Learn American English

Regardless of how wealthy or poor their parents are, all black boys must confront and surmount the "achievement gap": a divide that shows up not only in our sons' test scores, but in their social and emotional development, their physical well-being, and their outlook on life. As children, they score as high on cognitive tests as their peers, but at some point, the gap emerges. Why? This is the question Joe Brewster, M.D., and Michele Stephenson asked when their own son, Idris, began struggling in a new school.

John Adams once wrote, “People and nations are forged in the fires of adversity.” That was very much Adams’ experience. Having been born in the English colony of Massachusetts in 1735, he not only witnessed a new nation emerging from the shell of infancy, but he also participated in its growing pains. Adams was a man who was frequently asked to assume roles in which he had little experience, like that of a diplomat to France and England. In a sense, he was a part of the vanguard that the government had thrown into the fray.

Jackie Bolen has 20 years of experience teaching ESL/EFL to students in South Korea and Canada. She has written these dialogues filled with helpful sentences, expressions, and phrases in American English for business people, plus each section has some practice opportunities to make what you've learned more memorable. Business English Vocabulary Builder by Jackie Bolen will help you stay motivated while consistently improving your business English skills.

American lawyer-turned-sociologist David Riesman published his first book, The Lonely Crowd, in 1950. Aimed at academics, it nonetheless gained a large popular audience. In it, Riesman explores the links between social character - the ways in which members of a society are similar to one another - and social structures. Riesman's work popularized sociology, helping to establish it as an academic discipline, and today it provides a fascinating window into the 1950s American psyche.

In his thought-provoking and deeply moving book, Matthew Desmond tackles the issue of poverty in America through the lens of eviction. Desmond's Pulitzer Prize winning book follows the personal lives of several families and individuals struggling to survive in Milwaukee during the Great Recession. (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)

Scientists have shown bilingualism to be brain-changing. It can also be life-changing. In America's Bilingual Century, author Steve Leveen takes you on a journey of reinvention - of yourself, your children, and the country - that takes place when we embrace bilingualism. Based on a decade of research and hundreds of interviews with experts and successful bilinguals, Steve found that a new America is emerging: One where more and more people are speaking English and another language.

On August 28, 1963, more than 200,000 people gathered in Washington, DC, to demand equal rights for all races. It was there that Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech, and it was this peaceful protest that spurred the momentous civil rights laws of the mid-1960s.

From coronavirus lockdowns to critical race theory in the classroom, it has become crystal clear that America’s schools aren’t working for America’s students and parents. No one knows this better than Betsy DeVos. In Hostages No More, DeVos unleashes her candid thoughts about working in the Trump administration, recounts her battles over the decades to put students first, hits back at “woke” curricula in our schools, and details the reforms America must pursue to fix its long and badly broken education system.

In the late 1940s, parents began to file desegregation lawsuits with their daughters, forcing Thurgood Marshall and other civil rights lawyers to take up the issue. After the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, girls far outnumbered boys in volunteering to desegregate formerly all-white schools. In A Girl Stands at the Door, historian Rachel Devlin tells the remarkable stories of these desegregation pioneers. She also explains why black girls were seen, and saw themselves, as responsible for the difficult work of reaching across the color line in public schools.

In The Spirit of Our Work, Dr. Cynthia Dillard centers the spiritual lives of Black women educators and their students, arguing that spirituality has guided Black people throughout the diaspora. She demonstrates how Black women teachers and teacher educators can heal, resist, and (re)member their identities in ways that are empowering for them and their students. Dillard emphasizes that any discussion of Black teachers’ lives and work cannot be limited to truncated identities as enslaved persons in the Americas.

Guy Stuff Feelings: Everything You Need to Know About Your Emotions is full of advice on dealing with the new feelings and emotions that are a part of puberty. Boys will find helpful tips from a pediatrician on identifying, managing, and expressing emotions—from anger to sadness to embarrassment to happiness—in positive ways.

Being a student at Americus High School was the worst experience of Greg Wittkamper's life. Greg came from a nearby Christian commune, Koinonia, whose members devoutly and publicly supported racial equality. When he refused to insult and attack his school's first black students in 1964, Greg was mistreated as badly as they were: harassed and bullied and beaten.

In his meteoric, 13-year rise to fame, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a mass movement for civil rights - with his relentless peaceful, non-violent protests, public demonstrations, and eloquent speeches. But as violent threats cast a dark shadow over Dr. King's life, Swanson hones in on James Earl Ray, a bizarre, racist prison escapee who tragically ends King's life.

Starting during the renowned 1920s, we’re going to look at what life in the United States was like back then and even find some remarkable mirror images that are a reflection of what life is like during this day and age. We’ll look at the importance of alcohol and at how much one decade could be the driving force for the next. We’ll take a look at how small inventions made a big difference in America and the idea of whether a nation should use its power to look after itself or make a mark internationally.

On April 4, 1968, the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., shocked the nation. Later that month, the Reverend John Brooks, a professor of theology at the College of the Holy Cross who shared Dr. King’s dream of an integrated society, drove up and down the East Coast searching for African American high school students to recruit to the school, young men he felt had the potential to succeed if given an opportunity. Among the twenty students he had a hand in recruiting that year were Clarence Thomas and Theodore Wells....

No one would work to establish a new school if they weren’t driven by extreme dissatisfaction with the schools already available. The people who established the Sudbury Valley School have not been an exception to this rule. All have been actively seeking a new way in education, and all have made large investments of thought, time, and material, firmly rooted in the traditional values, and institutions, that constitute our American heritage. This book quickly became a classic and is still relevant as it lays out the foundations of the Sudbury model in clear, easy terms.

An explosive new look at the pressures on today's teachers and the pitfalls of school reform, Confessions of a Bad Teacher presents a passionate appeal to save public schools, before it's too late. When John Owens left a lucrative job to teach English at a public school in New York City's South Bronx, he thought he could do some good. Faced with a flood of struggling students, Owens devised ingenious ways to engage every last one. But as his students began to thrive under his tutelage, Owens found himself increasingly mired in a broken educational system.

In the mid-1990s, facing severe cuts to its public funding, the University of Oregon - like so many colleges across the country - was desperate for cash. Luckily, the Oregon Ducks' 1995 Rose Bowl berth caught the attention of the school's wealthiest alumnus: Nike founder Phil Knight, who was seeking new marketing angles at the collegiate level. And so the University of Nike was born. But as journalist Joshua Hunt reveals in University of Nike, Oregon has paid dearly for the veneer of financial prosperity and athletic success that has come with this brand partnering.

In Teaching the Invisible Race, anti-bias and anti-racist educator and researcher Tony DelaRosa (he, siya) delivers an insightful and hands-on treatment of how to embody a pro-Asian American lens in your classroom while combating anti-Asian hate in your school. The author offers stories, case studies, research, and frameworks that will help you build the knowledge, mindset, and skills you need to teach Asian-American history and stories in your curriculum.

Everyone was rather surprised when small-town farmer Jimmy Carter first announced that he’d be running for president in 1976. When Jimmy told his mother, she replied, “President of what?” But this former naval officer and governor of Georgia was ready for the role. Jimmy Carter went on to become one of America’s most beloved political figures thanks to his honesty, strong faith, and compassion. Today, Jimmy Carter is remembered for his dedication to helping Americans through his extensive work as a philanthropist.