Academic conferences increase collaboration and support collegial dialogue between teachers, principals, and district administrators, while providing a forum for education professionals to consider school practices old and new, and plan ways to best utilize them all in the future. This book, by experienced educators Eli Johnson and Arthur L. Costa, is about encouraging and enhancing these necessary, but often neglected, conversations as a means of helping educators identify the ways that innovative teaching strategies can best connect positive classroom outcomes to the long-term plans, learning goals, and academic purposes of a school and district. Academic Conferences for School and Teacher Leaders proves an invaluable tool for educators and educational administrators who are tasked with the toughest decisions facing our struggling school system today, and is an ideal fit for courses in educational leadership and supervision of instruction. When structured effectively, academic conferences can transform schools and help educational leaders mine the excellence of every student in their classrooms, and this book is a necessary guide for any leader whose goal is to do just that.

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.

Increase student learning by developing teacher leaders! This is the first book to synthesize theoretical, empirical, and practice-based literature in order to provide a comprehensive look at what is known about teacher leadership and what works to support it. The first part of the book explores the core concepts of teacher leadership, while the second part shows readers how to establish the context in their school or district to cultivate and support teacher leaders. A vital tool for school improvement, this volume covers such important topics as: The principal’s critical role in supporting teacher leadership Cultivating teacher leadership through professional development Overcoming organizational barriers that hinder teacher leadership How teacher leadership can help advance school improvement efforts

Do you want your school or district to truly become a learning organization? How do you foster lasting and meaningful change? How do you avoid rejection of your new approach to teaching and learning? If you've been involved in a school change effort, you most likely have struggled with these questions. To ease this struggle, Douglas B. Reeves has proposed a new framework to promote effective change efforts through teacher leadership. In this book, you will explore not only cutting-edge research findings, but also practical applications that can help improve student achievement and educational equity. You can learn how to achieve lasting results as an educator and school leader. You can learn from other teacher researchers how to infuse your classroom, school, or district with enthusiasm, meaningful teaching, improved results, and greater satisfaction. Even as you strive for innovation, you naturally want to avoid having the next new thing become the latest old thing. To achieve lasting change, educators must embrace evidence-based decision making rather than the fact-free debate. Reeves has found that educators more readily accept decisions they disagree with if they believe the decision-making process was fair--not based on opinion or hierarchy. Reeves aims for you to help him build a network of teacher leaders based on this new evidence-based framework that will foster resilient learning organizations. Come along--explore, act, and share. Note: This product listing is for the Adobe Acrobat (PDF) version of the book.

An inspiring account of teachers in ordinary circumstances doing extraordinary things, showing us how to transform education What School Could Be offers an inspiring vision of what our teachers and students can accomplish if trusted with the challenge of developing the skills and ways of thinking needed to thrive in a world of dizzying technological change. Innovation expert Ted Dintersmith took an unprecedented trip across America, visiting all fifty states in a single school year. He originally set out to raise awareness about the urgent need to reimagine education to prepare students for a world marked by innovation--but America's teachers one-upped him. All across the country, he met teachers in ordinary settings doing extraordinary things, creating innovative classrooms where children learn deeply and joyously as they gain purpose, agency, essential skillsets and mindsets, and real knowledge. Together, these new ways of teaching and learning offer a vision of what school could be—and a model for transforming schools throughout the United States and beyond. Better yet, teachers and parents don't have to wait for the revolution to come from above. They can readily implement small changes that can make a big difference. America's clock is ticking. Our archaic model of education trains our kids for a world that no longer exists, and accelerating advances in technology are eliminating millions of jobs. But the trailblazing of many American educators gives us reasons for hope. Capturing bold ideas from teachers and classrooms across America, What School Could Be provides a realistic and profoundly optimistic roadmap for creating cultures of innovation and real learning in all our schools.

Focusing on the ways in which leadership can be fostered and enhanced, this text argues that teacher leadership is an instrinsic and important part of school and classroom improvement, as well as considering the roles, responsibilities and influences of teachers who lead.

Featuring scholarly descriptions, teacher leader reflections, and thoughtful questions, this thoughtful collection will immerse readers in deep exploration of teacher leadership and student learning; definitions, structures, and cultures that promote teacher leadership; and teacher leader preparation and development.

This book addresses the critical gaps among understandings of teacher leadership across organizational and cultural contexts. It challenges the use of the term teacher leadership as if there is a widely shared understanding of what it is and what it means for exercising influence and making decisions. The book describes how implicit meanings and competing assumptions about teacher leadership may contribute to uncertainty and confusion in school communities. The authors caution against the incorporation of teacher leadership in international policy making discussions without adequate consideration of contextual, organizational, historical, and cultural differences that may lead to school community members struggling to accommodate the concept or, worse, ignoring other frameworks for facilitating more culturally appropriate decision making. This book shares the findings of research conducted in several North American, European, African, Latin-American, and Australasian contexts as part of the International Study of Teacher Leadership. Study findings are used to posit contextualized conceptualizations of teacher leadership and to offer a perspective for positioning researchers and practitioners in the international teacher leadership discourse.

Interest in and knowledge of leadership and learning, separately and together, is an international and continuing phenomenon. This book adds to a somewhat under-researched aspect of the field. It focuses both on a particular form of leadership – teacher leadership, and on a particular form of learning – professional development. It considers the connection between teacher leadership and professional development and the first chapter relates this connection to a ‘Leadership for Learning’ conceptual framework, developed through an international, three-year project. The book’s chapters explore teacher leadership and professional development from a number of perspectives, giving rise to three points of particular significance. Firstly the chapters show that, either by accident or design, there is a growing cadre of teacher leaders emerging from a multitude of professional development activities and initiatives. Secondly, a number of new conceptual frameworks are put forward, alongside the adaption and development of extant ones that add to the ever-increasing theorisation of educational leadership and professional development literature. Thirdly, the chapters provide evidence of the connections between leadership and learning as conceptualised in the ‘Leadership for Learning’ framework. This book was originally published as a special issue of Professional Development in Education.

Co-published with Kappa Delta Pi, The Power of Teacher Leaders provides a comprehensive resource for understanding the ways that teacher leaders foster positive change in their schools. Distinct from school administrators, teacher leaders are professionals who remain in the classroom and use their specialized knowledge and skills to improve student achievement, influence others, and build organizational capacity. Written by leading educational researchers, each chapter of The Power of Teacher Leaders describes a different way that teachers are leading. Moving beyond the question of why teacher leaders are important and how such work is implemented, the contributing scholars to this collection offer a critical examination of the field by presenting original research, case studies, and programs in practice. Topics covered include how teachers become leaders, their wide-ranging leadership roles, and the effects of teacher leadership on student academic success and school communities. A cohesive edited collection, this book demonstrates how teacher leaders play an increasingly active role in the improvement of student learning, teacher professional development, and school climate.