Fearless Series
Discover new titles written by Creative Leadership Solutions thought leaders
Want to learn more from our thought leaders?
Fearless Instruction: High-Impact Strategies Inspired by 90/90/90 Schools
Grounded in research and rich with practical strategies, this book is for educators who are ready to lead with clarity, collaborate with purpose, and teach with courage…
Fearless Classrooms: Building Resilience and Psychological Safety for Students, Staff, and Communities
When students are afraid, they cannot learn. In “Fearless Classrooms,” Dr. Douglas Reeves explains how teachers and school administrators can provide psychological safety for every student and staff member…
Fearless Grading: How to Improve Achievement, Discipline, and Culture through Accurate and Fair Grading
When grades are accurate and fair, students and teachers will see immediate improvements in academic performance, student behavior, and attendance…
Fearless Coaching: Resilience and Results from the Classroom to the Boardroom
This is the moment when coaching-instructional coaching, leadership coaching, and team coaching-is more important than ever…
Fearless Schools: Building Trust, Resilience, and Psychological Safety
Schools need psychological safety, resilience, and trust now more than ever. These are the essential prerequisites of learning for both students and staff…
Books by CLS Associates
100-Day Leaders: Turning Short-Term Wins Into Long-Term Success in Schools
Douglas Reeves, Robert Eaker
Dramatically increase student achievement and transform school culture in only 100 days. Using focused, strategic planning and change management, educational leadership can make significant changes that lead to continuous school improvement.
Achieving Equity & Excellence: Immediate Results From the Lessons of High-Poverty, High-Success Schools
Douglas Reeves
Empower students, teachers, and administrators to make dramatic improvements in achievement, behavior, and attendance in a single semester. Bring equitable teaching practices and active learning strategies into the classroom. Improve learning outcomes for students in high-poverty schools and poor socioeconomic backgrounds.
Beyond Conversations About Race: A Guide for Discussions with Students, Teachers, and Communities
Washington Collado, Sharroky Hollie, Rosa Isiah, Yvette Jackson, Anthony Muhammad, Douglas Reeves, Kenneth C. Williams
This essential work provokes respectful dialogue about race that catalyzes school-changing action. Learn how to talk about race in the classroom and discover actionable steps you can take toward promoting a safe, equitable environment for marginalized students and underserved communities.
Cultural Caring: The Human Side of Professional Learning Communities at Work®
Douglas Reeves & Robert Eaker
A nurturing, caring school environment is essential for school improvement and student motivation. In this book, Douglas Reeves and Robert Eaker bring the importance of a caring environment to the forefront of school transformation efforts. They identify who is responsible for shaping school communities, what qualities are vital for them to exhibit, and what educational leaders and practitioners can do to promote more caring for all.
Deep Change Leadership: A Model for Renewing and Strengthening Schools and Districts
Douglas Reeves
Change efforts often fail to meet their desired ends. Learn how to make a real, sustainable impact with Deep Change Leadership. This school leadership resource highlights engagement, inquiry, and focused action as part of an effective leadership model.
Empowered Families, Thriving Students: Unlocking the Potential of Family-School Partnerships
Washington Collado, Alex Marrero, Belinda Reyes
Family engagement has never been more critical to student achievement, yet too many schools remain stuck in outdated models that treat families as occasional visitors rather than essential partners. Authored by three seasoned and celebrated school leaders, this practical book challenges educators to move beyond traditional “meetings and meals” approaches toward authentic family empowerment that drives meaningful change.
Education and the Ethics of AI: Enduring Values in a Changing World
Douglas Reeves
From ethical applications of AI to supporting policies that guide implementation and practice, author Douglas Reeves guides readers through integral considerations. He provides educators with practical steps to seamlessly integrate these technologies, showcasing how generative AI can transform lesson planning, IEP goals, and administrative tasks. Learn how AI’s potential can save valuable time and boost educational equity.
Four Pillars to Guide Visionary Educators: Structuring Schools That Serve Students in Poverty
Washington Collado
In this essential guide for education leaders who aspire to effect meaningful change in the lives of students from high-poverty communities, Washington B. Collado presents four pillars to support education leaders in (1) creating a shared vision and mission, (2) engaging families and communities, (3) maintaining a focus on equity, and (4) developing systems to support students’ academic and social-emotional development. Together, these four essential elements provide a coherent and systematic approach to educational excellence for all students, particularly those from low-income families.
From Ghosts to Graduates: An Educator’s Guide to Identifying and Reconnecting Disengaged Students
Emily Freeland, Ed.D.
This timely book recognizes that three years of interrupted learning has created an impending dropout timebomb of students who are traditionally at risk, as well as those who became disengaged during pandemic learning. Many students are ghosts in the system–they have become disconnected and disenchanted with schooling. Instead of only addressing strategies to treat the symptoms of dropping out, this important resource addresses the causes of the disengagement that led to those symptoms.
Giving Effective Feedback to Teachers: A Team Approach
Dr. Christine M Smith
This handbook for school leaders provides a step-by-step method for giving timely, objective, non-evaluative feedback to teachers for the purpose of improving teaching and learning using a team approach. From lessons learned in the field, the author explains what to do and what not to do in ways that build collegial relationships and maximize the use of precious administrative time. The approach has been field tested, and testimonials from teacher participants are included.
How To Achieve Educational Equity
Dr. Howard E. Fields III
Educational equity is more than an image. It is more than being able to watch a baseball game while standing on boxes. To frame it as such oversimplifies the complexities associated with this term. Educational equity should be defined as creating and/or eliminating policies, systems, and practices in schools that impact the experiences, outcomes, and access to resources for students from previously excluded groups. In How to Achieve Educational Equity, Dr. Fields shares his experiences and a framework to help us along our equity journey.
Lead with Collaboration: A Complete Guide for Transforming Staff Meetings
Allyson Apsey & Jessica Gomez
In the age of time-strapped teachers, shifting standards, and distance learning, how can educational leaders ensure that every staff meeting absolutely could not have been an email? Jessica Gomez and Allyson Apsey set the agenda for planning—and leading—meetings that are purposeful, impactful, and inspiring.
Leading the Whole Teacher: Strategies for Supporting the Educators in Your School
Allyson Apsey
How could school leaders create a school environment that nurtures the whole teacher? What impact could a school that sets teachers up for success have on student achievement? This book explores the six components of the whole teacher with strategies and ideas to create the environment that teachers need to thrive.
Less Talk, More Action: A Guide to Transforming Schools Through Action Research
Allyson Apsey & Emily Freeland
Think about your classroom or school. How often are you encouraged to identify and solve the learning challenges your students face? To think differently about your instructional practices? To take meaningful risks without fear? If that hasn’t happened lately, we invite you to join us on a new kind of learning journey, one built around a simple but powerful process. It’s called Action Research, and it gives us, as educators, a way to turn our reflections into results.
Principaled: Navigating the Leadership Learning Curve
Kate Barker Kourtney Ferrua, Rachael George
While the principal’s office may sometimes feel like the loneliest place in the building, it doesn’t have to be. In Principaled, veteran principals Kate Barker, Kourtney Ferrua, and Rachael George draw back the curtain on their years of experience, revealing the strategies, mind-sets, and practices that have helped them flourish in their roles. With humor, humility, and candor, the authors detail the key ingredients to finding balance as a school leader: taking time to reflect and learn, seeking out mentors, crafting simple and clear goals, and not neglecting self-care. The authors present a step-by-step approach to facing the challenges of school change and demonstrate that achievement and improving culture are not mutually exclusive goals. Strengthened by their hard-earned wisdom, the dynamic trio behind Principaled will elevate school leaders and help them find their footing along the route to career contentment.
School Safety: A Practical and Tactical Resource Guide for Administrators
Pamela M VanHorn, David E Johnson, Glenn G Norling, Jeffrey Yarbrough, Shaurn Hurtado
This timely and essential book offers a comprehensive exploration of school safety, not merely as a set of protocols but as a complex, dynamic system requiring thoughtful coordination and decisive action. What sets School Safety apart is its unique approach-unpacking the intricate relationships among the many factors that influence safety in schools, and presenting practical, real-world strategies to manage and mitigate these risks.
She Leads: The Women’s Guide To a Career In Educational Leadership
Dr. Rachael George and Majalise W. Tolan
With wisdom and implementable guidance that’s applicable to early-career leaders and veterans alike, this book is designed to help you land your dream job, make sure your voice is heard, find (and offer) support, attain better balance, and learn the leadership style that suits your strengths.
The Middle School Mindset: A Lesson Plan from A-Z
Dr. Dru Tomlin
Buckle up as we dive into the essence of middle level education, presented in the familiar format of the everyday alphabet. Using selected words from A-Z, Dru Tomlin sets out to examine and explore, to quest and question, to ask and answer, how we can reach every student and create great middle schools. You’ll finish this book full of hope and optimism, ready to put your middle grades mindset to work.
The Miseducation of Empathy
Jonelle Massey
In The Miseducation of Empathy, Jonelle Massey dismantles traditional ideas about how we should be practicing empathy in our daily lives. For too long, we’ve been taught to try and walk a mile in other people’s shoes – to try and imagine how others are feeling – but drawing from her professional and personal experience as a mom, a therapist, and a coach’s wife, Massey teaches us how to more deeply connect with others by uncovering the thoughts behind each other’s behaviors. Part memoir, part self-help, The Misdeucation of Empathy and the stories of Jonelle’s personal journey promises to change the way we see and connect with one another, in a time when we need it most.
The Successful Middle School Counseling Program
Ann McCarty Perez & Elise Kenney-Caldwell
We have always known that school counselors are important, but can most of us articulate what they do on a daily basis? The role of professional school counselor has become increasingly more complex and necessary as the needs of schools have changed. In the same way, so must our understanding of their importance to our schools. By exploring foundational documents, including The Successful Middle School: This We Believe and the ASCA National Model, we gain a better understanding of the intricacies and demands of comprehensive school counseling services and how we can best meet the needs of young adolescents through collaboration and execution. This companion guide to The Successful Middle School outlines recommended components of comprehensive middle school counseling services to best meet the ever-changing needs of young adolescents. It can be used by school communities to help implement all or portions of the middle school philosophy and comprehensive school counseling services to embrace the 18 Characteristics of Successful Middle Schools.
The Successful Middle School Leader
Dr. Cedrick Gray
School leader is not a job description with a checklist of actions or skills. It is a way of being. Now more than ever, each school, classroom, and team needs a living organism at the helm—one with all its parts strong, healthy, and functioning together. The successful middle school leader has a distinct anatomy that enables them to join with others in working relationships to produce the results students deserve.
The Successful Middle School Schedule 2nd Edition
Ann McCarty Perez, Ed.D.
Perhaps one of the most wide-reaching decisions a school leader makes is that of the schedule. It truly affects everyone. From start to end times, it impacts, parents, bus drivers, food service staff, teachers, and students. As we approach the schedule, it is not enough to just study the 18 Characteristics of Successful Middle Schools. It is our imperative to put them into action.
Transfers & Open Enrollment: An Educator’s Guide to Identifying And Reconnecting Disengaged Students
Dr. Howard E. Fields III
On June 11, 2013, the Breitenfeld vs. School District of Clayton decision catapulted The Student Transfer Law into action, making it the biggest education story in the region. Though busing students from Black communities to White communities was not an entirely new practice, requiring these already less resourced school districts to pay transportation and tuition costs for student transfers was certainly a newer, more challenging element.
What Makes a Great Principal: The Five Pillars of Effective Leadership
Allyson Apsey, George Couros
Many leadership books outline the “what” of effective leadership without delving into the “how.” What sets What Makes a Great Principal apart from others are three key elements: a clear emphasis on what truly matters, narratives and strategies directly sourced from teachers and students, and a diverse range of perspectives that collectively paint a comprehensive picture of impactful school leadership.