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Research for Better Teaching Publications

The Skillful Teacher

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$62.95

  Building Your Teaching Skills
© 2008 By: Jon Saphier, Mary Ann Haley-Speca and Robert Gower

This book has become the gold standard text in many colleges and school districts across the country for studying generic pedagogy. Designed for both the novice and the experienced educator. The Skillful Teacher  is a unique synthesis of the Knowledge Base on Teaching with powerful repertoires for matching teaching strategies to student needs. Designed as a practical guide for practitioners working to broaden their teaching skills, the book combines theory with practice and focuses on 18 critical areas of classroom performance. A must for instructional coaches and mentors!

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The Skillful Leader II

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$54.95

  Confronting Conditions That Undermine Learning
© 2008 By: Alexander D. Platt, Caroline E. Tripp, Robert G. Fraser, James R. Warnock, Rachel E. Curtis

This important new “Skillful Leader” book arms administrators and teacher leaders with step-by-step strategies to confront and raise the performance of teams and individuals who undermine student learning. The text includes methods of collecting data, strategies for intervention and tips for hiring and training. New individual and community profiles, together with legal notes, provide practical tools for busy leaders.

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The Data Coach's Guide

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$50.25

  Communicating to Lead and Learn
2008

By Nancy Love,Katherine E. Stiles, Susan Mundry, Kathryn DiRanna

This resource helps data-team facilitators move schools away from unproductive data practices and toward examining data for systematic and continuous improvement in instruction and learning. The book, which includes a CD-ROM with slides and reproducibles, illustrates how the authors’ model has proven successful in:

  • Narrowing achievement gaps in all content areas and grade levels.
  • Achieving strong, continuous gains in local and state assessments in mathematics, science and reading.
  • Initiating powerful conversations about race/ethnicity, class, educational status, gender and language differences.
  • Developing a vision for high-performing, data-informed school culture.

“This book offers a compelling message of hope and resolve. The authors’ three-year journey in a multiplicity of diverse, underperforming, high-poverty schools across the nation has resulted in a treasure chest of knowledge and experiences about how to professionally develop data coaches in ways that benefit some of our most underserved students. This book provides powerful resources to those who have the belief, passion, and desire to implementing collaborative data inquiries in schools and districts.” – From the Foreword by Ruth Johnson

 

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The Skillful Leader

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$44.95

  Confronting Mediocre Teaching
2000 By Alexander D. Platt, Caroline E. Tripp, Wayne R. Ogden and Robert G. Fraser

The knowledge and/or performance of mediocre teachers is neither substantive and skilled enough to help most children learn nor poor enough to warrant a move toward dismissal. All children, however, deserve expert instruction from every teacher. The Skillful Leader presents a tool kit of field-tested strategies that supervisors and evaluators can use to identify and improve mediocre teaching. It includes a comprehensive series of framing questions to help the evaluator isolate performance strengths and weaknesses and examples of observation and summary evaluation reports. It also contains steps and strategies for designing improvement plans where the responsibility for change rests with the teacher. Using case studies, legal notes and a model contract, assessment tools, and personal accounts of leaders in action, the authors show how even the most seemingly entrenched teacher can be helped.

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Talk Sense

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$29.95

  Communicating to Lead and Learn
2007 By: Barry Jentz

Leaders who watch video tapes of themselves handling difficult interactions confront their too tough or too nice approaches to improving performance in the form of sharp discrepancies between their self-image and how they actually behave: Leaders who believe they are open and truthful observe themselves withholding information, communicating opaquely, and speaking judgmentally without explanation or evidence. Leaders who think they are good listeners notice they seldom pay attention to what others are saying. And leaders who pride themselves on promoting an open culture of learning discover that they are closed and dismissive. As long as they remain blind to these discrepancies, leaders inadvertently foster mistrust - and lose the very credibility they are attempting to gain. Without trust and credibility (surely the bedrock of effective leadership), leaders cannot advance their agendas for improving performance.

Using stories that illustrate both inept and skillful communication, Talk Sense will walk you through a transformational process of:

  • Discovering discrepancies between your self-image and actual behavior
  • Inventing a new mind set, a new skill set, and a new rationale for communication, and
  • Practicing in a "protected setting" through self-help exercises.

Your transformational experience will take place in stories about interactions at home as well as work, so guide your efforts to integrate home and work lives. Integrating the two is vital to leadership effectiveness.

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John Adams' Promise

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$24.95

  How to Have Good Schools for All Our Children, Not Just for Some
2005 By: Jon Saphier
Curriculum reform, structural reform, funding reform, organization reform - all these 20th century efforts have failed to make a significant dent in the achievement gap and the performance of disadvantaged students, especially in cities and poor rural areas. What are the most important targets for school improvement? John Adams' Promise contains three essays. "The Three 'Big Rocks of Education Reform" discusses the need for 1)teaching expertise based on professional knowledge, 2)leadership for strong organizational culture, and 3) higher salaries and differentiated career paths for teachers. The second essay talks about the ten subsystems that form the supply chain for the teacher workforce. It defines the roles of the university, the state, the school district, and the individual school. "Including Student Results in Teacher Evaluation," the third essay, is a case study of teacher evaluation in Montgomery County, Maryland. It includes samples of teacher evaluations.

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How to Make Supervision and Evaluation Really Work

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$24.95

  Supervision and Evaluation in the Context of Strengthening School Culture
1993 By: Jon Saphier
How teachers are supervised and evaluated sends powerful messages to the staff and community about whether expert instruction is important. It also shows if teachers are valued as constant learners and decision-makers. This book describes the roles of supervisors and evaluators and explains the steps for developing a good supervision/evaluation system. It identifies four criteria for effective teaching - teaching techniques, teacher-student relationships, professional responsibilities, and staff relationships - and includes parameters and examples of what one might consider to determine if teachers meet these criteria. It also includes sample observation and evaluation forms and pre-conference and post-conference guidelines. How to Make Supervision and Evaluation Really Work offers school leaders a carefully integrated approach for transforming an often divisive supervision and evaluation system into a positive force for strengthening school culture.

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How to Bring Vision to School Improvement

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$21.95

 
1993 By: Jon Saphier & John D'Auria

This practical guide provides a proven step-by-step sequence for generating consensus among parents and staff about some of the valued core outcomes they want for all children. Then it shows how to achieve them through concrete areas in school and family life.

 

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How to Make Decisions That Stay Made

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$6.95

 
1993 By: Jon Saphier, Tom Bigda-Peyton, & Geoff Pierson, © 1989
This brief guide, first published in 1989 by ASCD, offers administrators and staff twelve clearly defined steps for making better decisions in schools. A case study illustrates how each step would work in an actual school setting.
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Activators and Summarizers Set

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$30.00

 
By: Jon Saphier & Mary Ann Haley

Special price if you purchase the Activators and Summarizers set. See descriptions below for each book

 

 

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Activators

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$17.50

  Activity Structures to Engage Students' Thinking before Instruction
1993 By: Jon Saphier & Mary Ann Haley
Activators is a collection of classroom-tested, practical activity structures for engaging students before introducing new content or skills. Each structure is designed to elicit what students already know about a topic, to surface misconceptions, and to create cognitive hooks for presentation of new material. Many of the structures help students develop higher level thinking skills. Each structure is fully explained with examples and step-by-step directions. Some lend themselves to use with individuals while others are better used with pairs, small groups, or full class. Most can be used at all levels with any content.

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Summarizers

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$17.50

  Activity Structures to Support Integration and Retention of New Learning
1993 By: Jon Saphier & Mary Ann Haley
Summarizers is a collection of classroom-tested, practical activity structures for getting students involved with content during and after periods of instruction. Each structure provides a framework for guiding students to summarize for themselves what is important, what they have learned, and/or how it fits with what they already know. Many of the structures involve the use of higher level thinking skills. Each structure is fully explained with examples and step-by-step directions. Some lend themselves to use with individuals while others are better used with pairs, small groups, or full class. Most can be used at all levels with any content.

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