The Art of Coaching: Effective Strategies for School Transformation


Elena Aguilar - 2013
    Established coaches will find numerous ways to deepen and refine their coaching practice. Principals and others who incorporate coaching strategies into their work will also find a wealth of resources.Aguilar offers a model for transformational coaching which could be implemented as professional development in schools or districts anywhere. Although she addresses the needs of adult learners, her model maintains a student-centered focus, with a specific lens on addressing equity issues in schools.Offers a practical resource for school coaches, principals, district leaders, and other administrators Presents a transformational coaching model which addresses systems change Pays explicit attention to surfacing and interrupting inequities in schools The Art of Coaching: Effective Strategies for School Transformation offers a compendium of school coaching ideas, the book's explicit, user-friendly structure enhances the ability to access the information.

The Wild Card: 7 Steps to an Educator's Creative Breakthrough


Wade King - 2017
    If you are a high school teacher or a kindergarten teacher, the seven steps in The Wild Card will give you the knowledge and the confidence to bring creative teaching strategies into your classroom.You'll learn: Why the deck is not stacked against you, no matter what kind of hand you've been dealt Why you should never listen to the Joker How to identify the "Ace up your sleeve" and use it to create classroom magic How to apply the "Rules of Rigor" in order to fuse creativity with learning How to become the "Wild Card" that changes the game for your students

Dream Class: How To Transform Any Group Of Students Into The Class You've Always Wanted


Michael Linsin - 2009
    They will free you to love your job, build effortless and influential relationships with your students, and enable you to become a happier, calmer, and more confident teacher. You will learn: -Simple strategies that make classroom management a lot easier. -Exactly (step-by-step) how to handle difficult students. -How to create a classroom your students will love coming to every day. -How to build behavior-changing rapport and influence with even the most difficult students. -How to get your students to treat each other with respect and kindness. -How to praise in a way that inspires, uplifts, and motivates. -How to build maturity and independence. -How you can know your students will behave instead of just hoping they will. -How to become a teacher that fellow teachers, parents, and students respect and admire. -How to love your class, and have them love you right back. -And much more . . .

Freedom and Beyond


John C. Holt - 1972
    This is the first book in which he looked beyond schooling as the sole problem of education or as the sole solution. No longer would Holt argue that if we could only make schools better, the problems that he and other critics outlined would be solved.

Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy


Gholdy Muhammad - 2019
    Gholdy E. Muhammad presents a four-layered equity framework—one that is grounded in history and restores excellence in literacy education. This framework, which she names, Historically Responsive Literacy, was derived from the study of literacy development within 19th-century Black literacy societies. The framework is essential and universal for all students, especially youth of color, who traditionally have been marginalized in learning standards, school policies, and classroom practices. The equity framework will help educators teach and lead toward the following learning goals or pursuits:  Identity Development—Helping youth to make sense of themselves and othersSkill Development— Developing proficiencies across the academic disciplinesIntellectual Development—Gaining knowledge and becoming smarterCriticality—Learning and developing the ability to read texts (including print and social contexts) to understand power, equity, and anti-oppression When these four learning pursuits are taught together—through the Historically Responsive Literacy Framework, all students receive profound opportunities for personal, intellectual, and academic success. Muhammad provides probing, self-reflective questions for teachers, leaders, and teacher educators as well as sample culturally and historically responsive sample plans and text sets across grades and content areas. In this book, Muhammad presents practical approaches to cultivate the genius in students and within teachers.

Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom


Patricia A. Jennings - 2015
    This book offers simple, ready-to-use, and evidence-proven mindfulness techniques to help educators manage the stresses of the classroom, cultivate an exceptional learning environment, and revitalize both their teaching and their students’ knowledge acquisition. Drawing on basic and applied research in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and education, as well as the author’s extensive experience as a mindfulness practitioner, teacher, and scientist, it includes exercises in mindfulness, emotional awareness, movement, listening, and more, all with real-time classroom applications.

'I Won't Learn from You': And Other Thoughts on Creative Maladjustment


Herbert R. Kohl - 1991
    Available in book form for the first time, "I Won't Learn from You" serves here as a starting point for four new, groundbreaking essays by one of the country's leading thinkers on education. "The Tattooed Man: Confessions of a Hopemonger" is about the importance of teaching hope, and is Kohl's first autobiographical effort to discover in his own ghettoized childhood attitudes that let him recognize "not-learning" when he saw it among his students decades later. "Creative Maladjustment and the Struggle for Public Education" is inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr.'s call for creative maladjustment to an unjust society, and deals with the ways in which one can lead a positive life and learn new ways of maintaining opposition and resistance. "Excellence, Equality, and Equity" explores the relationship between these three crucial - and often confused - concepts. "Uncommon Differences" is about the way in which notions such as political correctness have been used to distract us from the central concerns of public education, including educating the poor, developing cultural diversity within the schools, and undoing the stigmatization of students who do not conform. It is about what public education in America can become. Written in Kohl's hallmark conversational style and employing the case examples that make his writing so compelling, these essays are at the forefront of current thinking on urban education.

The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession


Dana Goldstein - 2014
    In The Teacher Wars, a rich, lively, and unprecedented history of public school teaching, Dana Goldstein reveals that teachers have been similarly embattled for nearly two centuries. From the genteel founding of the common schools movement in the nineteenth century to the violent inner-city teacher strikes of the 1960s and '70s, from the dispatching of Northeastern women to frontier schoolhouses to the founding of Teach for America on the Princeton University campus in 1989, Goldstein shows that the same issues have continued to bedevil us: Who should teach? What should be taught? Who should be held accountable for how our children learn?    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. And she also discovers an emerging effort that stands a real chance of transforming our schools for the better: drawing on the best practices of the three million public school teachers we already have in order to improve learning throughout our nation’s classrooms.   The Teacher Wars upends the conversation about American education by bringing the lessons of history to bear on the dilemmas we confront today. By asking “How did we get here?” Dana Goldstein brilliantly illuminates the path forward.

Free Schools


David Gillespie - 2014
    When it came time to select high schools, he thought it worth doing some investigation to assess the level of advantage his kids would enjoy if he spent the required $1.3 million to send them all to private schools.Shockingly, the answer was: none whatsoever.Intrigued, David continued his research, only to discover he was wrong on most counts - as are most parents - when it comes to working out what factors deliver a great education. He discovered that class size doesn't matter, your kids aren't any better off in co-ed than single-sex schools (and vice versa), composite classes are fine, fancy buildings are a waste of money, the old-tie network won't cut it in the new industries and NAPLAN is misread by everyone so is largely meaningless as a measure of quality.Taking on an ingrained and historical system of vested interests - the unions, the government, our own sense of worth, privilege and entitlement - this book is controversial and absolutely necessary. It is well researched, authoritative and accessible. It is a must-read for parents, as well as teachers and policy-makers.

Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension


Sara K Ahmed - 2018
    How do we create learning conditions where kids can ask the questions they want to ask, muddle through how to say the things they are thinking, and have tough conversations? How can we be proactive and take steps to engaging in the types of conversations where risk is high but the payoff could be even greater?Being the Change is based on the idea that people can develop skills and habits to serve them in the comprehension of social issues. Sara K. Ahmed identifies and unpacks the skills of social comprehension, providing teachers with tools and activities that help students make sense of themselves and the world as they navigate relevant topics in today's society.Each chapter includes clear, transferrable lessons and practical strategies that help students learn about a targeted social comprehension concept. From exploring identity and diversity to understanding and addressing biases and microaggressions, Sara demonstrates how to address real issues honestly in the classroom while honoring and empowering students.Dealing with social issues is uncomfortable and often messy, but you can build habitats of trust where kids and adults can make their thinking visible and cultivate empathy; where expression, identity, and social literacy matter. There is no magic formula for making the world a better place. It happens in the moments we embrace discomfort and have candid conversations.****I am convinced that every class of kids I work with is filled with change agents who will make this world the one we teach toward. I believe that my students will carry the work of doing right by this world into their own lives.I'll bet you believe this about your kids, too.-Sara K. Ahmed

How To Talk So Kids Can Learn


Adele Faber - 1995
    This breakthrough book demonstrates how parents and teachers can join forces to inspire kids to be self-directed, self-disciplined, and responsive to the wonders of learning.

Learner-Centered Teaching


Maryellen Weimer - 2002
    As the author explains, learner-centered teaching focuses attention on what the student is learning, how the student is learning, the conditions under which the student is learning, whether the student is retaining and applying the learning, and how current learning positions the student for future learning. To help educators accomplish the goals of learner-centered teaching, this important book presents the meaning, practice, and ramifications of the learner-centered approach, and how this approach transforms the college classroom environment. Learner-Centered Teaching shows how to tie teaching and curriculum to the process and objectives of learning rather than to the content delivery alone.

The Together Teacher: Plan Ahead, Get Organized, and Save Time!


Maia Heyck-Merlin - 2012
    This practical resource shows teachers how to be effective and have a life! Author and educator Maia Heyck-Merlin explores the key habits of Together Teachers—how they plan ahead, organize work and their classrooms, and how they spend their limited free time. The end goal is always strong outcomes for their students. So what does Together, or Together Enough, look like? To some teachers it might mean neat filing systems. To others it might mean using time efficiently to get more done in fewer minutes. Regardless, Together Teachers all rely on the same skills. In six parts, the book clearly lays out these essential skills. Heyck-Merlin walks the reader through how to establish simple yet successful organizational systems. There are concrete steps that every teacher can implement to achieve greater stability and success in their classrooms and in their lives. Contains templates and tutorials to create and customize a personal organizational system and includes a companion website: www.thetogetherteacher.com Recommends various electronic or online tools to make a teacher's school day (and life!) more efficient and productive Includes a Reader's Guide, a great professional development resource; teachers will answer reflection questions, make notes about habits, and select tools that best match individual needs and preferences Ebook customers can access CD contents online.  Refer to the section in the Table of Contents labeled, Download CD/DVD Content, for detailed instructions.

Point-Less: An English Teacher's Guide to More Meaningful Grading


Sarah M. Zerwin - 2020
    In Point-Less, she nudges teachers to consider how traditional forms of grading get in the way of student growth. Her pioneering ways of marking, collecting, and sharing student work shows teachers how to assess with fidelity and in ways that serve student learning. Instead of assigning random points to student tasks, she demonstrates how teachers can provide students with concise, descriptive data that serves as meaningful and specific feedback.'Inside this book, teachers will find:- online resources rife with tools and examples to manage feedback - ways to harness the electronic grade book as a useful instructional tool - frameworks that guide student and teacher feedback - checklists to simplify convoluted rubrics.'Sarah addresses every grading obstacle one could think of. She provides ways to navigate objections that parents, athletic directors, administrators, colleagues, colleges, and even students might have with this innovative way of reporting grades.'It's exciting to think how instruction could change if teachers weren't compelled to evaluate everything students did for the mere purpose of putting points in the grade book. Are you ready to find your path to a better way of grading? Are you ready to lead students on this journey to becoming better readers, writers, and thinkers? If so, you are going to love Point-Less!--Cris Tovani

Inquiry Mindset: Nurturing the Dreams, Wonders, and Curiosities of Our Youngest Learners


Trevor MacKenzie - 2018
    They explore the world around them through play, imagination, and discovery. They build meaning, they create understanding, and they unabashedly share their learning. It's in this process that they find joy in life and relevance in the world around them.Why, then, do some of our students become disconnected from their learning in school? Where does this natural curiosity go? And how, as educators, can we ensure all of our students experience a meaningful and wonder-filled journey through their education?It's these questions that Trevor MacKenzie, author of the critically acclaimed book Dive into Inquiry, answers in Inquiry Mindset. Co-written with kindergarten teacher Rebecca Bathurst-Hunt, Inquiry Mindset offers a highly accessible journey through inquiry in the younger years. You'll learn how to . . .Empower your learners, increase engagement, and accelerate achievement. Harness the wonderings and curiosities of your students and leverage them into powerful learning opportunities. Cultivate an inquiry mindset both as a teacher and in your students! Adopt an inquiry approach that results in the most authentic and inspiring learning you've ever experienced!