by Andrea Brenner and Lara Schwartz The transition from high school—and life at home—to college can be stressful for students and their families, and nothing in the college admissions process prepares students for it. Colleges are reporting an increase in underprepared first-year students at startling rates. How to College: What to Know Before You Go (and When You’re There) is here to help. Authors Andrea Malkin Brenner and Lara Schwartz guide first-year students to thrive in the transition process, in high school, during the summer after high school graduation, and throughout their first year on campus. How to College is the first student-facing practical guide of its kind on the market. It draws on the authors’ experiences teaching and working with thousands of first-year college students over decades. The comprehensive guide offers invaluable advice from college insiders to college-bound students, emphasizing the student’s ultimate self-reliance. The book is filled with important resources needed to set the foundation of success at the collegiate level including lessons and activities on money; time and self-management; co-curricular and civic-engagement experiences; navigating relationships with family and friends back at home and roommates and peers on campus; exploring new college identities; finding one's voice inside and outside of the classroom; health, wellness and safety; and the importance of finding mentors for support in this life transition. Colleges can use this book during the first year of college as… ...the basis for a first-year experience course. How to College addresses the full college experience, including college academic standards; maintaining physical and mental health and wellness; financial literacy and budgeting; moving to a new community; and engaging in college life in and out of the classroom. ...a guide for peer leaders and resident assistants. Research shows that peer leaders are among the best mentors for first-year students. These successful college students become adept at using college resources and mastering college-level skills, but by definition they do not have decades of experience dealing with the full range of challenges and pitfalls that are common to the first-year experience. They can benefit from a text that includes simple descriptions of these challenges and straightforward advice from experts that they can use to demystify the college experience in language that their student mentees will understand. ...a resource for residence life, counseling center, and orientation staff. Staff will find useful approaches to common first-year pitfalls and challenges. At most campuses, these staff do not have extensive contact with faculty. Written by two professors, How to College provides staff with the faculty point of view on matters such as study skills, writing, professionalism, reading, and academic integrity. The book creates a bridge between faculty and the student-facing staff who are charged with supporting students. This book can also benefit students before college starts in the following ways: Advising programs. Many colleges connect incoming students with an academic adviser, increasingly a first-year adviser, in the spring of their senior year of high school. This first contact is an excellent time to introduce How to College- including by sending it with other materials. Advisers can direct students to these exercises: Setting up and getting comfortable with the school’s technology systems, including email, library research tools, and learning management systems like Blackboard and Canvas;  Making good use of academic support services such as supplemental tutoring, writing centers, and resources for international students and students with disabilities; and  Sending professional emails.  Residence and campus life staff are in contact with incoming college students during the summer following high school graduation. Residence life programs pair roommates and suite-mates and build living and learning communities long before students arrive on campus. Students are “meeting” and interacting on social media and through email before orientation, and without the college professionals’ support. How to College has great tools to help students build these new relationships from the start, including:  Advice about how to have a first conversation with your new roommate(s);  Tips to prepare for a successful, low-conflict move-in day;  Activities to prepare students to live and learn in a diverse community. For example, we encourage students to learn about the student body’s backgrounds, demographics, and circumstances; to read books or articles by authors who have different points of view than their own; to attend an event that exposes them to a new idea or culture; and to reflect upon their own listening and communication skills and habits. Summer bridge programs for particular cohorts of college students. How to College is a pre-made “bridge” program that can form the basis of in-person programming. It includes materials of particular interest to the college cohorts that summer bridge programs most often serve: international students, first-generation students, low-income students, and students with disabilities.  Admissions and orientation programs can suggest How to College as a pre-orientation read or send it to incoming students with welcome materials.  Tutoring centers working with high school seniors on academic high school transitions can use How to College as a textbook, assigning activities from the book to their students. Of particular interest would be the information presented on: How to read an academic journal Reading without technology distractions Writing a persuasive college paper Using sticky notes for higher-level note-taking Common reads programs expose the entire incoming class to one common text. How to College can be a unique common read in that it exposes students to a series of shared summer experiences, not only a shared book. Students read the text and also engage with a wide variety of useful learning experiences in preparation for their college transition. Common Reads programs can assign students to complete particular activities- for example, setting personal goals as a communicator, participating in a new cultural activity, or taking a financial literacy course-- over the summer. Once on campus, they can then engage students in conversations about the experiences, making college preparation collaborative. For more information on How to College, go to our trade website at us.macmillan.com/books. ... View more

As a Learning Solutions Specialist at Macmillan, it’s my job to help instructors get their LaunchPad courses set up, offer advice on which activities to assign, and make sure they’re comfortable using the technology with their students.   I often begin or end my LaunchPad demo and training sessions with the idea that students WILL be using tech at some point through college, why not start them off with it right away? While they’re prepping for and/or adjusting to college?   That’s all we did at my old teaching gig.   Before coming to Macmillan, I taught, and was an adjunct for my school’s college success program. All online students took the exact same class during their first 4 weeks of school. We had a prescriptive course because we wanted each student on equal footing. And, because their programs were totally online, we wanted to make sure they knew how to use the technology they would be using the rest of their college careers. We offered “remedial” activities for students who may not be very familiar with laptops. Their very first assignment was to download AOL Instant Messenger (this was many years ago…) and send their instructor an IM, as all instructors on campus were constantly logged in during office hours, and that’s the best way to reach them “live.” We also worked through applications and websites that may be helpful in their other courses, and spent a fair amount of time on conducting research on the Internet.   All that being said, of course it is important to teach study skills, time management, etc. But make sure you’re focusing on the little things too. The little things that will also make their time in college a little easier. If you’d like a personal tour of LaunchPad, sign up for a session with me, your Learning Solutions Specialist: https://www.macmillanlearning.com/Catalog/support.aspx ... View more

Since we first launched the ACES self-assessment back in 2016, we’ve seen program after program make the simple decision to give each one of their students, on their first days of college, one of the most powerful gifts--self-knowledge. It all starts with the simple, 20-minute ACES activity: a set of survey questions expertly designed by three counseling psychologists, through which students create a quantitative self-portrait of their strengths and growth areas--the ACES Initial Report. Over 30,000 students have now taken ACES in their first weeks of college, so many of them for the first time discovering the power of a growth mindset, goal setting, and how to cultivate their inner assets to overcome adversity and be their best selves. Over the past year or so, we’ve been beta-testing an ACES “post-test,” so that students could take the assessment again and reflect on their progress. An impetus for developing the post-test was that instructors could now have a powerful tool to help quantify the progress students were making in their FYE course. But the real driver behind this second instance of ACES is a pedagogical reason--its metacognitive benefits. Having a second ACES report, at the end of the term, provides students with an important opportunity to reflect on their progress, practice gratitude, and gain valuable positive reinforcement. It also gives them an updated version of their quantitative self-portrait. By seeing change in their skills, abilities, and attitudes, the end-of-term ACES report provides them with real, first-hand experience with growth-mindset, neuroplasticity, and above all, the power to change oneself for the better. To emphasize these powerful benefits, the beta post-test will be replaced in early Summer 2019 in all ACES LaunchPads with a new, permanent, second instance of ACES to be taken at the end of the semester. The report students will receive from this second instance of ACES will be called “The ACES Progress Report.” Instructors will also have a new “Comparison Report” in their report dashboard so they themselves can reflect on the impact their course has had on their students. In addition, there will be a brief guide added to all ACES LaunchPads to help students compare their Progress Report with their Initial Report from the beginning of the semester. Connections, Second Edition--the new edition of the textbook program developed in conjunction with ACES by the same team of counseling psychologists--gets an even more powerful end-of-semester feature: an assignable Capstone LaunchPad activity that automatically pulls in students’ ACES results from the entire term, and leads them through a metacognitive reflection to set them up for long term success. These new features--the ACES Progress Report, the ACES Comparison Report, and the ACES Capstone Activity--are truly the product of the collaborative spirit at Macmillan Learning. I’m so inspired by how our wonderful authors, our senior editor Christina Lembo, our senior media editor Tom Kane, our technology team, and our faculty and student partners across the country, came together to bring you these new products, fostered by our spirit that together we can achieve more. With these new features, our hope is that you will now be able to give your students something as powerful as the self-knowledge you offer them when they walk into your class--self growth, as they walk out. ... View more

Last summer, we looked at schools with Common Reading Programs, where institutions assign or recommend titles for students and instructors to read over the summer, so that they can come together to discuss the book as a community in the fall. Believe it or not (I don't), but summer is here again, and so are these reading programs. While several schools have already announced their picks, there's still no way to tell which books will be the most common (pun intended) choice. While some common reading programs include the entire student body, many of them are aimed specifically at students entering their first year of college. This gives incoming students the opportunity to share something with their instructors and peers before they step on campus, and provides them with a taste of what they can expect from their institution over the course (pun not intended) of their studies. So, for those of you still deliberating on your common reading choices, or those of you who simply want more reading recommendations, take a look at the Macmillan catalog on Books for the First-Year Experience. These critically-acclaimed books are ideal for the first-year experience: they're accessible and challenging, timely and classic, broadly appealing, stimulating, and moving. They foster individual growth while also inviting campus-wide discussion. Overall, a perfect summer reading for an incoming student who wants to start their first year on the right page (last pun, promise!). Here are some examples of books featured on Macmillan's Books for the First-Year Experience Catalog:  The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton with Lara Love Hardin Oprah's Book Club Choice for June 2018! In 1985, Anthony Rae Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. Stunned, confused, and only twenty-nine years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence and ultimately set him free. But with an incompetent defense attorney and a different system of justice for a poor black man in the South, Hinton was sentenced to death by electrocution. He spent his first three years on Death Row at Holman State Prison in despairing silence—angry and full of hatred for all those who had sent an innocent man to his death. But as Hinton realized and accepted his fate, he resolved not only to survive, but to find a way to live on Death Row. For the next twenty-seven years he was a beacon—transforming not only his own spirit, but those of his fellow inmates, fifty-four of whom were executed mere feet from his cell. With the help of civil rights attorney and bestselling author of Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, Hinton won his release in 2015. With a foreword by Stevenson, The Sun Does Shine is an extraordinary testament to the power of hope sustained through the darkest times. Hinton’s memoir tells his dramatic thirty-year journey and shows how you can take away a man’s freedom, but you can’t take away his imagination, humor, or joy. Anthony Ray Hinton spent nearly thirty years on death row for crimes he did not commit. Released in April 2015, Hinton now speaks widely on prison reform and the power of faith and forgiveness. He lives in Alabama. Check out his chat with Oprah about his book on her Facebook page here. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande    Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession’s ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person’s last weeks or months may be rich and dignified. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering. Being Mortal asserts that medicine can comfort and enhance our experience even to the end, providing not only a good life but also a good end. Atul Gawande is author of three bestselling books: Complications; Better; and The Checklist Manifesto. He is also a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. He and his wife have three children and live in Newton, Massachusetts. In the Country We Love: My Family Divided by Diane Guerrero with Michelle Burford Diane Guerrero, the television actress from the megahitOrange Is the New Black and Jane the Virgin, was just fourteen years old on the day her parents were detained and deported while she was at school. Born in the U.S., Guerrero was able to remain in the country and continue her education, depending on the kindness of family friends who took her in and helped her build a life and a successful acting career for herself, without the support system of her family. In the Country We Love is a moving, heartbreaking story of one woman’s extraordinary resilience in the face of the nightmarish struggles of undocumented residents in this country. There are over 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., many of whom have citizen children, whose lives here are just as precarious, and whose stories haven’t been told. Written with bestselling author Michelle Burford, this memoir is a tale of personal triumph that also casts a much-needed light on the fears that haunt the daily existence of families like Guerrero’s and on a system that fails them over and over. Diane Guerrero is an actress on the hit shows Orange Is the New Black and Jane the Virgin. She volunteers with the nonprofit Immigrant Legal Resource Center, as well as with Mi Familia Vota, an organization that promotes civic involvement. She has been named an Ambassador for Citizenship and Naturalization by the White House. She lives in New York City. Walking to Listen: 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time by Andrew Forsthoefel At twenty-three, Andrew Forsthoefel walked out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read “Walking to Listen.” He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to being his adult life, but he didn’t know how. So he decided he’d walk. And listen. It would be a cross-country quest for guidance, and everyone he met would be his guide. Thousands shared their stories with him, sometimes confiding their prejudices, too. Often he didn’t know how to respond. How to find unity in diversity? How to stay connected, even as fear works to tear us apart? He listened for answers to these questions, and to the existential questions every human must face, and began to find that the answer might be in listening itself. Ultimately, it’s the stories of others living all along the roads of America that carry this journey and sing out in a hopeful, heartfelt book about how a life is made, and how our nation defines itself on the most human level. Andrew Forsthoefel is a writer, radio producer, and public speaker. After graduating from Middlebury College in 2011, he spent nearly a year walking across the United States. He first recounted part of that journey in a radio story featured on This American Life. He now facilitates workshops on walking and listening as practices in personal transformation, interconnection, and conflict resolution, and is currently based in Northampton, Massachusetts. This post was adapted from an entry in A Word from Macmillan tagged 2017, A Word from Macmillan on 10/19/2017. ... View more

   Since joining Pinterest in....wow, 2012, my boards have been pathetically bare. But as you may have seen from my last post, this fall I've been on an organization kick, and so I've been looking to Pinterest for inspiration.     For those who are not already familiar with Pinterest, it's is an image-sharing site, where people collect ideas and web pages by pinning them to their boards. It's essentially the internet's solution to scrapbooking, but instead of preserving old things, you're searching for new things. Pinterest currently has approximately 150 million active users each month, and among those users are students and, increasingly, instructors of all grade levels. Here are just some of the ways that instructors can utilize Pinterest to make their classrooms more engaging, more creative, and more internet-friendly. Get Inspired    One of the best aspects of Pinterest is the ability to find and share some of the unique ideas that your colleagues have posted to the site. Whether you're looking to decorate and organize your classroom, find templates for class activities and projects, or even just to find some tips for time-management and stress relief, you'll find plenty of ideas within your first few minutes of searching. You may even find something that you weren't looking for, like the inspiration to learn a new craft or explore new places. Personally, I've been looking for bullet journal ideas and templates Share Ideas    This is something that can benefit you, your colleagues, and even your students. Pinterest provides a space for people to share ideas, so if you want to offer your students some study tips, they can provide you in term with some ideas for outside material that could be discussed in class. Remove All the Clutter    Is your desk often covered with articles, journals, and memos? Save all of that information on your phone, computer, or other electronic device instead. With the option to create folders and boards for different categories, it's much easier to store and organize your data on Pinterest, so if you ever get a chance to actually read all of those articles, you'll actually be able to find them! Student Work    A great way to get students excited about their studies is to let them explore what they're learning on their own. This helps them develop independent study skills, and gives them an outlet to be creative with their coursework. Students can use the site to brainstorm and research topics, create digital portfolios and journals, and collaborate on group projects. This is also an excellent opportunity to get students thinking about the source of the photos, ideas, and information they're finding, teaching them not only about copyright law but about critically evaluating information and its source.   Build a Creative, Collaborative Environment    As previously mentioned, Pinterest is a place to share with others, and this can be your space to share with your students. You can start group discussions, share feedback on work, store ideas that have come up in class discussions, and create a space to display impressive work. By allowing students to explore their creativity in class, you'll not only get them thinking about the course material in a new way, but you'll also give them the chance to build communication skills, confidence, and self-reliance. These practices could help students succeed in the classroom, in their careers and, of course, on social media. ... View more