Building A Better Teacher: How Teaching Works (...
The Child Development Project (CDP) focuses on fostering caring peer relationships, including students in decision-making during classroom meetings, and teaching students to better understand the feelings, needs and perspectives of others. The goal of CDP is to promote positive development among students and build upon their strengths. Students exposed to this intervention feel more positive about school and are more motivated (e.g., showed more task orientation and greater intrinsic motivation) than their counterparts not receiving this intervention in elementary school (Solomon, Battistich, Watson, Schaps, & Lewis, 2000). Likewise, CDP appears to have some long-lasting effects; students enrolled in the CDP elementary schools were less antisocial and more prosocial in middle school as well (Battistich et al., 2004). Further, in a district that pressed for high achievement, CDP was linked to positive effects on achievement outcomes as well as gains in socio-emotional skills.
Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works (...
Teachers can never know what teaching works best for their students unless they are given the freedom to try out new strategies. PLCs can make this happen by having teachers collect evidence from common assessments and using data protocols to determine which strategies were most effective.
Research shows that parental involvement can free teachers to focus more on the task of teaching children. Also, by having more contact with parents, teachers learn more about students' needs and home environment, which is information they can apply toward better meeting those needs. Parents who are involved tend to have a more positive view of teachers, which results in improved teacher morale.
Previous research has shown positive teacher-student relationships promote student academic achievement, such as better grades and test scores, but a new study at the University of Missouri found positive teacher-student relationships lead to better teaching as well.
For instance, a middle school social studies teacher may have an ELL teacher co-teaching with him during one class period because five students in that class are newcomers to the United States and speak only Arabic fluently. A high school teacher may have one or two sections of biology to which many students with IEPs for reading are channeled; a co-teacher who specializes in reading disabilities co-teaches in these classes. A 4th grade teacher may have two students with 504 plans and another three who have specific learning disabilities in her class; she works alongside a special education teacher daily during lessons in the four core academic subject areas.
One teach, one observe: One teacher delivers instruction while the other observes student learning. Usually the observer collects data on student understanding so that the co-teaching team can better plan future instruction. Sometimes, specific students are watched closely so that the teachers can determine new strategies to use with them.
Co-teaching works better when the partners agree on who does what, when. Clearly defined roles and responsibilities prevent either partner from feeling the other has overstepped a boundary or shirked responsibilities.
Hello!I really loved reading this post. I have found it very difficult to work with another teacher, while discussing the needs of different students or jus the way we teach is very different. These tips are very helpful and seem like a great way to start rebuilding a relationship with a teaching partner. I also think this is a great outlook on all places of work, these tips seem almost universal and made with respect to one another. Thank you!!!
One of the most critical components of building a positive school culture is fostering relationships among the teachers. Creating relationships among teachers will lead to increased collaboration, more trust, better communication, and much success. To assist you with building an effective team and more positive school culture, we are providing you with 27 team-building activities.
We host a slate of workshops, laboratory classes, and seminars for teachers and teacher educators to watch, analyze, practice, and receive immediate feedback and support on the work of teaching and practice-based teacher education in real time.
Faced with the pandemic, countries have combined high-tech and low-tech approaches to help teachers better support student learning. In Cambodia, for example, education leaders designed a strategy that combines SMS, printed handouts, and continuous teacher feedback, taking advantage of the high mobile phone penetration in the country. The approach goes beyond providing low-tech materials: it gives information on how to access learning programs, ensures students access paper-based learning materials, and includes home visits to monitor distance learning activities. Teachers are also expected to provide weekly paper-based resources to students and meet them weekly to provide their marked worksheets and issue new ones for the week ahead.
In order to build back stronger education systems, countries will need to apply those teaching initiatives that have proved to be effective during the remote learning phase and integrate them into the regular education system. It is critical to empower teachers, investing in the necessary skills development and capacity building to exploit the full potential of remote and blended learning.
I was struck by the section on empowering teachers in this blog. But was not too sure how teachers can be freed from administrative work in schools. Administrative work in schools for teachers in my view has to do with marking registers, marking scripts of learners work and gathering data on the daily activities of the teaching and learning interaction. These are very important activities that Teachers have to undertake to provide evidence for the experiences gathered while interacting with learners. In this Covid-19 period, these administrative duties are important to help formulate better responses to ensuring learning achievement and outcomes as well as the best ways to improving services to learners and parents.
When looking across types of schools, two factors further contribute to the shortage of highly qualified teachers in high-poverty schools. First, while the data still confirm that higher credentials deter attrition (in this analysis, shown descriptively), we find that this link between quality and retention is weaker in high-poverty schools, and this leads to a relative leakage of credentials through attrition in high-poverty schools. We present our own analysis of these links in Table 2. In both high- and low-poverty schools, the credentials of teachers who stay in the school are better than those of teachers who quit teaching altogether. But the differences are narrower for teachers in high-poverty schools (with the exception of the share of teachers who majored in their subject of main assignment).
As is often the case, knowing that something works and can have a great impact is not enough to just simply make it happen. There are many models for building teacher collaboration, including professional learning communities (PLCs), grade-level teams, and cross-curricular teams.
By creating ideal working conditions for teachers, the grants would recruit the best candidates and provide them with the supports and resources necessary to be effective educators. This would improve the quality of teaching, enhance student learning, and ultimately boost student achievement. The schools participating in this program would also have the opportunity to demonstrate a new way forward for the profession as a whole by modeling great working conditions and how great conditions lead to better teaching and student learning and, in the long run, how they improve student achievement.
In an analysis of national public school teacher data, the Economic Policy Institute found that most teachers are not highly satisfied with their professional development experiences.92 The study found that only 50 percent of teachers have release time from teaching for professional development, and only 28 percent received reimbursement for conference and workshop fees.93 Furthermore, a TNTP survey of teachers and school leaders found that teachers feel they are not getting clear information about their strengths and weaknesses to improve their instruction.94 Half of the teachers surveyed did not think the assistance they were receiving helped them improve their practice.95 These surveys illustrate that teachers want quality professional development experiences and need support to engage in learning that improves their practice.
Research shows that a collaborative school environment where teachers have good working relationships can improve the quality of instruction and student learning. One study found that students had increased achievement gains in math and reading in schools where teachers reported better quality collaboration.138 Another study found that students had higher gains in math achievement when they were taught by teachers who spoke to other teachers about math and also reported a feeling of trust and closeness among their colleagues.139 To increase student achievement, it is important to leverage the human and social capital already available within the school building.
Leaders, principals, and other administrators play an important role in creating high-quality learning environments for students and better working conditions for teachers. A positive school climate needs a high-performing instructional leader invested in creating the kinds of teaching and learning conditions that support teachers in doing their jobs well. Just as all leaders have a role to play in setting the tone for an organization, creating a welcoming school environment is one of the responsibilities of a school leader. Principals who function as strong instructional leaders play a critical role in creating a learning culture within their school.144 041b061a72