Never Work Harder Than Your Students and Other Principles of Great Teaching


Book Description

Some great teachers are born, but most are self-made. And the way to make yourself a great teacher is to learn to think and act like one. In this updated second edition of the best-selling Never Work Harder Than Your Students, Robyn R. Jackson reaffirms that every teacher can become a master teacher. The secret is not a specific strategy or technique, nor it is endless hours of prep time. It's developing a master teacher mindset—rigorously applying seven principles to your teaching until they become your automatic response: Start where you students are. Know where your students are going. Expect to get your students there. Support your students along the way. Use feedback to help you and your students get better. Focus on quality rather than quantity. Never work harder than your students. In her conversational and candid style, Jackson explains the mastery principles and how to start using them to guide planning, instruction, assessment, and classroom management. She answers questions, shares stories from her own practice and work with other teachers, and provides all-new, empowering advice on navigating external evaluation. There's even a self-assessment to help you identify your current levels of mastery and take control of your own practice. Teaching is hard work, and great teaching means doing the right kind of hard work: the kind that pays off. Join tens of thousands of teachers around the world who have embarked on their journeys toward mastery. Discover for yourself the difference that Jackson's principles will make in your classroom and for your students.




Math with Bad Drawings


Book Description

A hilarious reeducation in mathematics-full of joy, jokes, and stick figures-that sheds light on the countless practical and wonderful ways that math structures and shapes our world. In Math With Bad Drawings, Ben Orlin reveals to us what math actually is; its myriad uses, its strange symbols, and the wild leaps of logic and faith that define the usually impenetrable work of the mathematician. Truth and knowledge come in multiple forms: colorful drawings, encouraging jokes, and the stories and insights of an empathetic teacher who believes that math should belong to everyone. Orlin shows us how to think like a mathematician by teaching us a brand-new game of tic-tac-toe, how to understand an economic crises by rolling a pair of dice, and the mathematical headache that ensues when attempting to build a spherical Death Star. Every discussion in the book is illustrated with Orlin's trademark "bad drawings," which convey his message and insights with perfect pitch and clarity. With 24 chapters covering topics from the electoral college to human genetics to the reasons not to trust statistics, Math with Bad Drawings is a life-changing book for the math-estranged and math-enamored alike.




We Want to Do More Than Survive


Book Description

Winner of the 2020 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award Drawing on personal stories, research, and historical events, an esteemed educator offers a vision of educational justice inspired by the rebellious spirit and methods of abolitionists. Drawing on her life’s work of teaching and researching in urban schools, Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements. She argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color. Instead of trying to repair a flawed system, educational reformers offer survival tactics in the forms of test-taking skills, acronyms, grit labs, and character education, which Love calls the educational survival complex. To dismantle the educational survival complex and to achieve educational freedom—not merely reform—teachers, parents, and community leaders must approach education with the imagination, determination, boldness, and urgency of an abolitionist. Following in the tradition of activists like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer, We Want to Do More Than Survive introduces an alternative to traditional modes of educational reform and expands our ideas of civic engagement and intersectional justice.




The New Teacher Book


Book Description

Teaching is a lifelong challenge, but the first few years in the classroom are typically a teacher's hardest. This expanded collection of writings and reflections offers practical guidance on how to navigate the school system, form rewarding relationships with colleagues, and connect in meaningful ways with students and families from all cultures and backgrounds.




The Teacher Wars


Book Description

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.




A Different Kind of Teacher


Book Description

For more than a decade, former New York City and State Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto has been among the most insightful and outspoken critics of American schooling, and an influential visionary of the future of education. Through hundreds of public talks, articles, interviews, and classroom projects, Gatto has shown decisively where our failing schools have gone wrong and what can be done to fix them. In A Different Kind of Teacher, the bestselling author of Dumbing Us Down has collected his most important writings of the past ten years -- reports, meditations, action plans, and jeremiads -- that will change forever the reader's understanding of how our system of education really operates, and how it can be rescued. Book jacket.




Being a Teacher


Book Description

Sharing the stories of educators working in a diverse range of international contexts, Being a Teacher uses personal narratives to explore effective teaching and learning in global settings. Demonstrating how personal values influence pedagogical practice, and asking how practice can be improved, authors reflect on their experiences not just as teachers, but also as learners, to offer essential guidance for all prospective educational professionals. The book focuses on teacher narratives as a vehicle for consideration of teacher professionalism, and as a way of understanding issues which are important to teachers in different contexts. By sharing and analysing these narratives, the book discusses the increasing complexity of teaching as a profession, and considers the commonality within the narratives. Each chapter includes graphic representations of analysis and encourages its reader to reflect critically on central questions, thereby constructing their own narrative. Being a Teacher provides an in-depth and engaging insight into the education system at a global level, making it an essential read for anyone embarking on a teaching career within the international education market.




What the Best College Teachers Do


Book Description

What makes a great teacher great? Who are the professors students remember long after graduation? This book, the conclusion of a fifteen-year study of nearly one hundred college teachers in a wide variety of fields and universities, offers valuable answers for all educators. The short answer is—it’s not what teachers do, it’s what they understand. Lesson plans and lecture notes matter less than the special way teachers comprehend the subject and value human learning. Whether historians or physicists, in El Paso or St. Paul, the best teachers know their subjects inside and out—but they also know how to engage and challenge students and to provoke impassioned responses. Most of all, they believe two things fervently: that teaching matters and that students can learn. In stories both humorous and touching, Ken Bain describes examples of ingenuity and compassion, of students’ discoveries of new ideas and the depth of their own potential. What the Best College Teachers Do is a treasure trove of insight and inspiration for first-year teachers and seasoned educators.







Teachers to Trainers


Book Description

Teachers Make Great Trainers Schoolteachers are leaving their profession at a higher rate than ever before—and for myriad reasons. Passion for teaching is generally not one of them. If you are a schoolteacher thinking about making a career change, knowing that your passion and purpose for education will transfer with you to your new career may be the assurance you need to make the shift. Knowing that you can be effective and create a spark for learning as well as still have the flexibility, compensation, and development you crave in a career could be the motivation to step into a new role. Teachers to Trainers: Apply Your Passion and Skills to a New Career introduces you to career opportunities in the growing industry of talent development, where all those aspirations are possible. This first-ever volume offers you a view of a different education system: the world of talent development. In each chapter, former teachers recount the stories of how they made the career switch, describe their current roles, and share resources and tips for success. You will discover why these former teachers decided to seek a change and gain valuable insights into how they transitioned into talent development roles, including what they wished they had known when making the switch and the obstacles they overcame. You will also learn about the rewards they achieved in their transitions and, most importantly, see that their passion for teaching remains. The book includes a full range of resources to guide you—skills assessments, worksheets, descriptions of certifications and certificate programs, and print and online reading recommendations. You’ll also find tips about: transferable skills job market research resume creation what you need to go forward.