Speak Up America 2015: Book Giveaway

Thanks to our wonderful friends at Arfstrom Consulting and Girls Thinking Global, we are excited to host a special book giveaway during Speak Up America week! All participating parents, educators, and community members are eligible to enter the giveaway – all you’ll need to do is take the Speak Up survey (http://bit.ly/SU15survey) and enter your information the webforms below. Once you hit the submit button, you’ll be entered into the giveaway for the book of your choice! Feel free to submit your name for each book.

Click on the book title to submit your entry:

Flip Your Classroom by Bergmann and Sams (donated by Arfstrom Consulting)

It started with a simple observation: students need their teachers present to answer questions or to provide help if they get stuck on an assignment; they don't need their teachers present to listen to a lecture or review content. From there, authors Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams began the flipped classroom-students watched recorded lectures for homework and completed their assignments, labs, and tests in class with their teacher available.

What Bergmann and Sams found was that their students demonstrated a deeper understanding of the material than ever before. This is the author’s story, and they're confident it can be yours too. Learn what a flipped classroom is and why it works and get the information you need to flip a classroom.

You'll also learn the flipped mastery model, where students learn at their own pace-furthering opportunities for personalized education. This simple concept is easily replicable in any classroom, doesn't cost much to implement, and helps foster self-directed learning. Once you flip, you wont want to go back!

Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis by Robert Putnam (donated by Arfstrom Consulting)

A groundbreaking examination of the growing inequality gap from the bestselling author of Bowling Alone: why fewer Americans today have the opportunity for upward mobility.

It’s the American dream: get a good education, work hard, buy a house, and achieve prosperity and success. This is the America we believe in—a nation of opportunity, constrained only by ability and effort. But during the last twenty-five years we have seen a disturbing “opportunity gap” emerge. Americans have always believed in equality of opportunity, the idea that all kids, regardless of their family background, should have a decent chance to improve their lot in life. Now, this central tenet of the American dream seems no longer true or at the least, much less true than it was.

Robert Putnam—about whom The Economist said, “his scholarship is wide-ranging, his intelligence luminous, his tone modest, his prose unpretentious and frequently funny”—offers a personal but also authoritative look at this new American crisis. Putnam begins with his high school class of 1959 in Port Clinton, Ohio. By and large the vast majority of those students—“our kids”—went on to lives better than those of their parents. But their children and grandchildren have had harder lives amid diminishing prospects. Putnam tells the tale of lessening opportunity through poignant life stories of rich and poor kids from cities and suburbs across the country, drawing on a formidable body of research done especially for this book.

Real Women, Real Leaders: Surviving and Succeeding in the Business World by Kathleen Hurley (donated by Girls Thinking Global)

In Real Women, Real Leadership, twenty-four women leaders describe their personal journeys to the top, providing deep insight and a fascinating perspective on "making it" as a woman in the male-dominated business environment. They discuss their experiences and offer guidance on topics such as balancing family and career, building alliances, mentoring and being mentored, and overcoming obstacles in the business world which is still dominated by men in the senior levels of management. Drawn from a range of industries including higher education, technology, law, the military, politics, the media, and more, these stories provide the details that every ambitious woman needs to know. You'll learn which skills, attributes, and relationships served these women best, how they overcame the obstacles thrown into their paths, and the people they credit as instrumental along the way. A self-assessment chapter helps you discover your own leadership attributes, and determine which skills you need to acquire as you formulate your own personal roadmap to the top.

 Thanks again to Arfstrom Consulting and Girls Thinking Global for their donations!