Transforming School Culture through Lesson Observation

Transforming School Culture through Lesson Observation

PDF Transforming School Culture through Lesson Observation Download

  • Author: Christine Cunniffe
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 0429515510
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 154

This book sets out a three-stage programme for lesson observation showing how a collaborative whole-school approach can transform the culture of the staffroom and improve outcomes for pupils. Focusing on the emotional environment of the classroom, the relationships between teachers and pupils, and teaching and learning outcomes, it will enable schools to provide a consistent approach to lesson observation where good practice can be celebrated and shared. Revealing the positive impact of the programme on pupils’ engagement and exam results, co-operation between departments and teacher wellbeing, the book: Provides clear guidance on implementing the programme and adapting it for different contexts. Shows how data can be used for both Ofsted and Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI) inspection documentation. Adresses key issues such as culture, staff psychological contracts, the emotional environment of the school and leadership development. If you are looking to make real impact within your school and bring about change for the better, the three-stage lesson observation programme is the tool for you. This innovative approach brings consistency, parity and fairness to lesson observation creating a secure and safe environment in which pupils can learn and teachers can teach.


Transforming School Culture

Transforming School Culture

PDF Transforming School Culture Download

  • Author: Anthony Muhammad
  • Publisher: Solution Tree Press
  • ISBN: 1934009997
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 135

Busy administrators will appreciate this quick read packed with immediate, accessible strategies. This book provides the framework for understanding dynamic relationships within a school culture and ensuring a positive environment that supports the changes necessary to improve learning for all students. The author explores many aspects of human behavior, social conditions, and history to reveal best practices for building healthy school cultures.


Leverage Leadership

Leverage Leadership

PDF Leverage Leadership Download

  • Author: Paul Bambrick-Santoyo
  • Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
  • ISBN: 1118238923
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 417

Paul Bambrick-Santoyo (Managing Director of Uncommon Schools) shows leaders how they can raise their schools to greatness by following a core set of principles. These seven principles, or "levers," allow for consistent, transformational, and replicable growth. With intentional focus on these areas, leaders will leverage much more learning from the same amount of time investment. Fundamentally, each of these seven levers answers the core questions of school leadership: What should an effective leader do, and how and when should they do it. Aimed at all levels of school leadership, the book is for any principal, superintendent, or educator who wants to be a transformational leader. The book includes 30 video clips of top-tier leaders in action. These videos bring great schools to you, and support a deeper understanding of both the components of success and how it looks as a whole. There are also many helpful rubrics, extensive professional development tools, calendars, and templates. Explores the core principles of effective leadership Author's charter school, North Star Academy in Newark, New Jersey, received the highest possible award given by the U.S. Department of Education; the National Blue Ribbon Print version includes an instructive DVD with 30 video clips to show how it looks in real life. E-book customers: please note that details on how to access the content from the DVD may be found in the e-book Table of Contents. Please see the section: "How to Access DVD Contents" Bambrick-Santoyo has trained more than 1,800 school leaders nationwide in his work at Uncommon Schools and is a recognized expert on transforming schools to achieve extraordinary results.


The First 100 Days in the Main Office

The First 100 Days in the Main Office

PDF The First 100 Days in the Main Office Download

  • Author: Alan Jones
  • Publisher: IAP
  • ISBN: 1641131489
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 175

This book presents a series of cultural situations that could occur within the first one-hundred days of a school year: responding to entrenched vocabularies and behaviors, addressing professional and instructional bad habits, enacting alternative teaching scripts, leveraging a policy blindside, redefining the goals and practices of teams, and implementing outside-the-box programs. Each cultural situation offers a new school leader the opportunity to redefine the goals, values, and practices of an entrenched school culture—the Central High way. Administrators reading the title of this book may view one hundred days as an arbitrary number picked out of administrative thin air. I argue that disrupting and replacing organizational and instructional routines is a race against time. Every school day that goes by without some sign of creative destruction is one more day that comfortable organizational and instructional routines live on in main offices and classrooms. The idea for this book originated from a question I asked a former student of mine who had just signed a contract to become the principal of a high school. We were discussing the complexities of changing a school culture when I asked the following question: “What would you do on the first day in your new office to change your school’s culture?” The response to that question described a series managerial routines that all new administrators have learned to perform as they move from the classroom to the main office: organize the office, meet staff, tour the building, write a newsletter, examine data, and visit community venues. Nothing in this conversation described strategies for redefining the beliefs and values of an entrenched school culture. With this conversation in mind, I made it a point in my formal and informal contacts with school administrators to always ask the question: “What would you do in the first day in your new office to change your school’s culture?” The most common responses involved reviewing district documents, touring facilities, meeting staff, listening to stakeholders and managing systems. In each conversation, school leaders populated their responses with the current jargon of school reform: learning communities, data mining, standards-based curriculum, differentiated learning, common core standards, formative assessment, race to the top, continuous improvement, etc. While these responses encompass reasonable behaviors on the first day in the main office, not one of these actions possesses the capacity to connect educational values expressed in school mission statements—why are we here—to daily organizational and instructional routines. Each activity gives the appearance of leading, but produces no connections between beliefs, values, and practices. Although none of these responses would make or break a school culture, they do represent a pattern of thinking and behaving that holds out little possibility of fundamentally changing a school’s culture.


Creating Cultures of Thinking

Creating Cultures of Thinking

PDF Creating Cultures of Thinking Download

  • Author: Ron Ritchhart
  • Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
  • ISBN: 111897462X
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 384

Discover why and how schools must become places where thinkingis valued, visible, and actively promoted As educators, parents, and citizens, we must settle for nothingless than environments that bring out the best in people, takelearning to the next level, allow for great discoveries, and propelboth the individual and the group forward into a lifetime oflearning. This is something all teachers want and all studentsdeserve. In Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 Forces We MustMaster to Truly Transform Our Schools, Ron Ritchhart, author ofMaking Thinking Visible, explains how creating a culture ofthinking is more important to learning than any particularcurriculum and he outlines how any school or teacher can accomplishthis by leveraging 8 cultural forces: expectations, language, time,modeling, opportunities, routines, interactions, andenvironment. With the techniques and rich classroom vignettes throughout thisbook, Ritchhart shows that creating a culture of thinking is notabout just adhering to a particular set of practices or a generalexpectation that people should be involved in thinking. A cultureof thinking produces the feelings, energy, and even joy that canpropel learning forward and motivate us to do what at times can behard and challenging mental work.


Unannounced Classroom Observation

Unannounced Classroom Observation

PDF Unannounced Classroom Observation Download

  • Author: James M. Corcoran
  • Publisher:
  • ISBN:
  • Category : Observation (Educational method)
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 147


Trust-Based Observations

Trust-Based Observations

PDF Trust-Based Observations Download

  • Author: Craig Randall
  • Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
  • ISBN: 1475853572
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 215

The results are in: observations are not improving teaching and learning. Pertinently, the Gates Foundation’s recently completed effort to improve student outcomes through enhancing the teacher evaluation process failed to achieve substantive improvement. The way observations are currently designed serve as an obstacle to teacher risk-taking. Teachers fear negative evaluations when their pedagogy is rated, and they lack faith in being supported by supervisors because a trusting relationship between them and their observer has not been built. Trust-Based Observations: Maximizing Teaching and Learning Growth is a schema changing evaluation model that understands people perform at their best when they feel safe and supported. It begins with twelve, 20 minute observations per week followed by collegial conversations driven by reflective questions, sharing observed teaching strengths, and the building of safe and trusting relationships with teachers. Add the elimination of rating pedagogical skills and replace it with rating mindset, and teachers trust. When teachers fully embrace risk-taking and innovation, it leads to remarkable teaching transformations and improved student learning.


The Transparent Teacher

The Transparent Teacher

PDF The Transparent Teacher Download

  • Author: Trent Kaufman
  • Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
  • ISBN: 111853932X
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 176

A new paradigm for teachers to open their classrooms and cultivate deep professional learning Teaching is an isolating profession. Most educators receive minimal feedback on their craft, typically limited to one or two short visits from the administrator each year. While some schools do encourage their teachers to observe peers, the usual protocol is for new teachers to watch the veteran, exemplary educators, but those less experienced educators could benefit immensely from having peers observe them in action. Teacher-Driven Observation is unique in that it places the observed teacher as leader of the work, the one who identifies a personal area for development, engages her colleagues in the collection of classroom data, and utilizes the data collected to inform her ongoing instruction. Offers a new model for collecting data to inform and improve individual instruction Includes a step-by-step process for implementing Teacher-Driven Observations Contains a comprehensive case study that clearly demonstrates the value of the Teacher-Driven Observation model This book outlines and illustrates a step-by-step process for breaking down professional isolation and cultivating opportunities for meaningful learning through the Teacher-Driven Observation process.


The Revitalized Tutoring Center

The Revitalized Tutoring Center

PDF The Revitalized Tutoring Center Download

  • Author: Jeremy Koselak
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 1317289897
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 145

Tapping into the existing resources and staff available within your school, The Revitalized Tutoring Center provides an effective strategy to improve instruction and student performance. This practical guide shares the blueprint, best practices, and resources necessary to create and implement a robust, embedded tutoring center. This dynamic peer tutoring model brings together teachers, peers, and community members in a support network that identifies students in need and facilitates individualized instruction. With a peer tutoring model in place, schools are better positioned to initiate and sustain a variety of initiatives such as PLCs, RTI, formative assessment, community partnerships, and service learning, while creating equitable access and opportunity for all. This book illustrates how instructional leaders can leverage existing resources in a sustainable and cost-effective way to implement a model that ultimately leads to cultural changes, innovation, and significant academic improvement.


Reclaiming Lesson Observation

Reclaiming Lesson Observation

PDF Reclaiming Lesson Observation Download

  • Author: Matt O'Leary
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 1317221133
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 233

Reclaiming Lesson Observation explores the latest practice, thinking and research in lesson observation, putting teacher learning at its heart. Illustrated throughout with practical examples from a range of education settings, each chapter contains a rich variety of state-of-the-art, evidence-based case studies to demonstrate how new approaches to observation can be applied in practice. The book is split into four easily accessible parts: making the transition to ungraded models of lesson observation recent research studies in lesson observation peer observation, coaching and mentoring innovations in observing classroom practice. With a carefully chosen team of contributors, from senior leaders and managers to classroom practitioners and education researchers, this book provides an informed perspective on how to maximise the use of observation, and most importantly, implement proven successful schemes to improve the quality of teaching in the classroom. Reclaiming Lesson Observation is for all practising educators who want to break free from the constraints of performative lesson observation to redefine and reclaim it as a powerful tool for teacher growth, on which to build sustainable, collaborative communities of teacher learning.