Making Teachers Better Not Bitter

In too many districts, evaluation of teachers ensures competence but does little or nothing to encourage and support expertise. In this thought-provoking and groundbreaking book, Tony Frontier and Paul Mielke address this issue head-on, combining the conceptual and the practical by offering a compelling vision of teacher growth, along with nearly three dozen step-by-step protocols for working with teachers. They present a powerful rationale for reconceptualizing teacher evaluation by creating a balanced system of three equally important components: * Reliable and valid evaluation. * Empowering and focused supervision. * Meaningful and purposeful reflection. Each component is discussed in terms of its purpose, premise, processes, practices, and payoffs. Revealing examples based on the authors’ experiences in classrooms across the country show what evaluation, supervision, and reflection look like when they’re not done well--and what they could look like if done more effectively. Providing insight and inspiration, Making Teachers Better, Not Bitter paves a clear path to better teaching and helps you acknowledge and support the hard work that teachers do every day to make learning come alive for their students.

A practical, research-based guide for ensuring trustworthy classroom observations that provide teachers with meaningful feedback Better Feedback for Better Teaching is an essential resource for school, district, and state, leaders committed to high-quality classroom observations. This practical guide outlines the knowledge and skills classroom observers need to identify and help develop effective teaching, and explains how leaders can best facilitate the development of classroom observers. The best way to ensure high quality instruction in every classroom is to provide teachers with accurate, constructive feedback on practices proven to enhance student learning. Skilled classroom observers help teachers do their best work, so that they can guide students to their greatest potential. Better Feedback for Better Teaching provides helpful, reliable strategies from leading experts and practitioners involved in the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project, which carried out one of the largest, most influential studies of classroom observations to date. Among the many topics covered, Better Feedback for Better Teaching describes how to: Build a shared vision of effective teacher feedback among observers Ensure a common understanding of a classroom observation tool Train observers to collect objective evidence from a lesson, efficiently and free of bias Leverage data to improve how observers are trained and supported This comprehensive resource includes helpful starting points, as well as tips to refine techniques and address new challenges. Each section combines clear explanations of key ideas with concrete, adaptable examples and strategies. Self-assessments are included to help you quickly rank current needs and find the most relevant solutions. Filled with valuable, practical tools, Better Feedback for Better Teaching helps educators cultivate high-quality classroom observations that improve teaching and learning.

Feeling overwhelmed—constantly, on a daily basis—has unfortunately become the status quo among educators. But it doesn't have to be. Schools need to stop adding more programs, strategies, activities, resources, projects, assessments, and meetings. Though they are often implemented with the best intentions, these things ultimately end up as clutter—that which inhibits our ability to help students learn. Instead, teachers need more clarity, which emerges when we prioritize our efforts to do less with greater focus. This isn't simply a matter of teachers doing less. Rather, teachers need to be intentional and prioritize their efforts to develop deeper understanding among students. In Teaching with Clarity, Tony Frontier focuses on three fundamental questions to help reduce curricular and organizational clutter in the interest of clarity and focus: * What does it mean to understand? * What is most important to understand? * How do we prioritize our strategic effort to help students understand what is most important? By prioritizing clear success criteria, intentional design, meaningful feedback, and a shared purpose, teachers can begin to clear away the curricular clutter that overwhelms the profession—and embrace the clarity that emerges.

In Effective Supervision, Robert J. Marzano, Tony Frontier, and David Livingston show school and district-level administrators how to set the priorities and support the practices that will help all teachers become expert teachers. Their five-part framework is based on what research tells us about how expertise develops. When these five conditions are attended to in a systematic way, teachers do improve their skills: * A well-articulated knowledge base for teaching * Opportunities for teachers to practice specific strategies or behaviors and to receive feedback * Opportunities for teachers to observe and discuss expertise * Clear criteria for success and help constructing professional growth and development plans * Recognition of the different stages of development progressing toward expertise. The focus is on developing a collegial atmosphere in which teachers can freely share effective practices with each other, observe one another's classrooms, and receive focused feedback on their teaching strategies. The constructive dynamics of this approach always keep in sight the aim of enhancing students' well-being and achievement. As the authors note, "The ultimate criterion for expert performance in the classroom is student achievement. Anything else misses the point."

‘Tom Bennett is the voice of the modern teacher.’ - Stephen Drew, Senior Vice-Principal, Passmores Academy, UK, featured on Channel 4’s Educating Essex Do the findings from educational science ever really improve the day-to-day practice of classroom teachers? Education is awash with theories about how pupils best learn and teachers best teach, most often propped up with the inevitable research that ‘proves’ the case in point. But what can teachers do to find the proof within the pudding, and how can this actually help them on wet Wednesday afternoon?. Drawing from a wide range of recent and popular education theories and strategies, Tom Bennett highlights how much of what we think we know in schools hasn’t been ‘proven’ in any meaningful sense at all. He inspires teachers to decide for themselves what good and bad education really is, empowering them as professionals and raising their confidence in the classroom and the staffroom alike. Readers are encouraged to question and reflect on issues such as: the most common ideas in modern education and where these ideas were born the crisis in research right now how research is commissioned and used by the people who make policy in the UK and beyond the provenance of education research: who instigates it, who writes it, and how to spot when a claim is based on evidence and when it isn’t the different way that data can be analysed what happens to the research conclusions once they escape the laboratory. Controversial, erudite and yet unremittingly entertaining, Tom includes practical suggestions for the classroom throughout. This book will be an ally to every teacher who’s been handed an instruction on a platter and been told, ‘the research proves it.’

The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration. Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success. They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options. Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers. Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including: -When, where, and what to publish -Writing a foolproof grant application -Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV -Acing the job talk and campus interview -Avoiding the adjunct trap -Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.

Ticked Off by Harry Fletcher-Wood introduces teachers to the checklist, but not as they've seen it before. Discover the rationale for using checklists, the key design principles behind them and the effect they can have.