Sunday, November 27, 2011

Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America's Teachers

  • ISBN13: 9781595581280
  • Condition: Used - Very Good
  • Notes: 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

{Directed by Oscar winner Vanessa Roth}
{Inspired by the New York Times bestseller "Teachers Have It Easy"}
{Produced by Best-Selling Author Dave Eggers ("A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius").}
{Endorsed by Teacher's Unions representing millions of teachers.}
{Seen as the answer to "Waiting for Superman" and "The Lottery".}
{Opened in theatres with an $8000+ per screen average in first week and rave reviews.}
{Microsoft's Partners in Learning has launched a community screening tour in more than 400 cities and towns across the country.}

As the debate over America's public schools rages on, the one thing everyone agrees on is the need for great teache! rs. Yet while research has shown that teachers are the most important in-school factor in a child's success, America's educators are so underpaid that almost two-thirds must work a second job in order to make a living.

Chronicling the stories of four teachers in different areas of the country, American Teacher reveals the frustrating realities of today's teachers, the difficulty of attracting talented new educators, and why so many of our best teachers leave the profession altogether. Can we re-value teaching and turn it into a prestigious, financially attractive and desirable profession? With almost half of American teachers leaving the field in the next ten years, now is the time to find out.

The bestselling call to action for improving the working lives of public school teachersâ€"and improving our classrooms along the way.

Since its initial publication and multiple reprints in hardcover in 2005, Teachers Have It Easy has attracted the a! ttention of teachers nationwide, appearing on the New York ! Times extended bestseller list, C-SPAN, and NPR's Marketplace, in addition to receiving strong reviews nationwide. Now available for the first time in paperback, this groundbreaking book examines how bad policy makes teachers' lives miserable.

Many teachers today must work two or more jobs to survive; they cannot afford to buy homes or raise families. Interweaving teachers' voices from across the country with hard-hitting facts and figures, this book is a clear-eyed view of the harsh realities of public school teaching, without chicken-soup-for-the-soul success stories.

With a look at the problems of recruitment and retention, the myths of short workdays and endless summer vacations, the realities of the work week, and shocking examples of how society views America's teachers, Teachers Have It Easy explores the best ways to improve public education and transform our schools.

The Man with No Name Trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars / For a Few Dollars More / The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly) [Blu-ray]

  • Condition: New
  • Format: Blu-ray
  • AC-3; Box set; Color; Dolby; DTS Surround Sound; Dubbed; Full Screen; Restored; Subtitled; Widescree
Sergio Leone “spaghetti westerns” did not simply add a new chapter to the genre…they reinvented it. From his shockingly violent and stylized breakthrough, A Fistful of Dollars, to the film Quentin Tarantino calls “the best-directed movie of all time,” The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Leone’s vision did for westerns what talkies did for all movies back in the 1920s: it elevated them to an entirely new art form. Fully restored, presented in high definition with their best-ever audio, and including audio commentaries, featurettes and more, these films are much more than the definitive Leone collection...they are the most ambitious and influential westerns ever made.

A Fistfull Of Dollars
Clint Eastwood’s legendary “M! an With No Name” makes his powerful debut in this thrilling, action-packed classic in which he manipulates two rival bands of smugglers and sets in motion a plan to destroy both in a series of brilliantly orchestrated setups, showdowns and deadly confrontations.

For A Few Dollars More
Oscar® Winner Clint Eastwood** continues his trademark role in this second installment of the trilogy, this time squaring off with Indio, the territory’s most treacherous bandit. But his ruthless rival, Colonel Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef, High Noon), is determined to bring Indio in first...dead or alive!

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
The invincible “Man With No Name” (Eastwood) aligns himself with two gunslingers (Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach) to pursue a fortune in stolen gold. But teamwork doesn’t come naturally to such strong-willed outlaws, and they soon discover that their greatest challenge may be to stay focused â€" and stay alive â€" in a! country ravaged by war.Review for A Fistful of Do! llars:
A Fistful of Dollars launched the spaghetti Western and catapulted Clint Eastwood to stardom. Based on Akira Kurosawa's 1961 samurai picture Yojimbo, it scored a resounding success (in Italy in 1964 and the U.S. in 1967), as did its sequels, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The advertising campaign promoted Eastwood's character--laconic, amoral, dangerous--as the Man with No Name (though in the film he's clearly referred to as Joe), and audiences loved the movie's refreshing new take on the Western genre. Gone are the pieties about making the streets safe for women and children. Instead it's every man for himself. Striking, too, was a new emphasis on violence, with stylized, almost balletic gunfights and baroque touches such as Eastwood's armored breastplate. The Dollars films had a marked influence on the Hollywood Western--for example, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch--but their most enduring legacy is Clint Eastwood himse! lf. --Edward Buscombe

Review for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:
If you think of A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More as the tasty appetizers in Sergio Leone's celebrated "Dollars" trilogy of Italian "Spaghetti" Westerns, then The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is a lavish full-course feast. Readily identified by the popular themes of its innovative score by Ennio Morricone (one of the bestselling soundtracks of all time), this cinematic milestone eclipsed its influential predecessors with a $1.2 million budget (considered extravagant in the mid-1960s), greater production values to accommodate Leone's epic vision of greed and betrayal, and a three-hour running time for its wide-ranging plot about the titular trio of mercenaries ("Good" Blondie played by rising star Clint Eastwood, "Bad" Angel Eyes played by Lee Van Cleef, and "Ugly" Tuco played by Eli Wallach) in a ruthless Civil War-era! quest for $200,000 worth of buried Confederate gold. Virtuall! y all of Leone's stylistic attributes can be found here in full fruition, from the constant inclusion of Roman Catholic iconography to a climactic circular shoot-out, along with Leone's trademark use of surreal landscapes, brilliant widescreen compositions and extreme close-ups of actors so intimate that they burn into the viewer's memory. And while some Leone fans may favor the more scaled-down action of For a Few Dollars More or the masterful grandiosity of Once Upon a Time in the West, it was The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly that cemented Leone's reputation as a world-class director with a singular vision. --Jeff Shannon

Homegrown : Widescreen Edition

  • Widescreen
HOMEGROWN - DVD MovieReleased to only a handful of theaters in the spring and summer of 1998, Homegrown was neglected by nervous distributors who couldn't figure out how to market a movie about marijuana farmers. As a result, hardly anyone saw this cleverly plotted comedy-thriller about three experienced pot growers in northern California (Billy Bob Thornton, Hank Azaria, and Ryan Phillippe) who guard their valuable outdoor crop against raids by the cops and unwanted competitors. When their mysterious leader is apparently murdered, Thornton assumes the dead man's identity to arrange one last, lucrative bumper-crop deal, but pulling off the scam proves to be a lot harder than they'd anticipated. While the three potheads seek refuge with an old colleague (Kelly Lynch) and routinely sample their goods (which explains the film's theatrical obscurity), Homegrown turns into! a taut thriller fueled by equal parts comedy and paranoid tension--an update of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre with marijuana instead of gold! Featuring cameo roles for Jamie Lee Curtis, Ted Danson, and John Lithgow, this entertaining film fell victim to the misguided fear that it promotes drugs and illegal activity. If anything, it promotes interesting characters, catchy dialogue, and a welcomed alternative to mainstream Hollywood comedies. --Jeff Shannon
Swap the annuals for edibles, creating attractive beds and containers that both beautify the yard and provide a bounty of fresh produce

 
As a trained chef-turned-professional kitchen garden designer, Marta Teegen knows what a difference freshly harvested vegetables can make to a mealâ€"and how easy it is to ensure seasonal vegetables are always available when you need them. She touts the joys creating front yardâ€"friendly raised beds and container gardens that take up o! nly a small amount of space and look beautiful to boot, and sh! ares ide as for tucking productive gardens in other small nooks and corners.

 
Teegen’s unique cuisine-based planting methods mean herbs, vegetables, and edible flowers grow next to each other in comingled plotsâ€"quickly, reliably, and efficiently. You'll find more than 40 top picks for small-space vegetables that yield big and are trouble-free, plus a variety of menus and 50 recipes for fresh and delicious summer dishes.

 
With food prices on the rise and concern over pesticide residues on produce ever present, the number of home owners growing vegetables nearly doubled in the last year. Homegrown shows that even urban and suburban dwellers can grow their own vegetables in easy-to-tend plots and spaces.

Mainstream rhetoric has made a concerted effort to polarize African Americans and Latinos, emphasizing differences in language and religion, while designating one or the other as the “favored minority” at wi! ll. In Witness, Amalia Mesa-Bains and bell hooks invite us to reexamine this politically popular binary and consider which differences are manufactured and which are real.

In Witness, Mesa-Bains and hooks explore their own similarities and differences, sharing the ways their childhoods, families, and work have shaped their political activism, teaching, and artistic expression. Drawing on shared experiences of sexism, classism, and racism, hooks and Mesa-Bains show how people from divergent cultural backgrounds can work together for radical social change.

While the black/Latino divide and the increasing cross-community political collaboration has been addressed in progressive newspapers and magazines, Witness, an inclusive call to reflect and act, is the first of its kind to look at these issues in depth. And Amalia Mesa-Bains, a pioneer scholar and producer of Chicana art, with bell hooks, one of the most acclaimed of African American theo! ristsâ€"prove an unparalleled match for the job.

bel! l hooks< /b> is one of the leading public intellectuals of her generation. She has written extensively on the emotional impact of racism and sexism, particularly on black women, as well as the importance of political engagement with art and the media. In her recent work on love, relationships, and community, she shows how emotional health is a necessary component to effective resistance and activism.

Amalia Mesa-Bains is an artist, curator, and writer who has initiated comprehensive exhibitions of Latino art, including Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation and Mi Alma, Mi Tierra, Mi Gente: Contemporary Chicana Art. Her artwork incorporates various aspects of Chicano/a history, culture, and folk traditions, exploring religion, ritual, and female rites of passage. She won a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992.

DVD

Flawless

  • From director Michael Radford (THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, IL POSTINO) comes FLAWLESS, a clever diamond-heist thriller set in swinging 1960s London. Demi Moore plays Laura Quinn, a bright, driven and beautiful executive at the London Diamond Corporation who finds herself frustrated by a glass ceiling after years of faithful employment, as man after man is promoted ahead of her despite her greater expe
From director Michael Radford (THE MERCHANT OF VENICE IL POSTINO) comes FLAWLESS a clever diamond-heist thriller set in swinging 1960s London. Demi Moore plays Laura Quinn a bright driven and beautiful executive at the London Diamond Corporation who finds herself frustrated by a glass ceiling after years of faithful employment as man after man is promoted ahead of her despite her greater experience. Michael Caine is Hobbs the nighttime janitor at London Diamond who is virtually invisible to the exec! utives that work there but over the years has amassed a startling amount of knowledge about how the company runs. Hobbs has his own bone to pick with London Diamond. Observing Laura s frustration he convinces her to help him execute an ingenious plan to steal a hefty sum in diamonds. But unbeknownst to Laura Hobbs plans go even farther than he s let on and together they set in motion a thrilling heist of dizzying proportions the likes of which London has never seen.System Requirements:Running Time: 109 mintuesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMA Rating: PG-13 UPC: 876964001038 Manufacturer No: 10103It would be overpraise to propose that Flawless reviews itself with its title, but... how about "supremely decorous"? It is, at any rate, a film that merits a grateful salute from audiences weary of being beaten about the head and shoulders in pursuit of an engrossing caper movie. A plot to make off with a fortune in gems from England's premier diamond co! mpany unfolds without explosions, vrooming vehicles, or rapid-! fire sho otouts. It's like a feature-length variation on those sly, soft-spoken Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes of the '50s, with the patient accumulation of mood, detail and character leading to wry twists and satisfying revelations. We are in 1960 and a London not yet disposed to swing. Laura Quinn (Demi Moore), the lone female officer of London Diamond Corporation, is smarter and more capable than her male colleagues, but that doesn't deter the company from promoting them over her while profiting from her talents. This has long since gotten old, so when Mr. Hobbs (Michael Caine), the mild-mannered night janitor, enlists her in a scheme to fill his thermos with two million pounds' worth of diamonds from the vault, she listens. Suffice it to say that the vault is penetrated according to plan--and then the real tension sets in. Things are not what they seem, even to those supposedly in the know (us, for instance), and distrust springs up between the conspirators as they fin! d themselves under close scrutiny by a steely investigator (Lambert Wilson).

All this is intelligently scripted by Edward A. Anderson (a maiden effort) and directed by Michael Radford with a crisp, unostentatious eye; the cold interiors of the Lon Di headquarters, generically oppressive on first sight, take on a nuanced familiarity as the place where, for the most part, Laura Quinn spends her life. Demi Moore--scarlet lips in a black-and-grey world--admirably catches Laura's not-quite-smothered ambition and frustration without breaking her cover, as it were. Michael Caine couldn't be better as Hobbs, an invisible man in plain sight (how many viewers fail to notice his first appearance in the film?); he's the master of his trade, but you knew that. There's a framing story, set more or less in the present, which seems to be an obligatory bow to feminism but sets up a tease or two of its own, then adds yet another twist to the proceedings. --Richard T. Jameson

Gardens of the Night

  • GARDENS OF THE NIGHT (DVD MOVIE)
In the most powerful role of his career, Tom Arnold plays Alex, who, with his partner Frank (Kevin Zegers)
lures eight-year-old Leslie (Ryan Simpkins) into a car, changing her life forever. For seven years, she and
another child, Donnie, live in horror, with no one to turn to but each other. Eventually abandoned by their
captors, Leslie (now played by Gillian Jacobs) and Donnie (Evan Ross), struggle with a hand-to-mouth
existence on the streets of San Diego. Haunted by their pasts, it seems reality for Leslie and Donnie is
being bought by strangers and never going home. Also featuring unforgettable performances by
John Malkovich and Jeremy Sisto.

Joie Women's Baxter B Top, Yves Blue, X-Small

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Matte silk tie front top

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