How does a teacher know whether he or she is benefitting learners? What do educators do when they have questions about the best way to integrate new technologies into their classrooms? What should a teacher do to avoid burnout? Who will mentor the teacher who takes on these questions? The 30 Goals Challenge for Teachers takes you on a personal journey to accomplish manageable goals, reflect on your experiences, and regain your spark and confidence in teaching. This innovative approach will help you reconnect to your students, improve your classroom practice, and help you transform as an educator. To ensure your success and growth, you will find: 30 short-term goals to complete at your own pace 30 long-term goals that relate to the short-term goals Exercises throughout to help you consider each goal Examples of how the goal has been accomplished in different teaching contexts Tips for the successful completion of the goals Reflection areas to document the result of accomplishing the goal A resource list with free web tools and apps related to the goal’s task
The best-selling First Year Teacher's Survival Kit gives new teachers a wide variety of tested strategies, activities, and tools for creating a positive and dynamic learning environment while meeting the challenges of each school day. Packed with valuable tips, the book helps new teachers with everything from becoming effective team players and connecting with students to handling behavior problems and working within diverse classrooms. The new edition is fully revised and updated to cover changes in the K-12 classroom over the past five years. Updates to the second edition include: • New ways teachers can meet the professional development requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act • Entirely new section on helping struggling readers, to address the declining literacy rate among today’s students • Expanded coverage of helpful technology solutions for the classroom • Expanded information on teaching English Language Learners • Greater coverage of the issues/challenges facing elementary teachers • More emphasis on how to reach and teach students of poverty • Updated study techniques that have proven successful with at-risk students • Tips on working effectively within a non-traditional school year schedule • The latest strategies for using graphic organizers • More emphasis on setting goals to help students to succeed • More information on intervening with students who are capable but choose not to work • Updated information on teachers’ rights and responsibilities regarding discipline issues • Fully revised Resources appendix including the latest educational Web sites and software
Develop standardsbased problem solving strategies & skills. Each comprehensive teacher resource contains over 90 task cards, each focused on one problem. The task cards can be used by a whole class, in small groups or individually. The associated activity for each is designed to challenge students to use their acquired problemsolving skills. Detailed teachers' notes provide information on distinct problemsolving strategies, to include: think, estimate & check; draw a diagram or picture; look for patterns; make a model; act out a problem; construct a table or a graph; write a statement; make a list; calculate; and reflect & assess results. The perfect supplement to any math class!
Design and teach effective learning goals and objectives by following strategies based on the strongest research available. This book includes a summary of key research behind these classroom practices and shows how to implement them using step-by-step hands-on strategies. Short quizzes help readers assess their understanding of the instructional best practices explained in each section.
What makes a great teacher great? Who are the professors students remember long after graduation? This book, the conclusion of a fifteen-year study of nearly one hundred college teachers in a wide variety of fields and universities, offers valuable answers for all educators. The short answer is—it’s not what teachers do, it’s what they understand. Lesson plans and lecture notes matter less than the special way teachers comprehend the subject and value human learning. Whether historians or physicists, in El Paso or St. Paul, the best teachers know their subjects inside and out—but they also know how to engage and challenge students and to provoke impassioned responses. Most of all, they believe two things fervently: that teaching matters and that students can learn. In stories both humorous and touching, Ken Bain describes examples of ingenuity and compassion, of students’ discoveries of new ideas and the depth of their own potential. What the Best College Teachers Do is a treasure trove of insight and inspiration for first-year teachers and seasoned educators.
What is understanding and how does it differ from knowledge? How can we determine the big ideas worth understanding? Why is understanding an important teaching goal, and how do we know when students have attained it? How can we create a rigorous and engaging curriculum that focuses on understanding and leads to improved student performance in today's high-stakes, standards-based environment? Authors Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe answer these and many other questions in this second edition of Understanding by Design. Drawing on feedback from thousands of educators around the world who have used the UbD framework since its introduction in 1998, the authors have greatly revised and expanded their original work to guide educators across the K-16 spectrum in the design of curriculum, assessment, and instruction. With an improved UbD Template at its core, the book explains the rationale of backward design and explores in greater depth the meaning of such key ideas as essential questions and transfer tasks. Readers will learn why the familiar coverage- and activity-based approaches to curriculum design fall short, and how a focus on the six facets of understanding can enrich student learning. With an expanded array of practical strategies, tools, and examples from all subject areas, the book demonstrates how the research-based principles of Understanding by Design apply to district frameworks as well as to individual units of curriculum. Combining provocative ideas, thoughtful analysis, and tested approaches, this new edition of Understanding by Design offers teacher-designers a clear path to the creation of curriculum that ensures better learning and a more stimulating experience for students and teachers alike.
Effective and practical coaching strategies for new educators plus valuable online coaching tools Many teachers are only observed one or two times per year on average—and, even among those who are observed, scarcely any are given feedback as to how they could improve. The bottom line is clear: teachers do not need to be evaluated so much as they need to be developed and coached. In Get Better Faster: A 90-Day Plan for Coaching New Teachers, Paul Bambrick-Santoyo shares instructive tools of how school leaders can effectively guide new teachers to success. Over the course of the book, he breaks down the most critical actions leaders and teachers must take to achieve exemplary results. Designed for coaches as well as beginning teachers, Get Better Faster is an integral coaching tool for any school leader eager to help their teachers succeed. Get Better Faster focuses on what's practical and actionable which makes the book's approach to coaching so effective. By practicing the concrete actions and micro-skills listed in Get Better Faster, teachers will markedly improve their ability to lead a class, producing a steady chain reaction of future teaching success. Though focused heavily on the first 90 days of teacher development, it's possible to implement this work at any time. Junior and experienced teachers alike can benefit from the guidance of Get Better Faster while at the same time closing existing instructional gaps. Featuring valuable and practical online training tools available at http://www.wiley.com/go/getbetterfaster, Get Better Faster provides agendas, presentation slides, a coach's guide, handouts, planning templates, and 35 video clips of real teachers at work to help other educators apply the lessons learned in their own classrooms. Get Better Faster will teach you: The core principles of coaching: Go Granular; Plan, Practice, Follow Up, Repeat; Make Feedback More Frequent Top action steps to launch a teacher’s development in an easy-to-read scope and sequence guide It also walks you through the four phases of skill building: Phase 1 (Pre-Teaching): Dress Rehearsal Phase 2: Instant Immersion Phase 3: Getting into Gear Phase 4: The Power of Discourse Perfect for new educators and those who supervise them, Get Better Faster will also earn a place in the libraries of veteran teachers and school administrators seeking a one-stop coaching resource.
A practical guide to the essential practice that builds better teachers. Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher is the landmark guide to critical reflection, providing expert insight and practical tools to facilitate a journey of constructive self-critique. Stephen Brookfield shows how you can uncover and assess your assumptions about practice by viewing them through the lens of your students' eyes, your colleagues' perceptions, relevant theory and research, and your own personal experience. Practicing critical reflection will help you… Align your teaching with desired student outcomes See your practice from new perspectives Engage learners via multiple teaching formats Understand and manage classroom power dynamics Model critical thinking for your students Manage the complex rhythms of diverse classrooms This fully revised second edition features a wealth of new material, including new chapters on critical reflection in the context of social media, teaching race and racism, leadership in a critically reflective key, and team teaching as critical reflection. In addition, all chapters have been thoroughly updated and expanded to align with today's classrooms, whether online or face-to-face, in large lecture formats or small groups. In his own personal voice Stephen Brookfield draws from over 45 years of experience to illustrate the clear benefits of critical reflection. Assumptions guide practice and only when we base our actions on accurate assumptions will we achieve the results we want. Educators with the courage to challenge their own assumptions in an effort to improve learning are the invaluable role models our students need. Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher provides the foundational information and practical tools that help teachers reach their true potential.
This inspiring book presents the concept of a heartprint -- the distinctive impression that an educator's heart leaves on students and colleagues during his or her professional career. For teachers, understand how teacher motivation, teacher-student relationships, and collaborative teaching all affect your self-efficacy, career, and professional development. For school leaders and administrators, discover your impact on staff, students, and school culture as you progress in your career and gain perspective on creating sustainable change. Examine the 5 HEART aspects of your professional life: Happiness: a passion for teaching, a purpose, and a desire to positively impact education Engagement: teacher motivation, energy, and effort necessary to impact student learning Alliances: relationships, collaborative teaching, and teacher support Risk: vision-focused risk taking to create sustainable change in schools Thought: the knowledge and professional development integral to advancing your career Discover Your Answer to the Question "Why Teach" and Advance Your Career in Education: Reflect on your journey and the personal and professional qualities of the teacher or leader you want to be. Discover your distinctive heartprint on your students and colleagues, and decide what the qualities of a good teacher are for you. Gain personal development plan ideas and inspirational insights from Dr. Kanold as well as dozens of thought leaders and researchers. Connect your professional life to each chapter and reconnect to the emotion, passion, energy, growth, and collaborative intimacy expected when joining the teaching profession. Build collective teacher efficacy and academic optimism by using the resource as a book study for professional development. Contents: Part 1: H Is for Happiness Chapter 1: The Happiness Dilemma Chapter 2: The Happiness-Passion Connection Chapter 3: What's Love Got to Do With It? Chapter 4: Got Compassion? Check! Chapter 5: Wanted--Persons of Positive Character and Hope Chapter 6: The Joy-Gratitude-Stability Connection Chapter 7: Why Should We Weep? Final Thoughts: The World Happiness Report Part 2: E Is for Engagement Chapter 8: Gallup Says--Full Engagement Not Ahead Chapter 9: Getting Engaged! Chapter 10: It's Energy, Not Time Chapter 11: Name That Energy Quadrant Chapter 12: Avoid the Quadrant III Drift Chapter 13: Quadrant II Time Required Chapter 14: Grit--Deliberate Daily Practice Final Thoughts: The MTXE Perspective Part 3: A Is for Alliances Chapter 15: The Primary Purposes of Collaboration Chapter 16: PLCs--Serving the Greater Good Chapter 17: Oh, the Inequity Places We'll Go! Chapter 18: Reduce Our Professional Noise Chapter 19: Relational Intelligence Required Chapter 20: What Are Those Black Boxes? Chapter 21: Celebration--Making Above and Beyond the Norm the Norm Final Thoughts: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success Part 4: R Is for Risk Chapter 22: What's in a Goal? Chapter 23: Shared Purpose--Each and Every Child Can Learn Chapter 24: Results or Persons? Chapter 25: The Risk-Vision Dependency Chapter 26: Build Trust the Millennial Way Chapter 27: Fixed or Growth Mindset? Chapter 28: Warning--Entropy Ahead! Final Thoughts: A Sense of Urgency Part 5: T Is for Thought Chapter 29: Your Great Adventure! Chapter 30: Your Voice of Wisdom Chapter 31: Clean Up the Climate Chapter 32: Become a Feedback Fanatic Chapter 33: Yours, Mine, and Ours Final Thoughts: Hold the Mayo!
