By the author of the best-selling book, The 11 Commandments of Good Teaching A great training tool for staff developers and mentors to use with new teachers Only book to focus on the unspoken rules of professionalism in teaching Gill uses humor, stories, and personal experiences to convey the importance of professionalism in such areas as dealing with students and parents, being a role model, avoiding gossip, working with other teachers and school staff, after hours job duties, and paperwork.
This Second Edition includes a new facilitator's guide for use in leading staff development meetings, book groups, and other small group discussions, or to serve as an instructor's manual for classroom instruction. How To Deal With Parents Who Are Angry, Troubled, Afraid, Or Just Plain Crazy is a practical, quick-read resource to help school headteachers and other educators at any level gain the skills needed to deal with disgruntled and unhappy parents. Readers will learn why so many parents today are unhappy with what's happening in schools and how they can defuse these feelings and solve the most common school problems.
Working With Teachers, Parents, Students, and the Community
"Educational administrators will find the book to be an easily applicable tool for solving many of the dilemmas they face in their schools." Theron Schutte, Middle School Principal Boone Community School District, IA "The book provides a theoretical base for practical application of strategies that will strengthen beliefs and attitudes that support behaviors that can move a school toward the fulfillment of its educational mission." David Erlandson, Professor Texas A&M University "This book keeps its promises: it is truly a guide for action that will be used by educators, especially educational change agents. Each of the authors comes out of an unusual blend of theoretical sophistication and practical experience that make this book a stimulating intellectual read and a solid manual for practice." Steven Tozer, Professor of Education University of Illinois Why do people behave as they do? What makes them take a stand on a specific issue? Solving school problems and making policy decisions require that we anticipate how people will feel about an issue or how they will behave. School leaders must understand the values, attitudes, and beliefs brought to different situations. The School Leader's Guide to Understanding Attitude and Influencing Behavior makes it possible for educators to scientifically understand and influence the attitudes and behaviors of diverse constituencies, both inside and outside the school. Using the Model of Reasoned Action (MORA) enables readers to understand how people form attitudes and make decisions about a wide variety of future behaviors. Armed with this information, educators can change attitudes and influence behavior of teachers, staff, parents, and the community. This excellent resource includes: Examples of attitude scales A sample questionnaire A checklist of steps through an attitude-behavior study Tables to organize and report data Data analysis presented in an easily-applied manner When you must know how best to influence the attitudes or behaviors of others, this remarkable book will show you. Make a positive difference in your school or district!
A sense of humor is essential for effective staff development! As educators, we often take ourselves a bit too seriously, so veteran educator and illustrator Aaron Bacall offers a little perspective with these lighthearted cartoons. Whether used as overheads for meetings or as an individual break in a busy day, this collection of whimsical glimpses at staff development will provide a moment to laugh and add a little levity-and poignancy-to your workday. Intended to amuse, inspire, and reveal the simple truths that surround us, these illustrations are ideal for: - Staff training days - Conference presentations - Classroom lectures - Community meetings - Internal communications !and they will continue reminding us that we can laugh at almost anything! Aaron Bacall's works have appeared in many publications: The School Administrator, Technology & Learning, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, and Reader's Digest. He has worked as a teacher, a principal curriculum writer for the New York City Board of Education, an antibiotic research chemist, and now as a full-time cartoonist. He is a member of The National Cartoonist Society and is on the Board of Governors of the Cartoonists Association.
An Educator's Handbook of Brain Terms and Cognitive Processes
"A delicious and nutritious alphabet soup for brain aficionados. How to Explain a Brain serves a generous portion of savory topics for the hearty neural appetite. From amygdala to emotion, from hippocampus to memory, from neurotransmitter to serotonin, the brain is explained as skillfully as one simmers a sumptuous stock." Robin Fogarty, President Robin Fogarty & Associates Unlock the mysteries of the brain with the help of this jargon-free guide! Noted author Robert Sylwester offers educators and general readers his own definitions for terms used in the cognitive neurosciences. This unique look into the marvelous brain uses language and descriptions that are accessible to readers, even those with just a limited understanding of biology. Discover how our brain is organized and develops, and how educators can use this emerging understanding of cognition to enhance student learning and the school environment. This ready-reference guide to essential concepts and terms in cognitive neurosciences includes: Nearly 300 encyclopedic entries and cross references created to help educators understand key concepts about our brain's organization, development, and learning capabilities Eleven newly created anatomic models and illustrations that focus on key brain systems and functions References and recommended print and Internet resources How to Explain a Brain celebrates the brain in all its wonder and is sure to become a reference book of choice for teachers, instructional leaders, and teacher educators.
Creating Professional Learning Communities That Target Student Learning
"This third edition from Murphy and Lick is a superb resource and a must read for all educators involved in the improvement of education. It should be in the hands of individuals from the state department of education to the classroom teacher, for it speaks to all layers of the system, and to the role that each person must play to assure successful learning for all students." -From the Foreword by Shirley Hord, Scholar Emerita Southwest Educational Development Laboratory "Planning is an important thing. What Whole-Faculty Study Groups has done for us is to ensure that we never forget that implementation is the only thing." Jack Ernst, Superintendent Springfield Public Schools, Springfield, MO One of the most successful and exciting approaches to staff development, school reform, and systemic change in education today! Used by hundreds of schools and school districts across the country, the Whole-Faculty Study Group (WFSG) System is a student-driven, holistic process for facilitating major staff development and schoolwide change. While providing a step-by-step methodology for the development and implementation of successful WFSGs, this newest edition of Murphy and Lick's groundbreaking bestseller incorporates the most current theoretical concepts on change, the latest refinements to change management procedures, and a wealth of new experiences from more than two thousand individual study groups. Other significant revisions to this edition include: Three additional chapters: the research foundation for WFSGs, how to recognize and understand school culture, and fourteen key findings A reorganization of chapters to make the book even more reader-friendly New material on timely topics such as "learning communities" and "learning teams" An increased focus on assessment of student results Updated sets of resources and illustrations in the appendix WFSGs are a proven way to successfully reform, improve, and transition schools to meet tomorrow's needs. Filled with real-world examples and illustrative cases, this book provides both the practical knowledge and the theoretical foundation necessary to negotiate the societal, organizational, and cultural barriers affecting education. This new edition is essential for administrators, teachers, and staff in K-12 schools, as well as district level administrators, teachers of education, and anyone interested in increasing student learning.
This book is the result of nearly two decades of research and development into providing educational researchers with a set of reliable and valid measures to study the nature of middle schools, and practitioners with a set of tools to evaluate their school climate with an aim towards organizational improvement.
Raising Test Scores and Writing Effectiveness Through Poetry and Fiction
A teacher's guide to teaching middle school and high school English and building literacy skills in even the most reluctant readers. Lorraine LaCroix shows the reader how carefully chosen poems and fiction can "hook" otherwise apathetic English students - by making an emotional connection, the teacher makes her lessons personally relevant and ......
This thoughtful volume about becoming a teacher is structured as a series of reflective conversations between a young woman about to begin her first year as a school teacher. Readers will find themselves effortlessly drawn into these fascinating dialogues that encourage them to reflect on, reexamine, and refine what they believe to be the elements of good teaching and the characteristics of good teachers: Mission and Vision; Expectations; Caring; Commitment; Respect; Observation; Cultural Awareness; Balance; Teambuilding; Growth and Knowledge. The writing style is highly readable and engaging, and the conversations extend from educational theory through practical classroom strategies and teaching models. This volume will challenge beginning teachers to think about how they can become the teachers they want to be and will revitalize veteran teachers by reminding them of the reasons and desires that compelled them to teach in the first place. An eclectic list of suggested readings rounds out the volume and a detailed index allows access to core topics covered throughout the text.
