The authors draw on their 30 years of action-research activities helping educators provide a meaningful education to at-risk/excluded students. They explain how teacher well-being is a precondition for building the sorts of relationships that enable excluded students to learn. They present in detail four concrete skills (non-abandonment, reframing, connecting conversation, and emphatic limit-setting) for reaching children and at the same time strengthening educators' emotional resilience and professional pride. They address how schools can rethink and reshape the way they relate to parents of excluded children, so as to allow both sides to trust and empower each other. If you are a teacher, this book will help you make sense of the difficulties you face daily and provide you with reliable methods for working more effectively. If you are a principal or policymaker, it will show how the road to excellence begins with inclusion, and with providing teachers the kind of support that enables them to succeed. I am not an education expert, but you don't have to be to want to implement the conclusions that Michal Razer and Victor J. Friedman make about schools to societies as a whole. To produce a successful school serving the needs of all of its students, you need to focus-before passing out any curriculum or teaching any classes-on building that elusive thing called "trust", or what the authors call "inclusion". When there is trust in the classroom, when every student believes that they and their aspirations matter to a teacher, everything is possible and everything is easier-the most difficult students become more educable and inspired and take more ownership over their success-and the best students soar even higher. This book should be read by teachers, parents and politicians alike, because its incisive recommendations for building more successful schools apply just as much to families and parliaments. - Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times columnist"

Contenu

"Foreword.- Acknowledgments.- Introduction.- The Cycle of Exclusion.- Excluded Students and Excluded Teachers.- Frames of Exclusion.- The "Helplessness" Frame.- The "False Identity" Frame.- The Emotional World of Teachers of Excluded Children.- Building Restorative Relationships.- The Caregiving Role of Inclusive Educators.- Redefining Success.- Emotional Work with Students.- Emotional Work with Teachers.- Introduction to Four Skills for Building Restorative Relationships in Schools.- Supporting Inclusive Practice at the Organizational Level.- Non-Abandonment: The First Step in Reversing the Cycle of Exclusion.- Abandonment and Non-Abandonment.- Non-Abandonment as a Conscious Choice.- Supporting Teachers in Practicing Non-Abandonment.- Assimilating Non-Abandonment into School Practice.- Conclusions.- Reframing: Expanding the Realm of the Possible.- Frames, Framing, and Reframing.- The Reframing Process.- Reframing Helplessness.- Reframing False Identity.- Putting the Reframing intoPractice.- Conclusions.- Connecting Conversations.- Instrumental versus Connecting Conversation.- Barriers to Connecting Conversations.- From an Instrumental to a Connecting Conversation.- Features of Connecting Conversation.- From False Inquiry to Connecting Conversation.- Connecting Conversation Fits with Caregiving Role.- Conclusions.- Beyond Discipline: Benevolent Authority and Empathic Limit-Setting.- Limit-Setting as a Power Struggle.- Challenges to Teachers' Authority.- Benevolent Authority.- Empathic Limit-Setting.- Online Empathic Limit-Setting.- Off-Line Empathic Limit-Setting.- Invitation to Connect, Planning Alternate Behaviors, Apologizing.- Conclusions.- The Troubled Relationship between Schools and Parents of Excluded Children.- Schools as Gateways or Gatekeepers for Excluded Children.- Case Study: Dealing with a Student's Chronic Lateness.- The Underlying Power Struggle.- Framing the Problem as the Need to Mobilize the Parents.- Typical Action Strategies Inside theMobilizing Parents Framing.- The Power Struggle That Results from Trying to Mobilize Parents.- Conclusions.- Building Restorative Relationships with Parents.- Reframing: "Parental Authorization" Instead of "Mobilizing Parents".- Case Study: A School's Initiative with a Child at Risk.- Assumptions that Underlie the Parental Authorization Framing.- Putting Parental Authorization into Practice.- Restoring Relationships: Actions that Build Trust.- Conclusions.- Role of the Principal.- How Principals Get Trapped in the Cycle of Exclusion.- Steps in Creating Conditions Favorable to Restorative Relationships.- Conclusions.- From Exclusion to Excellence.- References.- About the Authors.