Dealing With Parent Inflexibility
From Partnerships With Parents to Collaborations With Colleagues
CHAPTER 10Empowering Collaborations: How to Center Student Values in Discussions With Colleagues
Having Productive Conversations
Understanding Behavior in Context
Working Together to Understand Student Behavior
Discussing Successful Students’ Behaviors
From Collaborations to Curriculum
CHAPTER 11Empowering Curriculum: How to Incorporate Student Values Into Your Course Content
EMPOWER Work in the Humanities
EMPOWER Work in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
EMPOWER Work in Physical Education
EMPOWER Work in the Arts
Curriculum That Increases Values Awareness
Get Students to Articulate Why a Topic Matters
Show Diverse Exemplars of Personally Meaningful Work
Create Open-Ended Yet Well-Defined Assignments
Encourage Values-Based Reflection
Do Your Own Assignments
Share the Values That Guide You in Your Work
Let Your Students Mess Up
From Curriculum to Inquiry
CHAPTER 12Empowering Inquiry: How to Assess the Impact of Helping Students Pursue Their Values
Collecting Relevant Data
Students’ Academic Work
Records of Student Preparation and Participation
Communications From Colleagues and Parents
Student Self-Evaluations of Academic Work
Student Self-Reports About Values-Consistent Behaviors
Choosing a Design to Study Your Practice
Seeing Data Trends: Single-Case Designs
Inferring Causality: Multiple-Baseline Designs
Recommitting to Your Values
From Your Practice to Yourself
CHAPTER 13Empowering Yourself: How to Bring Your Own Values to Your Work
Overcoming Your Own Avoidance
Modeling Values-Consistent Behavior
Building Your Professional Capacities
Values-Consistent Curriculum Design
Values-Conscious Collaboration
Values-Relevant Professional Development
Doing Your Own EMPOWER Work
Exploration: Magic Moment
Motivation: Thank-You Note
Participation: Buzzword Yoga
Openness: Colleagues You Admire
Willingness: Struggle Keys
Empathy: Judgment Factory
Resilience: Bad Essay Introduction
Committing to Values-Consistent Action
From Yourself to Yourself
CONCLUSIONPaths to Empowerment
About the Authors
• • • • •
Lauren Porosoff teaches middle school English at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in the Bronx, New York. At Fieldston, she’s served as a grade-level team leader and a diversity coordinator, and she’s led curriculum mapping and professional development initiatives. An educator since 2000, she has also taught middle school history at the Maret School in Washington, DC; and second-, fifth-, and sixth-grade general studies at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland.
Helping students make their work meaningful has been a constant in Lauren’s teaching practice, and that interest led her to learn about methods of values-guided behavior change in acceptance and commitment therapy, relational frame theory, applied behavior analysis, motivational interviewing, and other applications of contextual behavioral science. Informed by these methods of values-guided behavior change, Lauren developed applications for the classroom, such as the processes for curriculum design she describes in her book Curriculum at Your Core: Meaningful Teaching in the Age of Standards.
Lauren has written for AMLE Magazine, Independent School, Phi Delta Kappan, the PBS NewsHour blog, Rethinking Schools, and Teaching Tolerance about how students and teachers can clarify and commit to their values at school. She’s presented on these topics at regional and national conferences of various professional organizations, including the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science, Learning and the Brain, the National Council of Teachers of English, the New York State Association of Independent Schools, and the Progressive Education Network.
To learn more about Lauren’s work, visit EMPOWER Forwards (http://empowerforwards.com).
Lauren received a bachelor’s degree in English from Wesleyan University and a law degree from George Washington University.
Jonathan Weinstein is a clinical psychologist with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He serves as the Suicide Prevention Coordinator at the Veterans Affairs Hudson Valley Health Care System and holds an appointment as assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at New York Medical College. Prior to serving in suicide prevention, Jonathan served as the post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use disorders coordinator at the James J. Peters Veterans Affairs Medical Center in the Bronx, New York. Before working for Veterans Affairs, Jonathan served in a variety of mental health and education roles in New York, Baltimore, and Mississippi stretching