Flip the Script: Breaking Down Barriers, Building Relationships, and Engaging Secondary Students (Impactful and transformative relationships with secondary students) - Softcover

Rebecca A. Knighton; Jessica R. May

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798893740110

Publisher: Solution Tree Press, 2025

Synopsis

In Flip the Script, the authors propose that to build relationships with and engage students, educators must examine core beliefs and assumptions that create unintentional barriers to supporting students. Through self-exploration, empathy building, and real-life examples from five master teachers, educators can learn how to help students break down negative thought patterns and become engaged learners.

Secondary teachers can use this book to:

• Increase students’ enthusiasm and willingness to actively engage in class
• Use examples from five highly effective teachers to deepen pedagogy and develop exceptional skills and mindsets
• Approach student conflicts with authenticity and respect, using those experiences as opportunities to guide student growth
• Reframe how students see themselves as learners and increase students’ self-efficacy and hope for the future, changing the trajectories of their lives

Contents:
Introduction
Chapter 1: Building Trust and Connection
Chapter 2: Creating Safety
Chapter 3: Developing Authenticity
Chapter 4: Increasing Student Engagement
Chapter 5: Navigating Student Conflict and Behavior
Chapter 6: Flipping the Script
Epilogue
Appendix A: Activities to Help Students Reflect
Appendix B: Middle and High School Essay-Writing Packets
Appendix C: Activities to Help Students Develop Social-Emotional Competencies and Skills
Appendix D: Activities for the First Two Weeks of School
References and Resources
Index

About this title

About the Author

Rebecca A. Knighton, PhD, is a lifelong learner with a passion for understanding humanity’s common needs, the barriers we face, and what motivates us. As a senior consultant with the Colorado Department of Education (CDE), Knighton helps district and school leaders transform their districts and schools by increasing their capacity for humanistic leadership and navigation of complex systemwide change efforts. She provides effective professional development to improve culture and climate and transform the way staff and students are understood and supported. She began her journey in education as a middle school behavioral interventionist (for general education students), gifted and talented specialist, and leading member of her school’s multitiered system of supports and individual student problem-solving teams. Knighton also developed and taught a social-emotional intervention class for sixth graders who struggled with behavior and low school engagement, changing the educational trajectories of the students who participated.
Knighton holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Boise State University in Boise, Idaho; a master’s degree in teaching literacy across content areas to underserved populations from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles; and a doctorate in population studies in health from the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. Her dissertation focused on teachers who are highly skilled at connecting with and engaging disengaged youth. When she isn’t thinking about and creating new ways to guide inspiration and transformation in those she supports, she loves spending time in nature with her husband and their Corgi, Tifa. She also enjoys traveling, especially to Europe to visit her son, or to the Pacific Northwest, where she can experience the power of the ocean and the beauty of the forest at the same time.

Jessica R. May, MEd, uses her role as a classroom teacher to foster supportive relationships with even the most difficult students—including those from generational poverty and the at-risk population as well as affluent students. She is well versed in the basic human tendencies of secondary students, along with brain research, which she draws from to uniquely connect with each of her students. May designs strategies to deeply bond with students navigating diverse issues that arise in all areas of life—not just at school.
Having won Colorado Teacher of the Year in 2024, as well as District-Level Teacher of the Year three times in seven years, May uses the feedback from her students’ end-of-year surveys, end-of-semester surveys, and peace circles to become a better person and teacher. She also coaches other teachers on classroom management, social-emotional learning lessons, and her biggest passion: reading in the real world through the lens of every content area.
May earned a bachelor’s degree in social sciences from the University of Colorado in Boulder and a master’s degree of education from Colorado State University in Fort Collins. She lives in Loveland, Colorado, with Doug, her husband of twenty-four years; their four sons; and their two pampered house cats, Mozzie and Scarlett. In her spare time, she enjoys reading youth and adult fiction, watching her beloved Denver Broncos, playing the acoustic guitar, and clobbering her sons—Jonas, Silas, Elias, and Mathias—in Uno, Gin, and Backgammon.

Edition details

• Publisher: Solution Tree Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798893740110
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• Number of pages: 320