Download or read book Isolation Is the Enemy of Improvement written by Kate Jamentz and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is designed to help school leaders critically examine what they should expect from students, how they will know when students have achieved those expectations, and how to design and implement instruction to ensure that every student achieves agreed-upon goals. It asserts that leaders are first and foremost teachers. Chapter 1, "Teaching to High Standards: Understanding What Teachers Need to Know and Be Able to Do," reviews the instructional demands of standards based reform, detailing specific teacher knowledge and skills critical to ensuring that all students achieve to high standards. Chapter 2, "Identifying Teacher Skills in Practice," presents two classroom vignettes illustrating the teaching behaviors described in the previous chapter. Chapter 3, "The Work of Instructional Leadership: Supporting Teachers to Build and Sustain Critical Skills," discusses the kinds of learning opportunities teachers need to build and sustain critical skills, offering examples of how instructional leaders can provide such opportunities by creating new structures for teacher learning and using familiar structures more effectively. Chapter 4, "Leaders as Teachers: Leaders as Learners," identifies potential challenges as instructional leaders take on greater responsibility for focusing on, exploring, and influencing classroom practice. An appendix presents tools for fostering and assessing instructional skills. (Contains 23 references.) (SM).

Download or read book Who s Teaching Your Children written by Vivian Troen and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of the problems afflicting American education are the result of a critical shortage of qualified teachers in the classrooms. The teacher crisis is surprisingly resistant to current reforms and is getting worse. This important book reveals the causes underlying the crisis and offers concrete, affordable proposals for effective reform. Vivian Troen and Katherine Boles, two experienced classroom teachers and education consultants, argue that because teachers are recruited from a pool of underqualified candidates, given inadequate preparation, and dropped into a culture of isolation without mentoring, support, or incentives for excellence, they are programmed to fail. Half quit within their first five years. Troen and Boles offer an alternative, a model of reform they call the Millennium School, which changes the way teachers work and improves the quality of their teaching. When teaching becomes a real profession, they contend, more academically able people will be drawn into it, colleges will be forced to improve the quality of their education, and better-prepared teachers will enter the classroom and improve the profession.

Download or read book Transforming Schools written by Allison Zmuda and published by ASCD. This book was released on 2004 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains a set of six operating principles through a fictional dialogue that provides practical guidance to school leaders, including identifying core beliefs, creating a shared vision, and developing and implementing an action plan.

Download or read book Self Improving Schools The Journey to Excellence written by Roy Blatchford and published by John Catt. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * Can a school-led system truly become self-improving? * What is the difference between good and great schools? * Who should inspect and regulate? * How should local authorities change? * Is the landscape ahead one of all schools in partnerships? The English schools' system is at a crossroads. This landmark collection of essays brings together some of the country's leading education thinkers and practitioners. Their polemic is intended to help teachers, school leaders, governors, researchers and policy makers think deeply about future directions. 'As a Minister, I would ask which organisation was responsible for resolving a particular problem in education, only to be told: 'Don't worry, Minister - it's no longer the DFE. That is now a responsibility of the School-Led System. They will be delivering it.' Often, when you probed a little deeper, you discovered that the school-led system was nowhere near as well formed and ever present as some Ministers and senior civil servants liked to think.' David Laws 'This is a time of great possibility. Teachers are attempting to do extraordinary things. If we had more courage to shape our schools around what we believe to be a good education, then we could make life so much better not just for teachers but for the students we serve.' Peter Hyman 'For a self-improving system to be truly successful and to have a significant impact, it requires the highest performing schools to be outward reaching and to establish deep partnerships.' Rachel Macfarlane 'A self-improving school system must not become a self-regarding or, worse, a self-protecting school system. The role of external challenge is key to this.' Russell Hobby

Download or read book Teacher Self Supervision Why Teacher Evaluation Has Failed and What We Can Do About it written by William Powell and published by John Catt. This book was released on 2015-11-08 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many, perhaps even most schools, are not reaching their potential to be places of collective learning. The authors believe that one of the greatest impediments to realizing this vision is the deleterious effect of traditional systems of teacher evaluation. Rather than infantilizing teachers, we need to empower them. Traditional forms of teacher evaluation have failed. They are riddled with negative expectations about teachers and what motivates them. Taken together, these underlying assumptions form a pernicious cloud of counterproductive expectations that many teachers will "live down to". Inadvertently, the traditional system of teacher evaluation has created a vicious cycle of "self-sealing logic." It is now time for teachers to reclaim their profession, the process of which involves a relentless focus on adult learning: professional learning that is self-directed. The more dynamic and stimulating the culture of adult learning, the more dynamic and stimulating student learning will be.

Download or read book Singletons in a PLC at Work written by Brig Leane and published by Solution Tree Press. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a professional learning community, isolation is the enemy of school improvement. But what does collaboration among teachers look like when you can’t easily identify with a team? This book will help singleton teachers first develop clarity on learning essentials, then find creative entry points to form collaborative teams. Drawing from their own experiences, the authors offer practical solutions for eliminating the practice of isolation for all educators. Collaborative teams will: Understand what meaningful collaboration is and how singletons can utilize the PLC process Build the groundwork for meaningful collaboration using strategies for your specific situation Implement meaningful collaboration as a singleton across separate schools or within the same school Align disparate singletons under the same unifying PLC process Contents: Chapter 1: Meaningful Collaboration Chapter 2: Singleton On-Ramps for Collaboration Chapter 3: Preparation for Meaningful Collaboration Chapter 4: Course-Alike Entry Point—The Virtual Team Chapter 5: Common-Content Entry Point Chapter 6: Critical-Friend Entry Point Chapter 7: Putting It All Together Afterword: Final Thoughts References and Resources Index

Download or read book Improving Instruction Through Supervision Evaluation and Professional Development written by Michael DiPaola and published by IAP. This book was released on 2018-02-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this second edition of Improving Instruction Through Supervision, Evaluation, and Professional Development we’ve maintained the conceptual framework while updating sections to provide the most recent research on instructional strategies that have the most promise of helping all students learn. Modifications of the law resulting from the reauthorization of the 50-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act—Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) (2015)—and their implication for practice are embedded throughout this new edition. Updated data collection tools for classroom observations are also provided. We included a link to a website that contains all the observation tools in electronic format so that observers can have the opportunity to collect data on a tablet or laptop, save the observation data as a PDF file and e-mail those data to the teacher observed. This new edition recognizes the reality that all principals are responsible for supervision, evaluation, and professional development of their teachers—tasks that are neither simple nor without conflict. The primary audience of this text is aspiring and practicing principals. We hope to help them understand both the theory and practice of supervision, evaluation, and professional development. However, observing instruction, collecting data for reflection, and having conversations about teaching, are not the sole provinces of principals. Master teachers, teacher leaders, and teacher colleagues can also benefit from the supervisory sections of the book, especially the chapters on high-quality instruction, improving instruction, and the classroom data collecting tools. The book provides numerous tools specifically designed to collect a variety of data in classrooms to improve instruction. Embedded in each chapter are exercises to apply Theory into Practice by responding to a set of questions posed by the key issues of the chapter. After the explication and illustration of the key concepts and principles of the chapter, actual Instructional Leadership Challenges as described by a successful practicing principal for reflection and analysis.

Download or read book Leaders of Learning written by Richard DuFour and published by Solution Tree Press. This book was released on 2011-07-26 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many years, the authors have been fellow travelers on the journey to help educators improve their schools. Their first coauthored book focuses on district leadership, principal leadership, and team leadership and addresses how individual teachers can be most effective in leading students—by learning with colleagues how to implement the most promising pedagogy in their classrooms

Download or read book Schools That Succeed written by Karin Chenoweth and published by Harvard Education Press. This book was released on 2020-01-15 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Informed by years of research and on-the-ground reporting, Schools That Succeed is Karin Chenoweth’s most inspiring and compelling book yet—an essential read for educators who seek to break the stubborn connection between academic achievement and socioeconomic status. Chenoweth draws on her decade-long journey into neighborhood schools where low-income students and students of color are learning at unexpectedly high levels to reveal a key ingredient to their success: in one way or another, their leaders have confronted the traditional ways that schools are organized and have adopted new systems, all focused on improvement. In vivid profiles of once-embattled schools, Chenoweth shows how school leaders doggedly and patiently reorganized internal systems in order to prioritize teaching and learning, resulting in improved outcomes that in many cases exceeded statewide averages. From how they use time to how they use money, schools that succeed combine a deep belief in the capacity of their students to achieve with deliberate systems focused on student needs. As a result, they create vibrant places “where teachers want to teach and students want to learn."

Download or read book A Scent of Water written by Edward Earwood and published by Ambassador International. This book was released on 2012-09-21 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Scent of Water is a message of hope for the Christian school movement, a movement that is currently lacks vision, struggles with enrollment declines and battles budget limitations. This message derives from scriptural truth and the findings of empirical research and recommends a means for restoring a vision for the ministry. The local Christian school must become the site for transforming the movement into one that focuses upon student learning and a clear delineation of student goals. The authors examine schools as social and cultural systems that must be understood. A Scent of Water describes the type of leadership that must characterize the movement and proposes an active, vibrant and collaborative role for classroom teachers, working with building principals who see themselves as capacity builders, building strength and knowledge within the teaching staff to bring a scent of water that will revitalize and transform the movement.

Download or read book Designing and Implementing Effective Professional Learning written by John Murray and published by Corwin Press. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For sustained success, educators must commit to their own lifelong improvement. A clear correlation exists between level of focus on teacher professional development (PD) and student success. In this book, John Murray identifies the characteristics of effective professional learning, detailing eight strategies for planning, and executing, and evaluating PD programs. Content includes: The proven “backward” approach to articulating the goals of your PD program Descriptions of innovative and effective designs for professional learning such as Lesson Study and Instructional Rounds Powerful approaches to designing and implementing online PD

Download or read book Standards of Mind and Heart written by Peggy Clohessy Silva and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 2002-04-05 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the remarkable story of the creation of a new kind of high school that truly aspires to educate all students to high standards. Believing that a deeply personalized culture can prevent the senseless violence that has invaded many public schools, educators at Souhegan High School in Amherst, New Hampshire set out to create a safe, caring, and academically rigorous school. In this volume, Silva (a teacher) and Mackin (a principal) chronicle their experiences as they worked through the many challenges that ultimately resulted in this extraordinarily successful school. Featuring their honest reflections and the voices of other participants, this book: -- Portrays a real public high school (not a small alternative school) that is successfully implementing most of the reform practices recommended by national reform models. -- Demonstrates how schools can strike a balance between the need for stricter safety measures and the social and emotional needs of each student, thus avoiding violent outbursts in schools. -- Details the school's structure, curriculum, professional culture, and systems of accountability for all students in a heterogeneous, inclusionary setting. -- Describes the use of teaming, advisory groups, exhibitions, and senior projects. -- Provides a working model of the "Breaking Ranks" recommendations, including the importance of "personalization" and democracy in education.

Download or read book Democratic Learning written by John MacBeath and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-11-06 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The time has come to challenge many of the age-old assumptions about schools and school learning. In this timely book leading thinkers from around the world offer a different vision of what schools are for. They suggest new ways of thinking about citizenship, lifelong learning and the role of schools in democratic societies. They question many of the tenets of school effectiveness studies which have been so influential in shaping policy, but are essentially backward looking and premised on school structures as we have known them. Each chapter confronts some of the myths of schooling we have cherished for too long and asks us to think again and to do schools differently. Chapters include: * Democratic learning and school effectiveness * Learning democracy in an age of mangerial accountability * Democratic leadership for school improvement in challenging contexts. This book will be of particular interest to anyone involved in school improvement and effectiveness, including academics and researchers in this field of study. Headteachers and LEA advisers will also find this book a useful resource.

Download or read book The High Performing School written by Mardale Dunsworth and published by Solution Tree Press. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Get three books in one! First, learn what research has identified as the 10 indicators of high-performing schools. Then, use rubrics to track how closely your school reflects those practices and learn what you can do to improve. Finally, use tools and strategies to create buy-in and involve all stakeholders, as well as monitor and report progress along the way.

Download or read book Cornerstones of Strong Schools written by Jeffrey Zoul and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-02 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes the practices of principals who develop and maintain purposeful learning communities. It applies and extends nine of the leadership responsibilities identified in research conducted by Marzano, Waters, and McNulty in School Leadership That Works.

Download or read book Results Now written by Mike Schmoker and published by ASCD. This book was released on 2006-06-30 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to author Mike Schmoker, there is a yawning gap between the most well-known essential practices and the reality of most classrooms. This gap persists despite the hard, often heroic work done by many teachers and administrators. Schmoker believes that teachers and administrators may know what the best practices are, but they aren't using them or reinforcing them consistently. He asserts that our schools are protected by a buffer--a protective barrier that prevents scrutiny of instruction by outsiders. The buffer exists within the school as well. Teachers often know only what is going on in their classrooms--and they may be completely in the dark about what other teachers in the school are doing. Even principals, says Schmoker, don't have a clear view of the daily practices of teaching and learning in their schools. Schmoker suggests that we need to get beyond this buffer to confront the truth about what is happening in classrooms, and to allow teachers to learn from each other and to be supervised properly. He outlines a plan that focuses on the importance of consistent curriculum, authentic literacy education, and professional learning communities for teachers. What will students get out of this new approach? Learning for life. Schmoker argues passionately that students become learners for life when they have more opportunities to engage in strategic reading, writing with explicit guidance, and argument and discussion. Through strong teamwork, true leadership, and authentic learning, schools and their students can reach new heights. Results Now is a rally cry for educators to focus on what counts. If they do, Schmoker promises, the entire school community can count on unprecedented achievements.

Download or read book Stumbling Blocks to Stepping Stones written by Doug Zahn and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2019-03-20 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In both business and personal life, we engage in hundreds of conversations each day. Some are successful. Some are not. In Stumbling Blocks to Stepping Stones, you will learn from author Doug Zahn how to improve your conversations, thereby building more effective relationships, whether with friends or those you perceive as adversaries. This book offers a way to begin, continue, and end a successful conversation, helping assure participants are satisfied with the outcome. Zahn offers strategies to monitor and adjust your input during the interaction. To successfully use his approach, you must commit to self-observation and change. Successful relationships are the key to completing most jobs, whether at home or at work. Through the analysis of difficult conversations (those you often prefer to avoid) and the use of methodical building blocks, you will be able to have successful interactions wherever you go.