Don’t do more work—do the right work. Educators at all levels have increasing demands keeping them working harder than ever, but they are often working hard on things that don’t really help them reach the loftiest of goals—student success. This "Fake Work" can mire the most dedicated educator in exhaustion, burnout, and a lack of confidence that improvement is possible. Nielson and Burks show leaders and their teams how to stop doing Fake Work, by providing tools for gaining focus, building high-performance teams, and identifying and driving the right work with the right behaviors. When you offer your team a better way of working, planning, and collaborating, you turn Fake Work into Real Work—and stagnancy into dynamic change. This data-driven, research-based guide shows you • An overall approach to addressing your culture—the foundational elements that supports the change that sets you up for maximum performance. • A simple, three-part model—strategy, alignment, execution—for shedding Fake Work • Road maps for aligning organizational strategies and actions • Tools for gaining focus, building teams, and cultivating productive behaviors • Real educators’ stories • Exercises, reflection questions, charts, checklists, and more School change remains elusive when the path to success is murky. Clear the way for principals, teachers and students by turning Fake Work into Real Work—and uncertainty into true success.

“This book merits every American’s serious consideration” (Vice President Joe Biden): from the Secretary of Education under President Obama, an exposé of the status quo that helps maintain a broken system at the expense of our kids’ education, and threatens our nation’s future. “Education runs on lies. That’s probably not what you’d expect from a former Secretary of Education, but it’s the truth.” So opens Arne Duncan’s How Schools Work, although the title could just as easily be How American Schools Work for Some, Not for Others, and Only Now and Then for Kids. Drawing on nearly three decades in education—from his mother’s after-school program on Chicago’s South Side to his tenure as Secretary of Education in Washington, DC—How Schools Work follows Arne (as he insists you call him) as he takes on challenges at every turn: gangbangers in Chicago housing projects, parents who call him racist, teachers who insist they can’t help poor kids, unions that refuse to modernize, Tea Partiers who call him an autocrat, affluent white progressive moms who hate yearly tests, and even the NRA, which once labeled Arne the “most extreme anti-gun member of President Obama’s Cabinet.” Going to a child’s funeral every couple of weeks, as he did when he worked in Chicago, will do that to a person. How Schools Work exposes the lies that have caused American kids to fall behind their international peers, from early childhood all the way to college graduation rates. But it also identifies what really does make a school work. “As insightful as it is inspiring” (Washington Book Review), How Schools Work will embolden parents, teachers, voters, and even students to demand more of our public schools. If America is going to be great, then we can accept nothing less.

Break down the barriers that keep professional learning from sticking! Real professional learning takes place when there is a permanent change in practice. This book outlines what it means to intentionally interrupt the status quo in order to overcome barriers to learning that impede permanent change. The authors explain the psychological processes involved in learning and which biases get in the way of making professional learning stick. Staff developers will find tools and strategies for: * Moving professional learning beyond activities to deepen conceptual change* Enabling new learning by building three key capacities: a learning focus, collaborative inquiry, and instructional leadership* Embedding and sustaining a true learning culture in schools.

Some great teachers are born, but most are self-made. And the way to make yourself a great teacher is to learn to think and act like one. In this updated second edition of the best-selling Never Work Harder Than Your Students, Robyn R. Jackson reaffirms that every teacher can become a master teacher. The secret is not a specific strategy or technique, nor it is endless hours of prep time. It's developing a master teacher mindset—rigorously applying seven principles to your teaching until they become your automatic response: Start where you students are. Know where your students are going. Expect to get your students there. Support your students along the way. Use feedback to help you and your students get better. Focus on quality rather than quantity. Never work harder than your students. In her conversational and candid style, Jackson explains the mastery principles and how to start using them to guide planning, instruction, assessment, and classroom management. She answers questions, shares stories from her own practice and work with other teachers, and provides all-new, empowering advice on navigating external evaluation. There's even a self-assessment to help you identify your current levels of mastery and take control of your own practice. Teaching is hard work, and great teaching means doing the right kind of hard work: the kind that pays off. Join tens of thousands of teachers around the world who have embarked on their journeys toward mastery. Discover for yourself the difference that Jackson's principles will make in your classroom and for your students.

"A tool box overflowing with ideas that will help every staff developer craft a school culture hospitable to adult and student learning." —Roland S. Barth, Author, Lessons Learned "The book speaks to many audiences, including instructional coaches, PLC leaders, action researchers and group leaders, and university professors working with action researchers and PLCs." —Gail Ritchie, Coleader, Teacher Researcher Network Fairfax County Public Schools, VA "A terrific resource for connecting teacher networks and action research to create powerful professional development opportunities. This book is a joy to read." —Ellen Meyers, Senior Vice President Teachers Network Powerful tools for facilitating teachers′ professional development and optimizing school improvement efforts! Professional learning communities (PLCs) and action research are popular and proven frameworks for professional development. While both can greatly improve teaching and learning, few resources have combined the two practices into one coherent approach. The Reflective Educator′s Guide to Professional Development provides educators with strategies, activities, and tools to develop inquiry-oriented PLCs. Nationally known school reform experts Nancy Fichtman Dana and Diane Yendol-Hoppey cover the ten essential elements of a healthy PLC, provide case studies of actual inquiry-based PLCs, and present lessons learned to help good coaches become great coaches. With this step-by-step guide, readers will be able to: Organize, assess, and maintain high-functioning, inquiry-oriented PLCs Facilitate the development of study questions Establish the trust and collective commitment necessary for successful action research Enable PLC members to develop, analyze, and share research results Lead successful renewal and reform efforts By combining two powerful training practices, coaches, workshop leaders, and staff developers can ensure continuous, robust school-based professional development.

Dial back and make room for impact With teacher and leader workloads and burnout at an all-time high, it’s time for de-implementation: de-prioritizing and deleting the less effective, higher-cost initiatives we implement in schools. De-implementation allows us to focus on practices that have more supporting evidence and a higher probability of positive impact on students, and at the same time gain much-needed work-life balance. In Making Room for Impact, the internationally respected education experts and authors provide a clear four-stage process for winnowing down teaching and learning to high-effect practices. Informed by the latest research in learning, education, healthcare, and psychology, each step and tool is designed to move educators through the hard parts of letting go. Inside, you’ll find: Research that tells us the process of schooling is often over-engineered and that gives us permission to dial back, carefully A step-by-step process for deciding which initiatives are most effective—and how to let go of the ones that are not Useful tools, templates, and charts that educators can immediately use in their de-implementation work—at school, in teaching teams, or at the system level It’s time to get our lives back—without harming student learning. If we can collectively learn to let go and understand how to identify which initiatives are worthwhile, we’ll have more time for what truly matters.

Each volume contains over 150 tunes.