed him as a victim of racism. The age of white supremacy has given way to an age of white guilt-and neither has been good for African Americans. Through articulate analysis and engrossing recollections, acclaimed race relations scholar Shelby Steele sounds a powerful call for a new culture of personal responsibility.

 

January 2017
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
by Matthew Desmond

NYT Book Review: Desmond is an academic who teaches at Harvard...In Milwaukee, he moved into a trailer park and then to a rooming house on the poverty-stricken North Side and diligently took notes on the lives of people who pay 70 to 80 percent of their incomes for homes that, objectively speaking, are unfit for human habitation. It was not fun, he wrote in his journal:"I feel dirty, collecting these stories and hardships like so many trophies."

...Eviction itself provides the dramatic punctuation in Desmond's story..."If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out."

Evictions are scenes of incredible cruelty, if not actual violence...Children are scarred in the process. They are pulled from one school to another; they periodically lose whatever tiny cache of possessions they may have accumulated.

 

 

December 2016
Rising Strong
by Brené Brown

The physics of vulnerability is simple: If we are brave enough often enough, we will fail. The author of the #1 New York Times best sellers Daring Greatly and The Gifts of Imperfection tells us what it takes to get back up, and how owning our stories of disappointment, failure, and heartbreak gives us the power to write a daring new ending. Struggle, Brené Brown writes, can be our greatest call to courage, and rising strong our clearest path to deeper meaning, wisdom, and hope.

 

November 2016
Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard
by Liz Murray

Goodreads: In the vein of The Glass Castle, Breaking Night is the stunning memoir of a young woman who at age fifteen was living on the streets, and who eventually made it into Harvard.

Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put into a girls' home. At age fifteen, when her family finally unraveled, Murray found herself on the streets. She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways all night to have a warm place to sleep.

Eventually, Murray decided to take control of her own destiny and go back to high school, often completing her assignments in the hallways and subway stations where she slept.

 

September & October 2016
Handbook of Evidence-Based Interventions for Children and Adolescents
Lea A. Theodore, ed.

Springer: Unlike other volumes that ignore or merely reference the evidence base of various interventions, this book focuses on providing immediate, empirically supported guidance for putting these strategies into direct practice. Issues covered include crisis interventions and response, social and emotional issues, academic/learning issues, psychopathological disorders, neuropsychological disorders, and the behavioral management of childhood health issues. Each chapter follows a consistent format including a brief description of the problem and associated characteristics, etiology and contributing factors, and three evidence-based, step-by-step sets of instructions for implementation. Additionally, each chapter provides several websites offering further information about the topic. Featuring contributions from leading scholars and practitioners on each issue covered, this book will be a valuable resource for school and child clinical psychologists, counselors, social workers, and therapists as well as other health and mental health professionals whose primary practice is with children and adolescents.

 

July & August 2016
Traumatic Experience and the Brain: A Handbook for Understanding and Treating Those Traumatized As Children
by Dave Ziegler

Traumatic Experience and the Brain is the result of Dr. Dave Ziegler's three decades of experience with children traumatized by abuse and/or neglect. This book details the effect of such trauma on the developing brain, describing how it actually rewires one’s perceptions of self, others, and the world. It is a book of hope for foster, natural, and adoptive parents of such"broken" children and the therapists, teachers and social workers who attempt to help them. Dave Ziegler, M.S., Ph.D., is the director of Scar/Jasper Mountain, a residential treatment program in Oregon for some of society's most damaged children.

 

June 2016
Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair
by Anne Lamott

Booklist: In her latest whirling, fuming, blunt, wise, and funny book of homilies, following the best-selling Help, Thanks, Wow (2012), Lamott combines exasperation and sorrow over perpetual and universal suffering with a stubborn belief in the possibility of meaning, solace, and mending. She asks how we can even begin to seek coherence when children are massacred in their schools and polar bears are "floating out to sea on scraps of ice." All we can do is what needs to be done. We clean up oil spills, rebuild after catastrophes, care for the sick, serve food, and wash floors. Lamott connects the epic to the ordinary and observes, "We live stitch by stitch, when we're lucky." As she tells charmingly self-mocking yet laser-sharp stories from her patchwork life of spiritual inquiry-one about a blouse she inherited from a friend who died too young, another about a creatively repaired curtain-sewing and darning become metaphors for accepting life's cycles of joy and loss, and for taking care of each other and the world. Lamott's larky yet shrewd needle-and-thread spirituality is realistic and renewing.

 

May 2016
In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness
by Peter A. Levine

In this culmination of his life's work, Peter A. Levine draws on his broad experience as a clinician, a student of comparative brain research, a stress scientist and a keen observer of the naturalistic animal world to explain the nature and transformation of trauma in the body, brain and psyche. In an Unspoken Voice is based on the idea that trauma is neither a disease nor a disorder, but ratheran injury caused by fright, helplessness and loss that can be healed by engaging our innate capacity to self-regulate high states of arousal and intense emotions. Enriched with a coherent theoretical framework and compelling case examples, the book elegantly blends the latest findings in biology, neuroscience and body-oriented psychotherapy to show that when we bring together animal instinct and reason, we can become more whole human beings.

 

April 2016
Between the World and Me
by Ta-Nehisi Coates

"I came to see the streets and the schools as arms of the same beast. One enjoyed the official power of the state while the other enjoyed its implicit sanction. But fear and violence were the weaponry of both."

Kirkus Reviews: The powerful story of a father's past and a son's future. Atlantic senior writer Coates..offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son's life. "I am wounded," he writes."I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next." Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. "I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked," he remembers, "but powerfully afraid." His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, "had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people." He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand "that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white." Coates refers repeatedly to whites' insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now "that nothing so essentialist as race" divides people, but rather "the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do."...This moving, potent testament might have been titled "Black Lives Matter." Or: "An American Tragedy."

 

March 2016
Why Culture Counts: Teaching Children of Poverty
by Donna Walker Tileston & Sandra K Darling

Current models do not address the complexity of achievement gaps among racial and socioeconomic groups. As the National Task Force on Minority High Achievement and current assessment data show, children of color, even those who are not poor, often score lower on achievement tests than whites who are poor. Culture trumps poverty in its impact on achievement. Culture defines what children will focus their attention on, how they interpret the world to give it meaning, what background knowledge they bring to learning, and how they will value that learning. The focus of our interventions to close the achievement gap must therefore be to attend to the culture of the learner. This book shows how to build the necessary supports to move classrooms from the traditional, Eurocentric model to one that respects and incorporates the cultures of the learners.

 

February 2016
The Warmth of Other Suns - The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
by Isabel Wilkerson

"In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.

From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves. With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals..."

 

January 2016
The World Café: Shaping Our Future Through Conversations That Matter
by Juanita Brown & David Isaacs & the World Café Community
Review by SSW Pat Beauchemin, LICSW, Rhode Island

"School social workers know about group processes and have honed their skills in drawing out the best thoughts and ideas of those invited to participate, whether the group is comprised of eighth grade students or parents in an education support group. In assuming more of a leadership role in their schools and districts, school social workers may want to read a wonderful book to assist them in their facilitative capacities to enhance conversations that occur in meetings or other group settings. . .

As I read, I became more excited as the book offers many possibilities using the 7 World Café principals in designing a café process. The authors have come to realize through their own and others experiences that a "collective intelligence" is the magic that emerges through table conversations offering participants an opportunity to reflect on meaningful questions, make important contribution to the intimate dialogue and serve as "ambassadors" by bringing forth the salient points of the dialogue to others, as people move from table to table in a powerful exercise.

The reader will become highly motivated to experiment with different forums as well as connect with others who "do" world café experiences, as the resource section identifies organizations dedicated to enhancing and shaping a myriad of conversations that can make a difference."

 

December 2015
Belonging and Becoming: The Power of Social and Emotional Learning in High Schools
by Barbara Cervone and Kathleen Cushman

"Despite growing attention to the importance of grit and other character traits for achievement, developing them in students rarely finds its way into secondary school curricula. Authors Barbara Cervone and Kathleen Cushman investigate the exceptions, telling the stories of five high schools with a national reputation for infusing rigorous academics with social and emotional learning, which results in demonstrable benefits for students.

Based on extensive interviews and on-site visits, the book identifies six elements that all of these schools have in common, including advisories and other structural supports for students and teachers; rituals and other means for establishing an intentional, reflective, and respectful community as well as a firm commitment to restorative justice; and a broad and engaging curriculum that includes service learning."

 

November 2015
The School-to-Prison Pipeline
by Christopher A. Mallett

"The expanded use of zero-tolerance policies and security measures in schools has exponentially increased arrests and referrals to the juvenile courts-often for typical adolescent developmental behaviors and low-level misdemeanors. This is the first truly comprehensive assessment of the "school-to-prison pipeline"-a term that refers to the increased risk for certain individuals, disproportionately from minority and impoverished communities, to end up ensnared in the criminal justice system because of excessively punitive disciplinary policies in schools. Written by one of the foremost experts on this topic, the book examines school disciplinary policies and juvenile justice policies that contribute to the pipeline, describes its impact on targeted-both intentionally and unintentionally-children and adolescents, and recommends a more supportive and rehabilitative model that challenges the criminalization of education and punitive juvenile justice. . .The book is a vital resource for undergraduate and graduate students of social work and criminal justice as well as for juvenile court and school personnel and policymakers."

 

October 2015
The New Bullying -- How Social Media, Social Exclusion, Laws and Suicide Have hanged Our Definition of Bullying, and What to Do About It
By MSU School of Journalism

Amazon: This book is primarily concerned with the issue of how bullying has changed from about 1997 to 2012. The authors' thesis was that bullying has changed considerably, but that some adults are not aware of the change. This book is intended to document that change. Among the changes that were examined are the rise of cyberbullying, social exclusion as a form of bullying, new laws about school bullying, computer crimes and threats and a growing willingness on the part of the public to talk about bullying and its perceived connection to suicide and violence, especially in schools.

 

September 2015
Swept Under the Rug: A Story from Two Sides of a Long Lasting Heroin/alcohol
Addiction

Amazon: A heart-wrenching, true story, told through memories of a young teen dealing with an older brothers long lasting heroin addiction. This book gives the readers a unique perspective of two sides of a heroin addiction. One side told through the younger brothers (Author) memories growing up as a young teen. One side told through the poems and songs written by the older brother (Addict).

The purpose of this book is to bring to light drug abuse. If this book helps one person either help themselves or another, the job has been done.

If you are looking for books about drug addiction, heroin abuse, family addition to drugs, alcoholism stories, or general drug abuse reads, this book will give you a taste of all of it.

 

June, July & August 2015
Remnants of a Life on Paper
By Bea Tusiani, Paula Tusiani-Eng and Pamela Tusiani

The book tells the story of a young woman suffering with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), a psychiatric illness characterized primarily by mood swings, unstable relationships, depression and self-destructive behavior. Pamela Tusiani's copious journals, moving artwork and poetry provide an intimate glimpse of her battle with a personality she could not control. Intertwined with Pamela's voice, Bea Tusiani tells the story of her daughter's struggle and the roller-coaster effect it had on her family. The two points of view present a unique insight into Pamela's state of mind. Based on Bea's and her husband's notes, taken during conversations with Pamela, her doctors and other healthcare providers, this book allows the reader to live through Pamela's day-to-day ordeal and experience the anxiety, love and fear of her family members. This is not just the story of one vibrant, gifted young woman and her courageous family. It is a real life account of an illness that irreparably changes one's world. Download a Clinical BPD Teaching Guide

 

May 2015
There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up In the Other America
By Alex Kotlowitz

There Are No Children Here...chronicles the true story of two brothers coming of age in the Henry Horner public housing project in Chicago over a two year period.

Lafeyette and Pharoah Rivers, their mother and siblings struggle to survive gun battles, gang influences, overzealous police officers, and overburdened and mismanaged bureaucracies to simply survive. Lafeyette and Pharoah Rivers are eleven and nine years old when the story begins in the summer of come and go. Their father Paul is rarely around due to his drug habit. Summer is the most dangerous season as shootings are constant. The family's safe place to avoid stray bullets is in the narrow hallway of their apartment.

 

April 2015
The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook: What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing
By Bruce Perry, Maia Szalavitz

What happens when a young brain is traumatized? How does terror, abuse, or disaster affect a child's mind--and how can that mind recover? Child psychiatrist Bruce Perry has helped children faced with unimaginable horror: genocide survivors, murder witnesses, kidnapped teenagers, and victims of family violence. In The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, he tells their stories of trauma and transformation through the lens of science, revealing the brain's astonishing capacity for healing. Deftly combining unforgettable case histories with his own compassionate, insightful strategies for rehabilitation, Perry explains what exactly happens to the brain when a child is exposed to extreme stress-and reveals the unexpected measures that can be taken to ease a child's pain and help him grow into a healthy adult. Through the stories of children who recover-physically, mentally, and emotionally-from the most devastating circumstances, Perry shows how simple things like surroundings, affection, language, and touch can deeply impact the developing brain, for better or for worse. In this deeply informed and moving book, Bruce Perry dramatically demonstrates that only when we understand the science of the mind can we hope to heal the spirit of even the most wounded child.

 

March 2015
The Compassion Fatigue Workbook
By Francoise Mathieu

Google Books: The Compassion Fatigue Workbook is a lifeline for any helping professional facing the physical and emotional exhaustion that can shadow work in the helping professions. Since 2001 the activities in this Workbook have helped thousands of helpers in the fields of healthcare, community mental health, correctional services, education, and the military. In addition to a comprehensive description of compassion fatigue and vicarious traumatization, The Compassion Fatigue Workbook leads the reader through experiential activities designed to target specific areas in their personal and professional lives. It provides concrete strategies to help the reader develop a personalized plan for identifying and transforming compassion fatigue and vicarious traumatization.

February 2015
10 Recent Non-Fiction Books to Read for Black History Month

1. Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward
2. The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
3. The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood by Ta- Nehisi Coates
4. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
5. Mo' Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove by Ahtnir "Questlove" Thompson and Ben Greenman
6. How to Be Black by Baratunde Thurston
7. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle
Alexander
8. White Girls by Hilton Als
9. How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America by Kiese Laymon
10. Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New
America by Gilbert King

 

January 2015
Reviving Ophelia
by Mary Pipher

Amazon: As a therapist, Mary Pipher was becoming frustrated with the growing problems among adolescent girls. Why were so many of them turning to therapy in the first place? Why had these lovely and promising human beings fallen prey to depression, eating disorders, suicide attempts, and crushingly low self-esteem? The answer hit a nerve with Pipher, with parents, and with the girls themselves. Crashing and burning in a "developmental Bermuda Triangle," they were coming of age in a media-saturated culture preoccupied with unrealistic ideals of beauty and images of dehumanized sex, a culture rife with addictions and sexually transmitted diseases. They were losing their resiliency and optimism in a "girlpoisoning" culture that propagated values at odds with those necessary to survive.

Told in the brave, fearless, and honest voices of the girls themselves who are emerging from the chaos of adolescence, Reviving Ophelia is a call to arms, offering important tactics, empathy, and strength, and urging a change where young hearts can flourish again, and rediscover and reengage their sense of self.

 

December 2014
Monday Coffee and Other Stories of Mothering Children with Special Needs
Darolyn "Lyn" Jones and Liz Whiteacre, eds.

Mothers of children with special needs feel guilt, sadness, and joy simultaneously, which is hard to understand. The mothers in this anthology don't seek pity; instead, they illustrate a complexity of emotions that start with diagnosis, explore care in both early and later years, and invite us to witness the aftermath of too-early deaths of their children. Weaving together essays, poems, and graphics by mothers of children with a wide range of disabilities, Jones and Whiteacre have edited a collection that highlights the challenges and joys of motherhood, exposing both fears and guilty pleasures as mothers explore their relationships with their children, partners, families, caregivers, educators, and the medical community.

 

November 2014
MOXIE: The Secret to Bold and Gutsy Leadership
by John Baldoni

Leaders today need to be mindful of their circumstances as well as mindful of their own strengths and shortcomings. They need to have the disposition to succeed as well as the inner resourcefulness to persevere. Leaders must be willing to do things differently but also draw on tried and true traits, such as courage and gumption.

Moxie is a concept that the modern leader is wise to adopt-one part courage, one part can-do spirit, and one part recognition. In Moxie: The Secret to Bold and Gutsy Leadership, author John Baldoni uses concrete, tried-and-true steps to bring out the inner leader in everyone. For management and employees alike, Moxie provides a roadmap to inspire innovation and effective leadership. Whether you're already at the helm of your organization or still looking for a way up the ladder, Moxie is the leadership tool you can't do without. Built on the MOXIE framework, leaders learn how Motivation, Opportunity, an "X" factor, Innovation, and Engagement work together for success.

 

October 2014
School Bullying: New Perspectives on a Growing Problem
by David R. Dupper

Bullying is one of the most prevalent and insidious forms of school violence today, impacting the learning environment of schools in profound ways. Victims of chronic bullying have poorer grades, increased rates of truancy, increased rates of dropping out, loss of selfesteem, feelings of isolation, depression, and increased risk of suicide attempts.

...Consistent with an ecological systems perspective, this book utilizes a whole school approach as a framework for developing and implementing comprehensive evidence-based interventions to combat bullying in schools. The result is a must-have resource for both undergraduate and graduate students in social work courses, school psychology courses, and education courses, as well as student service workers in secondary schools. (Oxford University Press)

 

September 2014
Beginnings, Middles, & Ends: Sideways Stories on the Art & Soul of Social Work
by Ogden Rogers

Ogden Rogers has written a collection of essays, poems, and other writings about life in social work, and about life in general. . .This book of 99 stories reads easily, and the author tells tales that operate at many levels. The stories exemplify role modeling and transformational learning theories, and readers are encouraged to reflect and consider their own thoughts and reactions to each piece. It's written in an easy, non-linear style that is filled with wit, wisdom, and drama. In many ways, it is a book that looks at social work from the inside out, and seeks to provide the reader with opportunities for validation, surprise, critique, and reading enjoyment.

 

August 2014
from the children's viewpoints...
Our New Home: Immigrant Children Speak
by Emily Hearn and Marywinn Milne

Our New Home is a collection of writings and drawings by children from around the world who have immigrated to Canada. The editors have divided the collection into four sections. They are: leaving their homelands, American differences, adjusting to a new culture, problems they experience, and their feelings about different topics. The children are from many different countries such as China, India, Argentina, Germany, Pakistan, Russia, Vietnam, and many more. Their words and pictures show their excitement, fears, and challenges about moving to a new country.

 

Making It Home: Real Life Stories from Children Forced to Flee
by Beverley Naidoo

"We took flight from the war a long time ago. . . . Nobody tells me why. . . .We saw lots of people dying and houses burning down." Displaced by war, children from Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Congo, Liberia, Sudan, and Burundi talk about the horror left behind, the family separation, and the struggle to adjust to a new place, whether as a refugee in a camp or as an asylum seeker in the U.S. Their first-person accounts, many with full-color photos, have been collected by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which runs programs to aid wartraumatized children, and anonymous writers supply short introductions to each war zone. Many of the kids' voices sound the same, and there's too much politics for one small book. But the aching personal details will grab readers, as will the global connections. As Beverly Naidoo points out in her foreword, these stories challenge the racism against today's asylum seekers."

 

June & July 2014
An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
by Kay Redfield Jamison

Dr. Jamison is one of the foremost authorities on manic-depressive (bipolar) illness; she has also experienced it firsthand. For even while she was pursuing her career in academic medicine, Jamison found herself succumbing to the same exhilarating highs and catastrophic depressions that afflicted many of her patients, as her disorder launched her into ruinous spending sprees, episodes of violence, and an attempted suicide.

Here Jamison examines bipolar illness from the dual perspectives of the healer and the healed, revealing both its terrors and the cruel allure that at times prompted her to resist taking medication. An Unquiet Mind is a memoir of enormous candor, vividness, and wisdom--a deeply powerful book that has both transformed and saved lives.

This book will help you understand what it feels like to be bi-polar and how persons with this disorder think and why they so frequently go on/off their medication.

 

May 2014
School Violence in Context: Culture, Neighborhood, Family, School & Gender
by Rami Benbenishty & Ron Avi Astor

This empirical contrast of universal with culturally specific patterns is sorely needed in the school violence literature. The authors' innovative research maps the contours of verbal, social, physical, and sexual victimization and weapons possession, as well as staff-initiated violence against students, presenting some startling findings along the way. When comparing schools in Israel with schools in California, the authors demonstrate for the first time that for most violent events the patterns of violent behaviors have the same relationship for different age groups, genders, and nations. Conversely, they highlight specific kinds of violence that are strongly influenced by culture... They reveal, for example, how Arab boys encounter much more boy-to-boy sexual harassment than their Jewish peers, and that teacher-initiated victimization of students constitutes a significant and often overlooked type of school violence, especially among certain cultural groups. Crucially, the authors expand the paradigm of understanding school violence to encompass the intersection of cultural, ethnic, neighborhood, and family characteristics with intra-school factors such as teacher-student dynamics, anti-violence policies, student participation, grade level, and religious and gender divisions. It is only by understanding the multiple contexts of school violence, they argue, that truly effective prevention programs, interventions, research agendas, and policies can be implemented.--OUP

 

April 2014
Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking
by Malcolm Gladwell

Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant-in the blink of an eye-that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work-in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others? - gladwell.com

 

March 2014
Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys
by Dan Kindlon, PhD, & Michael Thompson, PhD

Amazon: Kindlon and Thompson make a compelling case that emotional literacy is the most valuable gift we can offer our sons, urging parents to recognize the price boys pay when we hold them to an impossible standard of manhood. They identify the social and emotional challenges that boys encounter in school and show how parents can help boys cultivate emotional awareness and empathy--giving them the vital connections and support their need to navigate the social pressures of youth.

 

February 2014
Twelve Years A Slave
by Solomon Northup, Ira Berlin (introduction), & Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (editor)

Perhaps the best written of all the slave narratives, Twelve Years a Slave is a harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. It recounts how Solomon Northup, born a free man in New York, was lured to Washington, D.C., in 1841 with the promise of fast money, then drugged and beaten and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years of his life in captivity on a Louisiana cotton plantation. After his rescue, Northup published this exceptionally vivid and detailed account of slave life. It became an immediate bestseller and today is recognized for its unusual insight and eloquence as one of the very few portraits of American slavery produced by someone as educated as Solomon Northup, or by someone with the dual perspective of having been both a free man and a slave.

 

January 2014
Beast Management: Creating Conflict Resolution with Tough Workplace Adversaries
by Philip Sutton Chard

"...beast management is not about them so much as it is about you." p. 75

Most approaches to workplace conflict rely heavily on rational and "let's be reasonable" methods, such as mediation, crucial conversations, win-win negotiation, and the like. However, in dealing with people with low emotional intelligence, personality disorders, hidden agendas, and dysfunctional communication styles, rational approaches often fail or yield disappointing outcomes. Beast Management picks up where reasonable conflict resolution falls flat. It provides creative and powerful behavioral tactics that will significantly enhance your toolkit for addressing discord with difficult people in the workplace. Metaphorically depicting one's adversaries as "beasts," this book offers simple yet potent techniques for managing conflict when all else fails. Beast Management does not attempt to discredit or replace rational approaches to workplace strife, many of which can be effective when applied with the right kinds of people in appropriate circumstances. Rather, it offers unique methods for saving the day when reason has proven no match for the "beast" in your midst.

 

December 2013
Motivational Interviewing in Schools: Strategies for Engaging Parents, Teachers, and Students
by Keith Herman, Wendy Reinke, Andy Frey, and Stephanie Shepard

Based on encouraging research on the value of MI in K-12 settings, this practical book explains the basic elements of MI theory and demonstrates, step-by-step, how the four-stage process of engaging, focusing, evoking, and planning can be used with the families of students who need psychological or counseling services, teachers who need consultation and support to improve classroom management, and the students themselves. The book discusses barriers to readiness to change and describes how to foster engagement and compliance with school services to increase the likelihood that positive change will occur. It also describes how MI can be used to increase the effectiveness of inter-professional teams in school settings, along with ways in which MI can be integrated into and build support for already established programs. Richly illustrated with examples of using MI as a strategy for promoting everyday conversations about change--the nucleus of MI practice--the book also includes case studies and sample handouts for mental health professionals, students, family members, and teachers.

 

November 2013
Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others

A longtime trauma worker, Laura van Dernoot Lipsky offers a deep and empathetic survey of the often-unrecognized toll on those working to make the world a better place. We may feel tired, cynical, numb, or like we can never do enough. These, and other symptoms, affect us individually and collectively, sapping the energy and effectiveness we so desperately need if we are to benefit humankind, other animals, and the planet itself. Through Trauma Stewardship, we are called to meet these challenges in an intentional way--not by becoming overwhelmed but by developing a quality of mindful presence. Joining the wisdom of ancient cultural traditions with modern psychological research, Lipsky offers a variety of simple and profound practices that will allow us to remake ourselves--and ultimately the world.

 

October 2013
The Leadership Challenge Workbook
by James Kouzes & Barry Posner

This leadership classic continues to be a bestseller after three editions and twenty years in print. It is the gold standard for research-based leadership, and the premier resource on becoming a leader. This new edition, with streamlined text, more international and business examples, and a graphic redesign, is more readable and accessible than ever before. The Leadership Challenge, Fourth Edition, has been extensively updated with the latest research and case studies, and offers inspiring new stories of real people achieving extraordinary results. The authors' central theme remains the same and is more relevant today than ever: "Leadership is Everyone's Business." Their "five practices" and "ten commitments" have been proven by hundreds of thousands of dedicated, successful leaders. This edition, with almost one-third new material, emphasizes the global community and refocuses on business leaders.

 

September 2013
The Four Agreements
by don Miguel Ruiz

Barnes & Noble: "In The Four Agreements, don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of selflimiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, The Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love. The Four Agreements are: Be impeccable with your word, don't take anything personally, don't make assumptions, always do
your best happiness, and love." This short book, 129 pages, can help you make long-lasting changes in your life.

 

 

July & August 2013
Fire in the Ashes
by Jonathon Kozol

Random House: For nearly fifty years Jonathan has pricked the conscience of his readers by laying bare the savage inequalities inflicted upon children for no reason but the accident of being born to poverty within a wealthy nation. . . Jonathan is not a distant and detached reporter. His own life has been radically transformed by the children who have trusted and befriended him. Never has this intimate acquaintance with his subjects been more apparent, or more stirring, than in Fire in the Ashes, as Jonathan tells the stories of young men and women who have come of age in one of the most destitute communities of the United States. Some of them never do recover from the battering they undergo in their early years, but many more battle back with fierce and, often, jubilant determination to overcome the formidable obstacles they face. . . The urgent issues that confront our urban schools -- a devastating race-gap, a pathological regime of obsessive testing and drilling students for exams instead of giving them the rich curriculum that excites a love of learning - are interwoven through these stories. Why certain children rise above it all, graduate from high school and do well in college, while others are defeated by the time they enter adolescence, lies at the essence of this work.

 

June 2013
The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science
by Norman Doidge

An astonishing new science called "neuroplasticity" is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. In this revolutionary look at the brain, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge, M.D., provides an introduction to both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they've transformed.

“Only a few decades ago, scientists considered the brain to be fixed or ‘hardwired’ and considered most forms of brain damage, therefore, to be incurable. Dr. Doidge, an eminent psychiatrist and researcher, was struck by how his patients’ own transformations belied this and set out to explore the new science of neuroplasticity by interviewing both scientific pioneers in neuroscience, and patients who have benefited from neurorehabilitation. Here he describes in fascinating personal narratives how the brain, far from being fixed, has remarkable powers of changing its own structure and compensating for even the most challenging neurological conditions. Doidge’s book is a remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain.” - Oliver Sack, MD

 

April 2013
Ten Things Every Child with Autism Wishes You Knew
by Ellen Notbohm

This is quite an unusual book. It's not a practical guide to handling day to day issues with Autism, nor is it a dry clinical description of Autism. It's essentially a book promoting a new paradigm, (a whole new outlook) on Autism. It provides you with an understanding of some key positive concepts and then goes on to show how they can be put into practical use on a daily basis. . . Make no mistake, these aren't ten baby concepts which will only hold true for a small part of your child's life. They're adult ones, mantras for living - and they apply forever. . . [The author] makes it clear at the beginning of the book that all children are different and that not everything here will apply to every child."

 

March 2013
Learning from Behavior: How to Understand and Help Challenging Children in School
by James E. Levine
Forward by Sophie Freud

Understanding children's problem behaviors in school-seeing beyond the surface actions to reveal and name the root needs fueling those actions-is vital to helping the child. Yet, whether teachers in schools or parents at home, adults often make quick, cursory assessments, then an intervention is sprung. Explanations might be sought from the child, who often resists and becomes more distant. Punishment can occur and things are "taken away," but the behavior worsens. These scenarios and similar occurrences frustrate parents, teachers, and other school professionals alike. In Learning from Behavior, Levine shows us how to observe, question, and think about problem behaviors in such a way that we can understand what is motivating the children to act as they do. Behavior, after all, often represents what the child cannot communicate, due to language limitations, level of psychological development, or traumatic experience. Children think differently; they are not small adults. We need to understand the behavior from the child's perspective before we can intervene to change the behavior. Author Levine shows us, incorporating illustrative vignettes, how to do that.

 

February 2013
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose [cancer] cells--taken without her knowledge in 1951--became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and more. Henrietta's cells have been bought and sold by the billions, but her family didn't know and received no money for this. She remains virtually unknown, and her family can't afford health insurance. A true story.

 

January 2013
Safer Saner Schools: Restorative Practices in Education
by Laura Mirsky & Ted Wachtel

This collection of articles from the Restorative Practices eForum - the IIRP's internet publication with thousands of subscribers around the world - conveys the power of restorative practices to transform schools into positive, vibrant communities while dramatically reducing discipline referrals, detentions and suspensions. The articles include accounts of personal experiences, implementation and research in schools from the United States and Canada to the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and Asia.

 

December 2012
Implementing Evidence-Based Interventions In School Settings
by Sylvia Rosenfield & Virginia Wise Berninger

Designed for both researchers and practitioners, this book is a guide to bridging the gap between the knowledge generated by scientific research and application of that knowledge to educational practice. With the emphasis on evidence-based practice in the schools growing exponentially, school practitioners must learn how to understand, judge, and make use of the research being produced to full effect. Conversely, researchers must understand what is being used in "real-world" settings, and what is still needed. Each chapter is written by leaders on the topic, and contributors include both researchers and school-based practitioners. . . this book is an invaluable treatise on current understanding of the complexities of translating research into educational practice.

 

November 2012
Supporting and Educating Traumatized Students
A Guide for School-Based Professionals
Eric Rossen & Robert Hull, eds.

Combining knowledge of the cognitive and behavioral effects of trauma, evidence-based interventions, educational best practices, and the experiences of veteran educators, Supporting and Educating Traumatized Students: A Guide for School-Based Professionals presents a new framework for assisting students with a history of trauma. Designed specifically for busy educators who work with traumatized students daily, this volume brings together practitioners, researchers, and other experts with backgrounds in education, school psychology, school nursing, school social work, school counseling, school administration, clinical psychology, resilience, and trauma studies to examine the impacts of numerous traumatic experiences on school-aged children and youth. The book provides practical, effective, and implementable strategies and resources for adapting and differentiating instruction, modifying the classroom and school environments, and building competency for students affected by trauma.

 

October 2012
The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander
by Barbara Coloroso

It's the deadliest combination going: bullies who terrorize, bullied kids who are afraid to tell, bystanders who watch, and adults who see the incidents as a normal part of childhood. All it takes to understand that this is a recipe for tragedy is a glance at headlines across the country. In this updated edition of The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander, which includes a new section on cyberbullying, one of the world's most trusted parenting educators gives parents, caregivers, educators-and most of all, kids-the tools to break the cycle of violence. This compassionate and practical guide has become the groundbreaking reference on the subject of bullying.

 

September 2012
Bullying: A Guide to Research, Intervention and Prevention
by Faye Mishna

Untangling some of the thorny issues around what causes and constitutes bullying, including how to think differently about overlapping phenomena such as racism, sexism, homophobia, or sexual harassment, Faye Mishna presents an exhaustive body of empirical and theoretical literature in such a way as to be accessible to both students and practitioners. Chapters will equip readers to think critically about contexts, relationships, and risk and protective factors that are unique to individual students and schools, and to effectively assess and design multi-level interventions for a variety of aggressive behaviors. Paying particular attention to emerging types of victimization, such as cyber bullying, and to vulnerable groups, such as LGBTQ youth and students with disabilities, Mishna distills the key elements of successful interventions with both victims and aggressors and includes case examples and practice principles throughout.

 

July & August 2012
The School Practitioner's Concise Companion to Mental Health
by Cynthia Franklin, Mary Beth Harris and Paula Allen-Meares

The School Practitioner's Concise Companions gives busy social workers, psychologists, and counselors a quick guide to accessible, proven solutions for their students' most common problems. Built around the expert advice from the acclaimed School Services Sourcebook, each volume is a rapid reference to a key school issue. Here, readers will find an overview of adolescent mental health disorders and step-by-step guidelines for intervening effectively. This Concise Companion covers ten major mental health issues-from depression to ADHD to autismas well as strategies for working with co-occurring disorders and managing psychopharmacological treatments.

 

June 2012
The Ethics of Practice with Minors
by Kim Strom-Gottfried

Professionals who serve children address serious human needs in complex clinical, ethical, and political circumstances. Issues of confidentiality, informed consent, and selfdetermination become more complicated when clients' rights and choices are constrained by their age and maturity and by legal and parental prerogatives. With these issues in mind, the author introduces memorable frameworks for approaching ethical dilemmas and ethical decision making and uses the frameworks to analyze cases from an array of youth-service settings. The author's conversational style allows the reader to make sense of these complex topics. The Ethics of Practice with Minors is a valuable and practical resource for anyone working with children.

 

April 2012
Ethical Decision Making in School Mental Health
by James C. Raines & Nic T. Dibble

Ethical predicaments are endemic for mental health professionals working in a host setting like schools. New interventions, evolving technologies, and a patchwork of ethical guidelines and legal codes create a constant stream of new ethical dilemmas. Quick answers and simple solutions are rare, but with the seven-stage model presented here, readers will learn to apply an ethical decision-making process that minimizes their liability while better protecting their students.

 

March 2012
Wounded by School
by Kirsten Olson

The average child, who receives no special instruction or attention in school, is perhaps the most under-identified wounded child in our school system. Many students come away feeling that they are not smart and that their abilities are fixed.

 

February 2012
The Glass Castle
by Jeannette Walls

Reared by a mother who believed that kids should be left alone to reap the educational and immunological benefits of suffering, Jeannette Walls, her brother and two sisters rapidly discovered that their peripatetic, hardscrabble life -- constantly moving from one bleak, dusty Southwestern mining town to another -- had no end of painful lessons to teach them. . .The memoir offers a catalog of nightmares that the Walls children were encouraged to see as comic or thrilling episodes in the family romance.

 

January 2012
Inquiry: A Districtwide Approach to Staff and Student Learning
by Nancy Fichtman Dana, Carol Thomas and Sylvia Boynton

 

Its great benefit is its dovetailing of Inquiry with Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) and Response to Intervention (RtI), and its strong connection throughout with student learning. Administrators and teachers will see themselves clearly in this book. For school-based mental health providers, it offers a credible structure and set of practices for developing inquirybased professional learning opportunities.

 

November 2011
School Social Work: An Evidence-Informed Framework for Practice
by M. Kelly, J. Raines, S. Stone & A. Frey

"This text will become an instant classic for its scholarship and readability. Each chapter is filled with information for improving school social work practice using the available research evidence at every level of intervention. In this extraordinarily engaging practice book, Kelly and colleagues show practitioners the process for asking important questions about what constitutes effective school social work practice and provide specific strategies for practitioners to use when improving their practices." -Cynthia Franklin, PhD, Professor and Stiernberg/Spencer Family Professor in Mental Health, University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work

 

October 2011
Bullying at School (Understanding Children's Worlds) What We Know and What We Can Do
by Dan Olweus
The Olweus program is the first to be scrutinized by scientific research. "The problem of school bullying is one of growing dimensions and is of tremendous concern to teachers, parents, and many of the children themselves. Professor Olweus is without question the world's leading authority on the topic. His book is a succinct yet accurate and thorough statement of the problem and what educators and parents can do to alleviate it. It will be invaluable to its intended readership." Professor David G. Perry, Florida Atlantic University

 

Bullying in North American Schools
by Dorothy L. Espelage and Susan M. Swearer

Bullying in North American Schools is an exciting compilation of research on bullying in
school-aged youth by a representative group of researchers, including developmental, social, counseling, school, and clinical psychologists across North America . . . This text will help [to] understand how to prevent bullying behavior and how to select and manage intervention efforts in schools and school districts.

 

Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard: Preventing and Responding to Cyberbullying
by Sameer Hinduja and Justin W. Patchin

" . . . The authors argue that taking away technology when cyberbullying occurs--the wellintentioned
response from many parents--is ill-advised, akin to sheltering students from learning opportunities such as field trips for fear they could be dangerous. The authors contend that school staff can play a major role in decreasing and alleviating the effects of Internet misuse. In the book, they lay out the ways teachers and administrators can identify bullies and victims, help prevent online harassment, navigate the complicated legal terrain, and step in when harmful behavior occurs."

 

September 2011
A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League
by Ron Suskind

At Ballou Senior High, a crime-infested school in Washington, D.C., honor students have learned to keep their heads down. Like most inner-city kids, they know that any special attention in a place this dangerous cam make you a target of violence. Bud Cedric Jennings will not swallow his pride, and with unwavering support from his mother, he studies and strives as if his life depends on it--and it does. The summer after his junior year, at a program for minorities at MIT, he gets a fleeting glimpse of life outside, a glimpse that turns into a face-on challenge one year later: acceptance into Brown University, an Ivy League school.

At Brown, finding himself far behind most of the other freshmen, Cedric must manage a bewildering array of intellectual and social challenges. Cedric had hoped that at college hewould finally find a place to fit in, but he discovers he has little in common with either the white students, many of whom come from privileged backgrounds, or the middle-class blacks. Having traveled too far to turn back, Cedric is left to rely on his faith, his intelligence, and his determination to keep alive his hope in the unseen--a future of acceptance and reward that he struggles, each day, to envision. True story of hope, resilience and courage.

 

The Domains and Demands of School Social Work Practice: A Guide to Working Effectively with Schools
by Michael S. Kelly
• Incorporates evidence-based practice into the daily practice of social workers.
• Kindle edition available on Amazon.com

Social Marketing in the 21st Century
by Alan Andreasan
• Discusses “upstream” and “downstream” social marketing, a practical and useful
concept for promoting school social work and educating others about the profession
• Review: http://jmk.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/27/3/328

 

Boards That Make a Difference: A New Design for Leadership in Non-Profits and Public Organizations, 3rd Edition
by John Carver
• Describes an effective policy model of Board governance applicable to school social work associations.
• Kindle edition available on Amazon.com