Tackle the common challenges of being a floating teacher from managing equipment and supplies to pre-planning lessons and organizing materials. Read the guide cover to cover, or reference the information you need right now. Randall also offers proven tips for administrators to support and fund teachers. Reproducible checklists, forms, templates, and lesson plans make your job easier, your time more productive, and your outlook positive.

Because of elementary school overcrowding, federal "class size reduction" funding has not been used to reduce class sizes, but instead has been used to hire extra teachers to work with classroom teachers for some portion of the school day. These teachers are called "floating" teachers in most schools, but in some schools they are called "push-in" teachers, shorthand for teachers that come into the classroom to provide remediation services for children. The Educational Priorities Panel's (EPP) 2000 monitoring report, "Smaller is Better," primarily looked at schools where early-grade class sizes had been reduced with state funds, but staff interviews were also conducted at two schools using floating teachers. In the second year of the implementation of this federal program, EPP took a closer look at the assignments of floating teachers and staff perceptions of the usefulness of the program. The present report presents data on all the assignments of floating teachers, including strengths, weaknesses, assignment and scheduling problems, and attitudes of school administration. [Introductory note by Noreen Connell.].

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, Ken 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.

The best-selling book of easy-to-implement classroom lessons from the world’s premier educational system—now available in paperback. Finland shocked the world when its fifteen-year-olds scored highest on the first Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a set of tests evaluating critical-thinking skills in math, science, and reading. That was in 2001; even today, this tiny Nordic nation continues to amaze. How does Finnish education—with short school days, light homework loads, and little standardized testing—produce students who match the PISA scores of other nations with more traditional “work ethic” standards? When Timothy Walker started teaching fifth graders at a Helsinki public school, he began a search for the secrets behind the successes of Finland’s education system. Highlighting specific strategies that support joyful K–12 classrooms and can be integrated with U.S. educational standards, this book, available in paperback for the first time, gathers what he learned and shows how any teacher can implement many of Finland's best practices. A new foreword by the author addresses the urgent questions of teaching, and living, in these pandemic times.