Feel empowered during your first year as a team or department leader by applying the concise tips and tools in this book. Author Stephen Katzel shows you how to create an effective system to integrate into a new leadership team, create meaningful professional development, facilitate parent conferences, coach teachers, interview for your next role, handle difficult situations, and more! Perfect for beginning leaders, the book’s examples, anecdotes, and practical tools are quick and easy to implement and will help you get off to a strong start on your leadership journey, where you can broaden your impact beyond the classroom and help others succeed.
Starr Sackstein's insight will help you make the best decisions for yourself and those you serve, whether you have already made the move into leadership or are wondering whether a role in administration is right for you . In this honest and practical guide, Sackstein prompts you to reflect as you stretch for personal and professional growth.
We need a bold new brand of teacher leadership that will create opportunities for teachers to practice, share, and grow their knowledge and expertise. This book is about "teacherpreneurs"—highly accomplished classroom teachers who blur the lines of distinction between those who teach in schools and those who lead them. These teacherpreneurs embody the concept that teachers can teach as well as lead the transformation of teaching and learning. It’s about empowering expert teachers who can buoy the image of teaching and enforce standards among their ranks while all along making sure that their colleagues as well as education policymakers and the public know what works best for students. The book follows a small group of teacherpreneurs in their first year. We join their journey toward becoming teacher leaders whose work is not defined by administrative fiat, but by their knowledge of students and drive to influence policies that allow them and their colleagues to teach more effectively. The authors trace the teacherpreneurs' steps—and their own—in the effort to determine what it means to define and execute the concept of "teacherpreneurism" in the face of tough demands and resistant organizational structures.
Learn all the essentials for making your first year of teaching a success! In this exciting new book, internationally renowned educator Todd Whitaker teams up with his daughters--Madeline, an elementary teacher, and Katherine, a secondary teacher--to share advice and inspiration. They offer step-by-step guidance to thriving in your new role and overcoming the challenges that many new teachers face. Topics include: Learning classroom management skills such as building relationships and maintaining high expectations and consistency Setting up your classroom and establishing procedures and rules Planning effective lessons and making your instructional time an engaging experience Managing your own emotions in the classroom and dealing effectively with misbehavior Working with peers, administrators, and parents to build support and foster collaboration The book is filled with specific examples and vignettes from elementary, middle, and high school classes, so you’ll gain helpful strategies no matter what grade level and subject area you teach. You’ll also find out how to make tweaks or hit the "reset" button when something isn’t going as planned. Things may not always go perfectly your first year, but the practical advice in this book will help you stay motivated on the path to success! Bonus: As you read the book, get even more out of it by discussing it with others. Free study guides for practicing teachers and student teachers are available as eResource downloads from our website (www.routledge.com/products/9781138126152).
Interest in and knowledge of leadership and learning, separately and together, is an international and continuing phenomenon. This book adds to a somewhat under-researched aspect of the field. It focuses both on a particular form of leadership – teacher leadership, and on a particular form of learning – professional development. It considers the connection between teacher leadership and professional development and the first chapter relates this connection to a ‘Leadership for Learning’ conceptual framework, developed through an international, three-year project. The book’s chapters explore teacher leadership and professional development from a number of perspectives, giving rise to three points of particular significance. Firstly the chapters show that, either by accident or design, there is a growing cadre of teacher leaders emerging from a multitude of professional development activities and initiatives. Secondly, a number of new conceptual frameworks are put forward, alongside the adaption and development of extant ones that add to the ever-increasing theorisation of educational leadership and professional development literature. Thirdly, the chapters provide evidence of the connections between leadership and learning as conceptualised in the ‘Leadership for Learning’ framework. This book was originally published as a special issue of Professional Development in Education.
A road map for teachers who strive to be highly effective leaders in our nation's classrooms Teach For America has fought the daunting battle of educational equity for the last twenty years. Based on evidence from classrooms across the country, they've discovered much about effective teaching practice, and distilled these findings into the six principles presented in this book. The Teaching As Leadership framework inspires teachers to: Set Big Goals; Invest Students and Their Families; Plan Purposefully; Execute Effectively; Continuously Increase Effectiveness; Work Relentlessly. The results are better educational outcomes for our nation's children, particularly those who live in low-income communities. Inspires educators to be leaders in their classrooms and schools Demystifies what it means to be an effective teacher, describes key elements of practice and provides a clear vision of success Addresses the challenges every teacher, in every classroom, faces on a daily basis An accompanying website includes a wealth of tools, videos, sample lessons, discussion boards, and case studies.
“This remarkable book is a testament to teachers who not only respect and advocate for children on a daily basis but who are the necessary guardians of the spirit. Every citizen who cares about the future of our children ought to read this.”—Eric Carle, author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and other classic works for children “Kozol’s love for his students is as joyful and genuine as his critiques of the system are severe. He doesn’t pull punches.”—The Washington Post In these affectionate letters to Francesca, a first grade teacher at an inner-city school in Boston, Jonathan Kozol vividly describes his repeated visits to her classroom while, under Francesca’s likably irreverent questioning, he also reveals his own most personal stories of the years that he has spent in public schools. Letters to a Young Teacher reignites a number of the controversial issues Jonathan has powerfully addressed in his bestselling The Shame of the Nation and On Being a Teacher: the mania of high-stakes testing that turns many classrooms into test-prep factories where spontaneity and critical intelligence are no longer valued, the invasion of our public schools by predatory private corporations, and the inequalities of urban schools that are once again almost as segregated as they were a century ago. But most of all, these letters are rich with the happiness of teaching children, the curiosity and jubilant excitement children bring into the classroom at an early age, and their ability to overcome their insecurities when they are in the hands of an adoring and hard-working teacher.
The untold story of the root cause of America's education crisis--and the seemingly endless cycle of multigenerational poverty. It was only after years within the education reform movement that Natalie Wexler stumbled across a hidden explanation for our country's frustrating lack of progress when it comes to providing every child with a quality education. The problem wasn't one of the usual scapegoats: lazy teachers, shoddy facilities, lack of accountability. It was something no one was talking about: the elementary school curriculum's intense focus on decontextualized reading comprehension "skills" at the expense of actual knowledge. In the tradition of Dale Russakoff's The Prize and Dana Goldstein's The Teacher Wars, Wexler brings together history, research, and compelling characters to pull back the curtain on this fundamental flaw in our education system--one that fellow reformers, journalists, and policymakers have long overlooked, and of which the general public, including many parents, remains unaware. But The Knowledge Gap isn't just a story of what schools have gotten so wrong--it also follows innovative educators who are in the process of shedding their deeply ingrained habits, and describes the rewards that have come along: students who are not only excited to learn but are also acquiring the knowledge and vocabulary that will enable them to succeed. If we truly want to fix our education system and unlock the potential of our neediest children, we have no choice but to pay attention.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A groundbreaking history of 175 years of American education that brings the lessons of the past to bear on the dilemmas we face today—and brilliantly illuminates the path forward for public schools. “[A] lively account." —New York Times Book Review In The Teacher Wars, a rich, lively, and unprecedented history of public school teaching, Dana Goldstein reveals that teachers have been embattled for nearly two centuries. She uncovers the surprising roots of hot button issues, from teacher tenure to charter schools, and finds that recent popular ideas to improve schools—instituting merit pay, evaluating teachers by student test scores, ranking and firing veteran teachers, and recruiting “elite” graduates to teach—are all approaches that have been tried in the past without producing widespread change.
Have you ever imagined yourself as a teacher leader but weren't quite sure whether you really had—or could develop—the necessary skills? Have you wondered what the first steps toward becoming a teacher leader might be, what kinds of approaches work best, and how you could overcome the inevitable challenges that come with leading your colleagues on a journey toward improvement as professionals? Authors Rebecca Mieliwocki (California and National Teacher of the Year for 2012) and Joseph Fatheree (Illinois Teacher of the Year for 2007) answer these questions and more in this engaging guide to becoming a successful teacher leader. Organized around five key tools—communication, collaboration, professional development, data, and advocacy—the book covers every aspect of what is involved in taking on leadership responsibilities. Firsthand accounts of the authors' experiences and those of more than a dozen other State Teachers of the Year describe the various pathways to leadership, strategies for success, and pitfalls to avoid. These teacher voices add powerful credibility to the research on teacher leadership and show how leaders can not only improve their schools and districts but also influence state and national policies and practices. Both informative and inspiring, Adventures in Teacher Leadership invites others to expand their professional reach, empower the profession of teaching, and, ultimately, make a big difference in the lives of students everywhere. This book is a copublication of ASCD and NNSTOY.
