Focus: A simplicity manifesto in the Age of Distraction

• ISBN13: 9781434103079
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Bestselling author Mike Schmoker describes a plan for radically improving student learning that is built on three core elements: a focused and coherent curriculum (what we teach); clear, prioritized lessons (how we teach); and purposeful reading and writing, or authentic literacy.

With this "less is more" philosophy, educators can help students learn content at a deeper level, develop greater critical thinking skills, and discover more clearly how content-area concepts affect their lives and the world around them.

Both a call to action and a blueprint for creating more effective classrooms, Focus: Elevating the Essentials for Radically Improved Student Learning will cha! llenge your assumptions about schooling and show how educators who have embraced this approach quickly achieved spectacular results.

Meet Emily and Paul: The parents of two young children, Emily is the newly promoted VP of marketing at a large corporation while Paul works from home or from clients' offices as an independent IT consultant. Their lives, like all of ours, are filled with a bewildering blizzard of emails, phone calls, yet more emails, meetings, projects, proposals, and plans. Just staying ahead of the storm has become a seemingly insurmountable task.

In this book, we travel inside Emily and Paul's brains as they attempt to sort the vast quantities of information they're presented with, figure out how to prioritize it, organize it and act on it. Fortunately for Emily and Paul, they're in good hands: David Rock knows how the brain works-and more specifically, how it works in a work setting. Rock shows how it's possible for Emily and Paul, and thus the r! eader, not only to survive in today's overwhelming work enviro! nment bu t succeed in it-and still feel energized and accomplished at the end of the day.

YOUR BRAIN AT WORK explores issues such as:

- why our brains feel so taxed, and how to maximize our mental resources

- why it's so hard to focus, and how to better manage distractions

- how to maximize your chance of finding insights that can solve seemingly insurmountable problems

- how to keep your cool in any situation, so that you can make the best decisions possible

- how to collaborate more effectively with others

- why providing feedback is so difficult, and how to make it easier

- how to be more effective at changing other people's behavior

The author writes, "At the heart of this simple book lies the key to many of the struggles we face these days, from being productive and achieving our goals, to getting healthy and fit in the face of fast food and inactivity, to finding simplicity and peace amidst chaos and confusion.! That key is itself simple: focus. Our ability to focus will allow us to create in ways that perhaps we haven't in years. It'll allow us to slow down and find peace of mind. It'll allow us to simplify and focus on less-on the essential things, the things that matter most.

Idioms & Phrases in American Sign Language, Vol. 1: Teacher's Instructional DVD

• Your experience teaching idioms and phrases in American Sign Language (ASL) begins with us! Throughout this DVD, you will learn how to teach over 50 idioms and phrases in ASL about all facets of everyday life.
• You will also learn how to use these expressions in complete English and ASL sentences, activities and more.
• Since idioms and phrases are important part of daily conversations among Deaf / Hard-of-Hearing students, ASL teachers, parents and professionals, it is normal for one to encounter difficulties interpreting and/or translating these expressions into ASL and English.
• Our unique teachings will involve a media-rich bilingual presentation that is excellent for both Deaf / Hard-of-Hearing and ASL enthusiasts.
• This DVD is a requirement for every ASL teacher as well as for full use part of an American Sign Language / Deaf Studies and Interpreter Training programs (! ITP).

{Directed by Oscar winner Vanessa Roth}
{Inspired by the New York Times bestseller "Teachers Have It Easy"}
{Produced by Best-Selling Author Dave Eggers ("A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius").}
{Endorsed by Teacher's Unions representing millions of teachers.}
{Seen as the answer to "Waiting for Superman" and "The Lottery".}
{Opened in theatres with an $8000+ per screen average in first week and rave reviews.}
{Microsoft's Partners in Learning has launched a community screening tour in more than 400 cities and towns across the country.}

As the debate over America's public schools rages on, the one thing everyone agrees on is the need for great teachers. Yet while research has shown that teachers are the most important in-school factor in a child's success, America's educators are so underpaid that almost two-thirds must work a second job in order to make a living.

Chronicling the stor! ies of four teachers in different areas of the country, Americ! an Teach er reveals the frustrating realities of today's teachers, the difficulty of attracting talented new educators, and why so many of our best teachers leave the profession altogether. Can we re-value teaching and turn it into a prestigious, financially attractive and desirable profession? With almost half of American teachers leaving the field in the next ten years, now is the time to find out.

Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 03/11/2008 Run time: 622 minutes Rating: NrFrustrated newlyweds and bickering marrieds, lecherous executives and bodacious secretaries, uptight squares and free-spirited hippies, suspicious wives and nervous husbands, inexperienced teens and swinging seniors. They’re all part and parcel of Love, American Style, the era-defining anthology series that offered a comedic look at the so-called "new morality." Rebounding after studio-imposed DVD-interruptus, this three-disc set contains the 12 episodes that complete Season One. E! ach contains two or three playlets. Unlike The Love Boat, all are played for laughs: A honeymooning groom accidentally locks himself in an antique store’s chastity belt; A bachelor pretends to have a wife and children to seduce a coworker who only dates married men; A harried man discovers his favorite restaurant has gone topless just as his wife surprises him for lunch. One intriguing story is "Love and the High School Flop-Out," whose story about an awkward teen who has the house to himself while his parents are out of town anticipates Risky Business, complete with friends who suggest he rent out the house for an "orgy." Love plays it completely straight. In one story, a newlywed complains her husband seems to be losing interest in her, prompting her mother to inquire if he is "strange." In another, an interior decorator in love with a mobster’s daughter is dismissed by him as a "petunia" until he dispatches the thug’s henchmen ("The fact that I! have taste and a certain flair for color and design doesn’t! make me any less of a man," he argues). And in another, two bickering male business partners visit a marriage counselor to sort out their troubles. Of course, what really makes this show such a star-spangled affair is each episode’s roster of character actors, TV Land cult faves, and future stars. Burt Reynolds already has his smirk going as a soldier whose wife has written a scandalous bestseller in "Love and the Banned Book." An 18-year-old Kurt Russell portrays a high school student poised to lose his virginity in "Love and the First-Nighters." Love American Style is hip enough to reference Alice B. Toklas, Bonnie & Clyde, Rosemary’s Baby and Federico Fellini, but its chauvinistic attitudes now make the once-naughty show seem almost endearingly quaint. Still, to watch "Love and the Nervous Executive," which pairs prissy Paul Lynde with va-voom "Mighty Carson Arts Players" bombshell Carol Wayne, or "Love and the Big Night" with Tony Randall and Julie "Cat! woman" Newmar, is to fall in Love all over again. --Donald LiebensonStudio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 11/20/2007This DVD is a requirement for every ASL teacher as well as for full use part of an American Sign Language / Deaf Studies and Interpreter Training programs (ITP). Avery Posner will guide every viewer how to explicitly use Idioms & Phrases in American Sign Language, Vol. 1 DVD in a classroom environment. You will learn how to incorporate activities, provide handouts from the workbook (ISBN/EAN13:144144811X / 9781441448118) and plan your courses for 8 or more weeks. This DVD will show you how to provide quiz and do homework review. Over an hour and half of easy to follow introduction and instructions, every viewer will appreciate this most powerful teaching tool yet at a fraction of the cost! As a bonus, this DVD also includes all 52 idioms and phrases and their sentence examples seen in the student volume 1 DVD. Thus, you will have an all in one solution to teach the first 52 idioms!