Teaching to Empower


Book Description

We want students to master academic standards, and we want them to be confident, adaptive, and socially responsible. Above all, we want them to find meaning and satisfaction in their lives. Achieving these goals requires a concerted focus on the social-emotional skills that empower students in and beyond the classroom. In Teaching to Empower, Debbie Zacarian and Michael Silverstone explore what an empowered student looks like in our increasingly diverse contemporary schools and prompt educators to examine their own relationship to empowerment. The book's evidence-based strategies and authentic examples show you how to foster an inclusive culture of agency, self-confidence, and collaboration that will give each of your students—regardless of race, culture, language, socioeconomic status, abilities, sexuality, or gender—the opportunity, responsibility, and tools to become an active learner, thoughtful community member, and engaged global citizen. Whether you're a preservice teacher, a classroom novice, or a veteran, you'll find the practical guidance you'll need to * Create inclusive and empowering physical learning spaces. * Set up self-directed learning and promote positive interdependence. * Promote student self-reflection. * Teach the skills of collaboration. * Foster the self-advocacy that fuels deeper, more autonomous learning. * Partner more effectively with families and the community to support student empowerment.




Empower


Book Description

In Empower, A.J. Juliani and John Spencer provide teachers, coaches, and administrators with a roadmap that will inspire innovation, authentic learning experiences, and practical ways to empower students to pursue their passions while in school. Empower will provide ways to overcome challenges and turn them into opportunities for our learners.




Empowering Teachers to Build a Better World


Book Description

This open access book presents a comparative study on how large-scale professional development programs for teachers are designed and implemented. Around the world, governments and educators are recognizing the need to educate students in a broad range of higher order cognitive skills and socio-emotional competencies, and providing effective opportunities for teachers to develop the expertise needed to teach these skills is a crucial aspect of effective implementation of curricula which include those goals. This study examines how large-scale efforts to empower teachers for deeper instruction have been designed, how they have been implemented, and their outcomes. To do so, it investigates six programs from England, Colombia, Mexico, India, and the United States. Though all six are intended to broaden and deepen students’ curricular aspirations, each takes this expansion of curricular goals in a different direction. The ambitious education reforms studied here explicitly focus on building teachers’ capacity to teach on a broader set of goals. Through a discerning analysis of program documents, evaluations, and interviews with senior leaders and participants in the programs, the book identifies the various theories of action used in these programs, examines how they were implemented, and discusses what they achieved. As such, it offers an indispensable resource for education leaders interested in designing and implementing professional development programs for teachers that are aligned with ambitious instructional goals.




13 Steps to Teacher Empowerment


Book Description

"What is teacher empowerment? It's not just some formal administrative position exercised from above. It starts with expanding our professional roles in small everyday actions that make our jobs more fulfilling and less difficult. And then we can take on larger school-improvement tasks as we become ready to tackle them. . . . This book, then, is about extending one's professional role in small ways and large in the school community, in order to improve one's teaching, one's work life, and the school as a whole--and that is what we mean by teacher empowerment." Steven Zemelman and Harry Ross Experts talk about teacher empowerment, but this is the first book with direct, easy-to-take steps for teacher self-empowerment. Drawing from research, the experiences of practicing teachers, and the principles of community organizing, Steven Zemelman and Harry Ross prove that school leadership isn't just for those at the top of the ladder. Whatever your position, use the 13 Steps to Teacher Empowerment to deepen your professionalism and achieve: more effective teaching and deeper job satisfaction more enjoyment in your work more exciting collaboration with your colleagues more resources and professional opportunities. Listen to a podcast where Steve Zemelman and Harry Ross interview two teachers who used the principles in the 13 Steps to get the teaching life they wanted. Take one step at a time or pick and choose the strategies you most need right now. Or use the study guide with colleagues in PLCs or teacher study groups and together bring the 13 Steps of Teacher Empowerment to life. You'll not only develop your own professional power--you'll help make your school community more supportive and productive. "As I sat down and began to read this book, the voice in my head first whispered, then spoke a little louder, and finally screamed--Where have you been all my life?...I can't overemphasize the importance of this book. We need this book and we need it now. It is a road map to a vibrant, thriving, long-lasting teaching life." Stephanie Harvey Coauthor of Comprehension & Collaboration




Coaching to Empower Teachers


Book Description

Learn how to make instructional coaching more empowering and effective by supporting teachers as learners and leaders in their own classrooms. This unique book offers a powerful assets-based coaching framework that capitalizes on teachers’ strengths, internal motivation, and professional goals. The authors provide a useful analysis of popular theories and models that ground coaching and support intentional planning; tools and strategies to help you enact the framework through ongoing coaching cycles; and examples, vignettes, and transcripts to illustrate coaching in practice. Each chapter also includes opportunities for reflection and practice to guide you along the way. Appropriate for school-and district-based coaches of all levels of experience, this book will enable you to provide a more targeted, proactive learning experience for ongoing teacher growth. With an instructional framework designed to empower teachers, increased teacher professional capacity can be expected for lasting impact on students, classrooms, schools, and communities.




Teaching Mindfulness to Empower Adolescents


Book Description

Copublished with Mindful Schools “Effectively sharing mindfulness with teenagers depends on distinct skill sets . . . done well, it is incredibly joyous.” Matthew Brensilver, JoAnna Hardy and Oren Jay Sofer provide a powerful guide to help teachers master the essential competencies needed to successfully share mindfulness practices with teens and adolescents. Incorporating anecdotes from actual teaching, they blend the latest scientific research with innovative, original techniques for making the practices accessible and interesting to this age group. This text is an indispensable handbook for mindfulness instruction in its own right, and a robust companion volume for teachers using The Mindful Schools Curriculum for Adolescents. Also available as a two-book set.




The Leader in Me


Book Description

Children in today's world are inundated with information about who to be, what to do and how to live. But what if there was a way to teach children how to manage priorities, focus on goals and be a positive influence on the world around them? The Leader in Meis that programme. It's based on a hugely successful initiative carried out at the A.B. Combs Elementary School in North Carolina. To hear the parents of A. B Combs talk about the school is to be amazed. In 1999, the school debuted a programme that taught The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Peopleto a pilot group of students. The parents reported an incredible change in their children, who blossomed under the programme. By the end of the following year the average end-of-grade scores had leapt from 84 to 94. This book will launch the message onto a much larger platform. Stephen R. Covey takes the 7 Habits, that have already changed the lives of millions of people, and shows how children can use them as they develop. Those habits -- be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek to understand and then to be understood, synergize, and sharpen the saw -- are critical skills to learn at a young age and bring incredible results, proving that it's never too early to teach someone how to live well.




The Heart of Teaching


Book Description

Teaching Questions is a book about teaching and learning in the performing arts. Its focus is on the inner dynamics of teaching: the processes by which teachers can promote - or undermine - creativity itself. It covers the many issues that teachers, directors and choreographers experience, from the frustrations of dealing with silent students, and helping young artists 'unlearn' their inhibitions, to problems of resistance, judgment and race in the classroom. Teaching Questions speaks to experienced teachers and beginning teachers in all disciplines, bringing essential insight and honesty to the discussion of how to teach.




Clarity for Learning


Book Description

An essential resource for student and teacher clarity With the ever-changing landscape of education, teachers and leaders often find themselves searching for clarity in a sea of standards, curriculum resources, and competing priorities. Clarity for Learning offers a simple and doable approach to developing clarity and sharing it with students through five essential components: crafting learning intentions and success criteria co-constructing learning intentions and success criteria with learners creating opportunities for students to respond effective feedback on and for learning students and teachers sharing learning and progress The book is full of examples from teachers and leaders who have shared their journey, struggles, and successes for readers to use to propel their own work forward.




Teaching Climate Change for Grades 6–12


Book Description

Looking to tackle climate change and climate science in your classroom? This timely and insightful book supports and enables secondary science teachers to develop effective curricula ready to meet the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) by grounding their instruction on the climate crisis. Nearly one-third of the secondary science standards relate to climate science, but teachers need design and implementation support to create empowering learning experiences centered around the climate crisis. Experienced science educator, instructional coach, and educational leader Dr. Kelley T. Le offers this support, providing an overview of the teaching shifts needed for NGSS and to support climate literacy for students via urgent topics in climate science and environmental justice – from the COVID-19 pandemic to global warming, rising sea temperatures, deforestation, and mass extinction. You’ll also learn how to engage the complexity of climate change by exploring social, racial, and environmental injustices stemming from the climate crisis that directly impact students. By anchoring instruction around the climate crisis, Dr. Le offers guidance on how to empower students to be the agents of change needed in their own communities. A range of additional teacher resources are also available at www.empoweredscienceteachers.com.