The Pocket Guide to Educational Advocacy," due out this spring, is like having your own legal advocate in your pocket. It takes the reader, be it a parent, student or employee of any school or college, on a small tour of the possibilities of situations and how to handle them.

The guide is complete with sample letters with terminology that will help to create action and response, and thus, resolutions for the situation. Also included are resources and websites that are easy to find and maneuver for even the novice.

Special attention is to parents who feel that they are at wit's end in the educational system and are being pushed around and brushed aside by administrators and teachers; the book will also outline how to be taken seriously when the system is patronizing you and dismissing you and your child's concerns and needs.

Also focused in the book is the very real situation of violence and discrimination on campus or school grounds; and don't think that this only happens in large cities or "not where you live," as it can happen anywhere. This guide outlines what to look for and if something does happen, how to respond and what professionals to seek.

This book is all about making administrators accountable, turning teachers and professors into alliances and also advocating for teacher and professor rights when students of all ages, sizes and means as well as other peers, are manipulating, disrespecting and downright harming their rights to safety.

This book is also a hard look at the rights of parents and some shocking news that you as a parent may not even know; and the schools don't have to tell you.

If empowerment and justice are your goals in the educational system, you need this book in your back pocket.

The book will be released by Rain Publishing.