Pedagogy

The First Days Of School: How To Be An Effective Teacher

With nearly 1.4 million copies sold, you'll learn practical techniques on discipline, procedures and routines, teaching for mastery, cooperative learning, and positive expectations. You'll find it difficult to put this book down as you become an even more effective teacher.

Relentless Pursuit: A Year in the Trenches with Teach for America

A revealing look inside a national phenomenon, Teach For America, which, since its founding in 1990, has pursued one of the most daring—and controversial—strategies for closing the educational achievement gap between the richest and poorest students in the country.

The story is set in South Los Angeles at Locke High School, an institution founded in 1967 in the spirit of renewal that followed the devastating Watts riots but that, four decades on, has made frustratingly little progress in lifting the fortunes of the area’s mostly black and Latino children. Into this place, which resembles a prison as much as a school, are dropped a group of “recruits” from Teach For America, the fast-growing organization devoted to undoing generations of disadvantage through a fiercely regimented selection and deployment of America’s best and brightest. Nearly twenty thousand top college graduates apply for two thousand slots. Then, with only a summer of training, the lucky ones are sent to face the most desperate of classroom environments.

Giving us a year in the life of Locke through the absorbing experiences of four TFA corps members—Rachelle, Phillip, Hrag, and Taylor—Donna Foote recounts the progress of their idealistic but unorthodox mission and shares its results, by turns exhausting, exhilarating, maddening, and unforgettable. As the four struggle to negotiate the expectations of their Locke colleagues (most conventionally trained, many skeptical) and the relentlessly exacting demands of the overseers at TFA headquarters (to say nothing of the typical stresses of youth), we see these young people assume a level of responsibility that might crush a seasoned educator. Limited training must often be supplemented with improvisation in a school where Rachelle’s special ed biology students prove to need remedial reading more urgently than lab work, while Taylor’s ninth-grade English classes show themselves equal to discussing Shakespeare. Through it all, these teachers are sustained not only by the missionary fervor of their cause but also by the intermittent evidence that they can make a tangible difference.

Without romanticizing the successes or minimizing the failures, Relentless Pursuit relates, through the experiences of these four new teachers, the strengths, the foibles, and the peculiarities of an operation to accomplish what no government program has yet managed — to overcome one of the most basic and vexing of social inequities, a problem we can no longer afford to ignore.

Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement

104 Activities That Build: Self-Esteem, Teamwork, Communication, Anger Management, Self-Discovery, Coping Skills

Classroom Instruction that Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement (ASCD)

This brief book presents research on the best strategies for raising student achievement through classroom instruction. Readers will find a wealth of research evidence, statistical data, and case studies. Nine categories of instructional strategies—Identifying Similarities and Differences; Summarizing and Note Taking; Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition; Homework and Practice; Nonlinguistic Representations; Cooperative Learning; Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback; Generating and Testing Hypotheses; and Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers—that maximize student learning are introduced, along with the pertinent information to understand and synthesize each. For elementary school educators, administrators, and academic advisors and counselors.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56

From one of AmericaÂ’s most celebrated educators, an inspiring guide to transforming every childÂ’s education

In a Los Angeles neighborhood plagued by guns, gangs, and drugs, there is an exceptional classroom known as Room 56. The fifth graders inside are first-generation immigrants who live in poverty and speak English as a second language. They also play Vivaldi, perform Shakespeare, score in the top 1 percent on standardized tests, and go on to attend Ivy League universities. Rafe Esquith is the teacher responsible for these accomplishments.

From the man whom The New York Times calls “a genius and a saint” comes a revelatory program for educating today’s youth. In Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire!, Rafe Esquith reveals the techniques that have made him one of the most acclaimed educators of our time. The two mottoes in Esquith’s classroom are “Be Nice, Work Hard,” and “There Are No Shortcuts.” His students voluntarily come to school at 6:30 in the morning and work until 5:00 in the afternoon. They learn to handle money responsibly, tackle algebra, and travel the country to study history. They pair Hamlet with rock and roll, and read the American classics. Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire! is a brilliant and inspiring road map for parents, teachers, and anyone who cares about the future success of our nation’s children. BACKCOVER: Praise for Rafe Esquith:

“Rafe Esquith is my only hero.”
—Sir Ian McKellan

“Politicians, burbling over how to educate the underclass, would do well to stop by Rafe Esquith’s fifth grade class as it mounts its annual Shakespeare play. Sound like a grind? Listen to the peals of laughter bouncing off the classroom walls.”
—Time

“Esquith is a modern-day Thoreau, preaching the value of good work, honest self-reflection, and the courage to go one’s own way.”
—Newsday

Teaching Outside the Box: How to Grab Your Students By Their Brains

From seating plans to Shakespeare, Teaching Outside the Box offers practical strategies that will help both new teachers and seasoned veterans create dynamic classroom environments where students enjoy learning and teachers enjoy teaching. This indispensable book is filled with no-nonsense advice, checklists, and handouts as well as

• A step-by-step plan to make the first week of school a success
• Approaches for creating a positive discipline plan
• Methods for motivating students, especially reluctant readers
• Strategies for successful classroom management
• Suggestions for creating and grading student portfolios

What the Best College Teachers Do

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, 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.

First Year Teacher's Survival Guide: Ready-To-Use Strategies, Tools & Activities For Meeting The Challenges Of Each School Day (J-B Ed:Survival Guides)

The best-selling First Year Teacher's Survival Kit gives new teachers a wide variety of tested strategies, activities, and tools for creating a positive and dynamic learning environment while meeting the challenges of each school day. Packed with valuable tips, the book helps new teachers with everything from becoming effective team players and connecting with students to handling behavior problems and working within diverse classrooms.

The new edition is fully revised and updated to cover changes in the K-12 classroom over the past five years. Updates to the second edition include:

•Â New ways teachers can meet the professional development requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act
•Â Entirely new section on helping struggling readers, to address the declining literacy rate among today’s students
•Â Expanded coverage of helpful technology solutions for the classroom
•Â Expanded information on teaching English Language Learners
•Â Greater coverage of the issues/challenges facing elementary teachers
•Â More emphasis on how to reach and teach students of poverty
•Â Updated study techniques that have proven successful with at-risk students
•Â Tips on working effectively within a non-traditional school year schedule
•Â The latest strategies for using graphic organizers
•Â More emphasis on setting goals to help students to succeed
•Â More information on intervening with students who are capable but choose not to work
•Â Updated information on teachers’ rights and responsibilities regarding discipline issues
•Â Fully revised Resources appendix including the latest educational Web sites and software