Show educators how to optimize teacher and student learning with high-quality teams! Designed around the best-selling book, this comprehensive multimedia presentation offers staff developers the necessary materials to help educators develop results-oriented professional learning communities. Demonstrate how focused teams promote professional relationships, student engagement and achievement, and improved management of the stresses of change and accountability by: Developing a growth-oriented climate that is cultivated regularly Sharing knowledge and skills to improve instruction Building resilience by creating solutions that help teachers better manage their lives inside and outside the classroom Determining priorities and creating excellence by responding to colleagues’ needs for learning and growth Includes: DVD (47 min.), Facilitator’s Guide, CD-ROM, Companion Book

This resource shows how students who work together and share ideas with one another can deepen their understanding of essential concepts. Combining effective grouping strategies with other research-based practices, this resource focuses on the power of student collaboration and dialogue in differentiated classrooms. Students can strengthen critical thinking and achievement through three key skills: teaming to learn, sharing knowledge and skills, and integrating and applying learning. The authors offer more than 100 reproducible planning tools to help learners: • Improve critical thinking • Generalize and infer • Integrate content and Identify patterns • Increase adaptive and analytical reasoning By utilizing these innovative teaching tools and strategies with their student teams, teachers can prepare all students for deeper thinking and success—both in the classroom and on assessments!

"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 for implementing collaborative data inquiries in schools and districts." —From the Foreword by Ruth S. Johnson Use data as an effective tool for school change and improvement! How can data coaches create a collaborative culture in which data is used continuously and effectively to improve teaching and learning? The Data Coach′s Guide to Improving Learning for All Students provides detailed guidance for helping schools move away from unproductive data practices and toward examining data as a catalyst for systematic and continuous improvement in instruction and student learning. To help both current and aspiring data coaches facilitate school-based data teams and lead teachers in collaborative inquiry, the authors demonstrate a data model that has been field-tested and proven to be effective in: Narrowing achievement gaps between students in all content areas and grade levels Achieving strong, steady gains in local and state assessments in mathematics, science, and reading Using data as a springboard for powerful conversations about race/ethnicity, class, educational status, gender, and language differences Developing shared values and a vision for creating a high-performing, data-informed school culture This culturally responsive resource benefits staff developers, teachers, and administrators interested in creating change through effective data practices, and includes a CD-ROM keyed to the book, with templates, handouts, PowerPoint slides, resources, and sample goals and agendas.

In this fascinating book, the author of The Hinge Factor and The Weather Factor surveys revolutions across the centuries, vividly portraying the people and events that brought wrenching, often enduring and always bloody change to countries and societies almost overnight. Durschmied begins with the French Revolution and goes on to examine the revolutions of Mexico in 1910, Russia in 1917, and Japan in 1945, as well as the failed putsch against Hitler in 1944. His account of the Cuban Revolution is peppered with personal anecdotes for he was the first foreign correspondent to meet Castro when the future leader was still in the Sierra Maestra. He concludes with the Iranian Revolution that ousted the Shah in 1979 another that he personally covered and, in a new preface, extends his analysis to the Arab Spring.Each revolution, Durschmied contends, has its own dynamic and memorable cast of characters, but all too often the end result is the same: mayhem, betrayal, glory, and death. Unlike the American Revolution, which is the counterexample, few revolutions are spared the harsh reality that most devour their own children. Durschmied is a supremely gifted reporter who has transformed the media he works in. Newsweek A] light and lively narrative that serves as a useful introduction for the general reader. Library Journal

Standards were developed to guide educational leaders in recognizing and addressing the essential conditions for effective use of technology to support P-12 education.

Textbooks are symbols of centuries-old education. They're often outdated as soon as they hit students' desks. Acting "by the textbook" implies compliance and a lack of creativity. It's time to ditch those textbooks--and those textbook assumptions about learning In Ditch That Textbook, teacher and blogger Matt Miller encourages educators to throw out meaningless, pedestrian teaching and learning practices. He empowers them to evolve and improve on old, standard, teaching methods. Ditch That Textbook is a support system, toolbox, and manifesto to help educators free their teaching and revolutionize their classrooms.