Innovative Educators


Book Description

In a culture that demands change and innovation, how can the individual teacher effect change that's both meaningful and achievable? Innovative Educators shows teachers how to adapt existing practices and how to invent new ones that foster the proactive mindset needed to face an uncertain future. Informed by her experience as a classroom teacher, school leader, and Director of Innovation for the Colorado DOE, Gretchen Morgan invites teachers to reclaim their identity as creative, progressive thinkers. Based on an understanding of the history of American education and the economic drivers that demand change, Gretchen offers teachers reflective experiences and generative activities to prepare teachers to try something new and wise in their classroom tomorrow. As teachers, we model being the proactive learners, professionals, and community members that we want our students to become. In this book, teachers are shown practical, doable ways of living those beliefs more closely.




Dream Team


Book Description

The world needs great individual educational changemakers capable of identifying problems and creating bold, scalable solutions. But the world also needs Dream Teams —groups of talented administrators, teachers, staff, students, and community members who are passionate about making things better for kids, believe that school-based change is the means to this end, and are willing to roll up their sleeves and work together to achieve it. This book is for Dream Teams in the making. In it, rising global education leaders Aaron Tait and Dave Faulkner share the models and methods of 10 brilliant leadership teams at urban, suburban, and rural schools in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Informed by these successes, the authors provide specific, sometimes audacious advice for navigating what they call the Change Leader Journey: how to move from Dream Team assembly and problem analysis all the way through to solution generation, piloting, promotion, and evaluation. Innovative educators come in all forms, and they require lots of options. Here, you'll find a collection of practical ideas and tools designed to fuel transformational leadership without sacrificing instructional excellence or anyone's sanity. Whether your team is a group of fearless rebels, more cautious types, or somewhere in between, Tait and Faulkner's flexible approach can help you figure out where you want your school to go, build a more collaborative and creative culture, and generate the solutions that best serve your students.




10 Perspectives on Innovation in Education


Book Description

How do great educators bring about real change to make a difference in students’ lives? In this first volume of the Routledge Great Educators Series, 10 of education’s most inspiring thought-leaders come together to share their top suggestions you need right now to innovate in your school or classroom. You will gain fresh insights and practical strategies on these essential topics: Personalizing professional learning (Jeffrey Zoul) Promoting a positive school culture (Todd Whitaker) Improving our hiring practices (Jimmy Casas) Designing spaces that maximize learning (Thomas C. Murray) Empowering students in their learning and assessments (Starr Sackstein) Flipping the classroom to reach each student (Kirk Humphreys) Positioning libraries as learning hubs (Shannon McClintock Miller) Helping others embrace technology changes (Katrina Keene) Developing personal, not just professional, skills (Dwight Carter) Embracing each student's passions and strengths (LaVonna Roth) Filled with inspiring stories throughout, the book will leave you feeling motivated to take risks and try new things in your own school or classroom. As the authors say, if we want to make a real difference, it’s not enough to do the things we do better; we must also do new and better things!




Deeper Learning


Book Description

The acclaimed exploration of how public education can cultivate innovators—with a foreword by Russlynn Ali, a leading advocate for remaking schools Dime-a-dozen ideas for reforming education seem to be everywhere these days but few actually transform the everyday experience of the 50-million-plus students who are regularly subjected to traditional lecturing, note-taking, and rote learning—often with dismal results. Enter Deeper Learning, "a fast read [that] will interest educators who want to produce self-motivated, passionate learners" (Library Journal). Offering "uplifting" (Kirkus Reviews) anecdotes in what Tom Carroll of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future calls a "rare blend of inspiration and practical action," Deeper Learning provides a blueprint for creating flexible environments that put students at the helm of their own collaborative learning experience. This paperback edition includes a new foreword by renowned education advocate Russlynn Ali and will empower and inspire educators everywhere to address the need for schools to be genuinely innovative.




Teacherpreneurs


Book Description

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.




Powerful Multicultural Essays For Innovative Educators And Leaders


Book Description

Powerful Multicultural Essays for innovative Educators and Leaders is written for this day, age, and time. We need to tear down our walls of hatred to optimize “hearty” conversations. In addition, we need to challenge ourselves and our institutions to do the right things. We must revisit our inner spiritual connectivity--- there are biblical allusions that could buttress our understanding about multiculturalism. For instance, human valuing is the engine behind the Parable of the Good Samaritan and the Parable of the Sower. Should our goal not be to sow good seeds that bloom to be beautiful flowers and even grow to be strong trees? Should our actions be divorced from supporting those who are different from us? Reading this book will help us to answer these questions. As often as possible, we must be action-oriented and practical as we arrive at our central hub and enhance our potential or existential collaboration, consultation, and cooperation at all levels of our human interactions. This is a book for students of life, which means all of us! We are all learners whether we are students, teachers, community leaders, university professors and leaders, researchers, scholars, politicians, to mention a few. We all need to read this book to optimize conversations, create open and healthy environments, and advance our nations and world. The days for hiding from discourses are over! We can no longer sweep our problems and actions under the rug! And, we cannot divorce ourselves from our own realities. Hopefully, this book will yield remarkable fruitful dividends with regard to human valuing.




Innovative Education Technologies for 21st Century Teaching and Learning


Book Description

This book highlights all aspects of innovative 21st-century education technologies and skills which can enhance the teaching and learning process on a broader spectrum, based on best practices around the globe. It offers case studies on real problems involving higher education, it includes policies that need to be adaptable to the new environments such as the role of accreditation, online learning, MOOCs, and mobile-based learning. The book covers all aspects of the digital competencies of teachers to fulfill the required needs of 21st-century classrooms and uses a new pedagogical approach suitable for educational policies. Innovative Education Technologies for 21st Teaching and Learning is the first book that addresses the teaching and learning challenges and how those challenges can be mitigated by technology which educational institutions are facing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This book is suitable for teachers, students, instructional and course designers, policymakers, and anyone interested in 21st-century education.




Learner-Centered Innovation


Book Description

When we tell kids to complete an assignment, we get compliance. When we empower learners to explore and learn how to make an impact on the world, we inspire problem solvers and innovators.




Maverick Teachers


Book Description

Despite dwindling resources and high-stakes testing, public school teachers all over the country are managing to breathe life, passion, and excitement into their classrooms. In this new book by bestselling author A.J. Juliani and lifelong educator David E. Baugh, you’ll meet a diverse group of teachers—Mavericks—who are doing exactly that. You’ll hear from teachers across the country and how they are shaking up the norm. Each story includes a powerful vignette and a breakdown of tactics used, so you can bring inspiration and strategies back to your own classroom. Together, these teachers and their stories will show you how to relate and respond to your students’ most pressing needs, leaving you feeling reenergized in your role as a change-maker.




Transforming Diné Education


Book Description

Transforming Diné Education honors the perspectives and voices of Diné educators in culturally relevant education, special education, Diné language revitalization, well-being, tribal sovereignty, self-determination in Diné education, and university-tribal-community partnerships. The contributors offer stories about Diné resilience, resistance, and survival by articulating a Diné-centered pedagogy and politics for future generations.