Oregon Books

Sam MCKinney's books are what inspired me to build my power sharpie (see my other reviews). I'm 70, and I figured if he can do it so can I. So I can't wait to get my boat done and follow his Colimbia River tracks. He was a dedicated, motivated, independant, off the wall, adventurous Waterman that dedicated his life to the water and helping youth learn outdoor skills. His writings are simple, homey, and inspiring. Get them all.

Terry Lesh

Catherine Anderson is a wonderful story teller/writer. I would love to have been a child in her house - I can just imagine the bedtime stories she would make up. I appreciate the fact that her stories don't drag on and on but are precise and keep you interested right up until the end. Keep them coming, Catherine!!!

I purchased this book to help me find a place to honeymoon that was cozy, not over-run by tourists. I wanted a honeymoon site that offered an authentic experience, not one marketed or comercialized. I knew there had to be out of the way places that would allow genuine exploration and discovery in which the traveler was not just another number being shuttled around to the same places to spend money with everyone else. I ended up finding a beautiful bed and breakfast on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. Built in the late 1800's this inn featured a small detached bungalow on the bluffs overlooking the harbor. There is no way I would have found this place without the guide.

I am realizing the benefit of "place." The world is full of ugly concrete box hotels that all look and feel the same. Why not chance it a little and explore a small county inn off a small country road surrounded by woods and coastline? Yes, there may be a little discomfort in the lack of anonimity, but why settle for the generic?

For those who live on the west coast, or want to visit, this guide has hundreds of listings of places to stay. The author has personally visited each of them (tough job), and offers insightful recommendations. The guide thoroughly covers a broad range of geography and has something from everyone from 19th century hotels to small cabins in California's Gold Rush Country. Most of these inns are owned by families who live on the site, so you know you are supporting local economies and not some corporate interest 1,000 miles away.

Read this and then get out there and explore.

D. E Bullis, better known to his friends as Deb, has succeeded where most authors fail. Taking seventeen years to pen a sequel to his 1931 work, "Bleaching and dyeing Royal Ann cherries for maraschino or fruit salad use", Deb wows us with his appropriately, and self-explanatorily titled, "Relationship of maturing and weathering to yield and quality of peppermint oil," and does so in even fewer pages than his freshman effort.

How many authors actually produce a sequel shorter than the original? Take that, J.K. Rowling! And no slipshod 500 pages whipped out in a year, no sir. Deb spent over a year penning each page, and it must show. How easily such a publication could have run 20, 30, even 40 pages. Good show, Deb. Five Stars!! And a place on my wish list of books of unknown bindings.

Here are personal interviews and reminiscences of the people who lived the early days and created Pendleton and Umatilla County, Oregon. From the mid 1800's on, these are the stories of the pathfinders including ranchers, business people, teachers, newspaper-men, ministers, doctors, and more. If you like anecdotal history this is up your alley; a much more down-to-earth approach than schoolbook history.

I read this delightful and perceptive history of life along the Sweetwater River in central Wyoming several years ago. In fact I have read this book at least twice and skimmed through it a number of times since then.
Whereas Ruth Beebe brings to life the early trappers, explorers, westward emigrants, Pony Express and military who traveled through this region, her main focus is on the early homesteaders who settled this valley.
From the 1870's thru the early twentieth century this is a chronological as well as geographical study of the pioneers who braved the unforgiving climate and rigorous lifestyle to make this remote region their home.
"Reminiscing" is an important Wyoming historical account of names and past events which occurred in this somewhat mystical passageway to the west.

"Rescue Flight" tells the story of ten-year-old Will O'Malley, a tall gangly kid who loves airplanes, and whose great-uncle "Pops" O'Malley, a bush pilot, invites him on a two-week flying adventure in the rugged Badger Mountains of Oregon. The simple vacation becomes a life-and-death strugle when an excaped convict grabs the two. Will, who has never flown solo before must steal the plane back from the convict and fly it from a remote mountain airstrip. If he fails, his severely injured uncle will soon die. The result is an adventure story, told in a style that is accessible but doesn't talk down to young readers. The final two chapters detailing Will's perilous escape flight are truly gripping for readers of any age. The problem of a ten-year-old making his first solo flight under such harrowing conditions draws the reader in with page-turnng intensity, and there are plenty of realistic aviation details for the most enthusiastic aviation buff.

This book is an extremely well constructed, balanced perspective about the problems with the Lower Snake River dams. The writing is clear and consise, which is crucial when explaining such a complex issue. The author does not use emotional arguments to outrage the reader. Rather, he presents the facts that surround the issue and uses those to draw a well thought out conclusion. We have much to gain by preserving salmon in the Northwest.

"History is something like a river," we read in the introduction to this extraordinary book that loops and turns from the mountains all the way to the sea. Weaving myth, history, biology, the stories of salmon, Yurok, Karok, Hupa and immigrant farmers, Stephen Most tells the story of one of California's most beautiful and storied rivers. One feels the sacredness of it. If you love wilderness books and river books and if the land for you wears a beautiful face, don't miss this book. It will take you there.

A tremendous amount has been written about school restructuring during the past half-dozen years. Writers and researchers have investigated, discussed, and debated the need and rationale for change in public education, the various strategies being attempted, their relative effectiveness, and the difficulty of bringing about change in public schools.

This wealth of information has not been easily available to practitioners. It is widely dispersed in journals, papers, and unpublished, hard-to-find documents. When school people begin to consider restructuring, it is not easy for them to assemble the resources that might aid their discussions and decisions.

This book is designed to help address this need, at least in part. It is an attempt to assemble many of the salient works on school restructuring that have appeared in print since discussions on the topic began in earnest in the mid-1980s. But this book goes beyond simply summarizing the writing in this area. Its goal is to provide a conceptual framework within which restructuring activities and processes can be considered; to provoke thinking, discussion, and questions regarding restructuring; and to enable readers to go beyond this text to many other sources that will deepen their understanding of ideas presented here.

The book draws from more than 600 sources across a wide spectrum of perspectives and beliefs regarding restructuring. It incorporates and builds upon several of my earlier works on this topic, along with information I gleaned from discussions and interviews with practitioners. Additional insights have come from my role as a school restructuring consultant, as a site facilitator for nine schools participating in a U.S. Department of Education grant designed to enable schools to take the "next step" in restructuring, and more recently as director of a project that works with 30 high schools to develop proficiency-based college admission standards for Oregon's public colleges and universities.

This book provides a picture of many of the trends and issues in school restructuring and attempts to place these issues into a context that helps explain where schools have come from and where they might be going. The book is designed to serve as a tool to help faculties develop their vision of school restructuring and their strategies for pursuing the process of restructuring. It might also be used profitably as a resource for principals, administrators, and boards of education who are trying to understand in greater detail this concept and its implications.

My goal in writing this book is to help educators, community members, and policy-makers understand more clearly why many educators are trying to restructure education, what people may mean when they talk about restructuring, what a few select schools are doing, and how the process of attempting fundamental change in education is being played out.

I hope that this book will enable the reader to have a more informed opinion on school restructuring, and to be more aware of the causes, issues, techniques, and strategies that are associated with this movement.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 15 CHAPTER 2. The Whys of Educational Restructuring 26 CHAPTER 3. Creating New Habits of Heart and Mind 43

Part 2 CHANGING ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES 55 introduction to part 2 56 CHAPTER 4. Federal and State Governments 58 CHAPTER 5. School Districts 68 CHAPTER 6. School Sites 79 CHAPTER 7. Parents And The Community 89

Part 3 DIMENSIONS OF RESTRUCTURING 101 INTRODUCTION TO PART 3 102 CHAPTER 8. Preview of the Twelve Dimensions 104 CHAPTER 9. Learner Outcomes 113 CHAPTER 10. Curriculum 125 CHAPTER 11. Instruction 142 CHAPTER 12. Assessment 151 CHAPTER 13. Learning Environment 165 CHAPTER 14. Technology 188 CHAPTER 15. School-Community Relations 201 CHAPTER 16. Time 217 CHAPTER 17. Governance 227 CHAPTER 18. Teacher Leadership 245 CHAPTER 19. Personnel 257 CHAPTER 20. Working Relationships 265

Part 4 PROCESS OF RESTRUCTURING CHAPTER 21. Discontinuous Restructuring 281 CHAPTER 22. The Difficulty of Change in Education 306 CHAPTER 23. Culture, Leadership, and Readiness 321 CHAPTER 24. The Role Of Vision And Some Representative Visions 345 CHAPTER 25. Some Tools For Taking The Next Steps Toward Restructuring 361 CHAPTER 26. Emerging Visions Of School Restructuring 384 bibliography 400