CEHD - About Us

People First! Mental Illnesses is designed to support professionals and pre-professionals in beginning or continuing to transform their perspectives of people with mental illnesses to seeing the person before the mental illness. This transformation results in more positive interactions with, and effective and collaborative support for the people with whom they work, care for, live with, and/or love. Through reflective exercises, the reader explores how they perceive people with mental illnesses and how these perceptions impact their daily professional and/or personal interactions with people with mental illnesses. In addition, this book presents dynamic and purposeful case studies that focus on certain aspects of mental illnesses and the mental health field in general. Another unique feature included is a glossary of words often used within the mental health field, defined in a person first manner. These definitions go beyond simple translations to reveal the impact behind the words and phrases affecting people with mental illnesses. This book is unparalleled as it is distinct in providing the perspective of people with mental illnesses and begins to stimulate a larger shift in societal stigma towards seeing People First before their Mental Illnesses!

Latinos—those born in the United States as well as those who immigrated later in life—are not only transforming the country and cities, they are also transforming themselves in a difficult process of community making. This book tells the story of how a diverse group of immigrants have adapted to dramatic changes in the largely Anglo setting of Portland, Maine, building bridges instead of walls. The Latino storytellers included here address multiple challenges of discrimination, language barriers, cultural retention and adaptation, and speak of their strengths—strong family ties, a connection to the environment, and an expanding sense of home—to illustrate how they have emerged not only with hopes and dreams intact, but also with a resilience built upon fluid and flexible identities.

"The personal tone of the narratives and the compelling, engaging stories are a strong complement to scholarship about Latinos in the United States." -- Daniel D. Arreola, author of Tejano South Texas: A Mexican American Cultural Province

RTI in the Classroom: Guidelines and Recipes for Success (2009)
Rachel Brown-Chidsey, Louise Bronaugh and Kelly McGraw
The Guilford Press

Written expressly for teachers, this book is jam-packed with tools and strategies for integrating response to intervention (RTI) into everyday instruction in grades K–5. Numerous real-world examples connect RTI concepts to what teachers already know to help them provide effective instruction for all students, including struggling learners. Drawing on extensive classroom experience, the authors:

Explain the core features of RTI and what they look like in action.
Describe evidence-based instructional methods for reading, writing, math, and behavior.
Show how to fit assessment and progress monitoring into the busy school day.
Present color-coded intervention recipes for all three tiers of RTI implementation.
Provide hands-on tools and 50 reproducibles, with a large format and sturdy wire binding for ease of use.

"This book is indispensable for teachers whose districts are in the process of implementing RTI. The strong focus on the essential components of RTI gives the reader a foundation of knowledge from which a successful RTI plan can be developed. The book describes research-based interventions in reading, writing, mathematics, and behavior. Chapters on instructional considerations for English language learners and the use of the DIBELS system are invaluable."--Joseph Gerard, MA, school psychologist/RTI coordinator, Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District, Alaska

End Over End (2002)
Kate Kennedy
Soho Press

Ivory Towle is a dreamy, other-worldly 14-year-old growing up in a blue-collar town in New Hampshire. Artistic and bored, she is in love with Blake, a beautiful boy who abuses her, and she may or may not be pregnant with his child. Five months later, the badly decomposed remains of her shot and stabbed body are found by a curious dog in a wooded area just outside the town center. But this isn't a whodunit we never find out who is responsible for the crime. Instead, Kennedy inverts the conventions of the genre and successfully refocuses attention on the culture that made the girl's death possible. Point of view shifts rapidly from character to character, among them: Ivory's parents, paralyzed into passivity by their grief and by the inhumanity of the system they're expected to trust; Mrs. Cadenza, the well-intentioned health teacher who cannot reach her students; Sally Gregg, the compassionate cop who views Ivory's murder through the filter of her own personal tragedy; Tommy Slack, one of the rage-filled, misdirected boys accused of the crime; and Ivory's girlfriends, who, as lost as they are, continue to suspect that there's something better out there for them. Kennedy's portrait of poor, suburban youth culture is pitch-perfect and devastating in its implications, and her prose is so beautiful that the apparent lack of focus hardly seems to matter. She reveals a world of teen pregnancies, drugs, shrugged-off rape, suicide attempts and careless violence, of which Ivory's death is only a part. "It makes you tired, holding a future in your own two hands," Ivory says, and Kennedy leaves us to wonder if this waste is not, in fact, the final tragedy.

More than Petticoats: Remarkable Maine Women (2005)
Kate Kennedy
TwoDot Publishers

Meet Independent, Inspiring Maine Women

More than Petticoats: Remarkable Maine Women tells the stories of thirteen strong and determined women who broke through social, cultural, or political barriers. Through their passions for art, exploration, literature, politics, music, and nature, these women made contributions to society that still resonate today.

Meet Marguerite "Tante Blanche" Thibodeau Cyr, "The Mother of Madawaska," whose bravery and kindness during one brutal winter saved her frontier settlement; botanist-artist Kate Furbish, who explored Maine's wilderness, collecting, classifying, and painting all of its flowering plants; and Florence Nicolar Shay, a Native-American basketmaker who demanded and succeeded in gaining rights for her tribe, the Penobscots.

Each of these women demonstrated courage, compassion, and an independence of spirit that is as inspiring now as it was then. Read about their extraordinary lives in this collection of brief and absorbing biographies.

Teachers in Professional Communities: Improving Teaching and Learning (2008)
Ann Lieberman and Lynne Miller
Teachers College Press

The seventh volume in a long term collaboration between Lynne Miller and Ann Lieberman, this is a book about professional learning communities, which are defined as "ongoing groups of teachers who meet regularly for the purpose of increasing their own learning and that of their students." The book is divided into two sections. The first section is in the form of an extended essay that reviews selected research about teacher learning in professional communities. The second section provides five case studies, authored by educators who have led in the creation and realization of such communities,. The book concludes with Ann's and Lynne's remarks that tie together what research and practice can teach us about this promising practice.

''Breaks new ground....Lieberman and Miller tell us how teacher learning community develops inside and outside schools, using evidence from research, theory, and reflections on practice. A must-read for anyone committed to improving teaching quality teacher leaders, teacher educators, principals and district administrators, school reformers, and professional developers.'' --Joan Talbert, co-director of the Stanford University Center for Research on the Context of Teaching

Note: Lynne's and Ann's previous book, Teacher Leadership ( Jossey Bass, 2004) has just been translated into Korean.

Conducting School-Based Functional Behavioral Assessments: A Practitioner’s Guide – 2nd Edition (2009)
Mark W. Steege & T. Stuart Watson
The Guilford Press

Explaining the "whats," "whys," and "how-tos" of functional behavioral assessment, this practical and engaging book is packed with real-world tools and examples. Effective procedures are presented for evaluating challenging behavior in K-12 students, organizing assessment data, and using the results to craft individualized behavior support plans. The authors draw on extensive school-based experience to provide sample reports, decision trees, and reproducible checklists and forms-all in a large-size format with lay-flat binding to facilitate photocopying.

New to This Edition:

Revised throughout to reflect significant advances in the field.
Provides an updated conceptual model for understanding behavior.
Three new chapters cover brief functional analysis, behavior-analytic problem solving, and direct behavioral consultation.
Fully updated coverage of legal issues under IDEIA.
Includes revised forms and sample reports.

Conducting School-Based Functional Behavioral Assessments: A Practitioner's Guide - Chinese Translation (2009)
Mark W. Steege and T. Stuart Watson
The Guilford Press

This book provides the basis for thoughtful reflection and discussion of school accountability by critically examining Kentucky's groundbreaking educational reform strategy of statewide student assessment and teacher accountability.

Accountability, Assessment, and Teacher Commitment offers a vantage point to draw lessons from, and ponder alternatives to, the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), a state school reform effort based on a system of statewide student assessment and high-stakes accountability for teachers. It documents classroom realities and probes the consequences of this type of reform through case studies, comparisons to alternative models, and thought-provoking responses from national experts.

University of Southern Maine