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The article focuses on helping new teachers manage misconceptions and challenges in their early careers. Topics include the importance of open communication with school leaders to address unrealistic expectations, the need for effective classroom management based on relationships rather than just class dynamics, and the role of parents in supporting, rather than complicating, the educational process.

The article focuses on the Georgia Southern University paid residency program, which supports student teachers financially and emotionally while they gain classroom experience. Topics include the financial benefits and support structures of the residency model, the role and impact of mentor teachers, and the alignment challenges between residency assignments and educational requirements.

The article focuses on the transformative journey from early teaching failures to professional growth through embracing imperfection and continuous learning. Topics include the shift from perfectionism to viewing teaching as a craft, the importance of creating a culture of vulnerability and experimentation, and the need to disrupt martyrdom narratives in education to support sustainable careers for new teachers.

The article discusses about self-directed learning that teaches students to start noticing essential elements. Topics discussed include three points that drive students for self-learning, where it discusses in brief about noticing relevant actions, words, tasks, and tools within the classroom that support learning and mentions that noticing is the active process of being attentive to what is happening during a learning experience.

The article discusses that grades detract students from their motivation to learn unless classroom grading practices are improved and enhanced. As a young teacher, the artucle author found the authority to give grades empowering. The grade was her ace in the hole, providing the leverage needed to entice students to cooperate. She wanted her students to wonder, to understand and ultimately to be changed. Many of them simply wanted a good grade. Grades measured student's willingness to cooperate and work hard rather than their understanding of economics or their ability to use that understanding to think more clearly about their world. When grades are not deliberately connected to learning, they provide little valuable feedback regarding student's academic strengths and weaknesses, and can even be counterproductive. Although grades should definitely reflect the quality of students' academic performance, many teachers believe that students' work habits, responsibility, and attitudes. According to the article author it is essential to report academic and nonacademic factors separately. One can assess a student's ability to turn things in on time and report it as part of a nonacademic grade component. When assessing homework assignments, it's especially important to distinguish between academic achievement and nonacademic factors.

The article explores how to get the most out of a coaching session and also mentions several tips to help teachers bring their best including ask questions, start with a positive attitude, and work hard. It also mentions the expectation of confidentiality while sharing information in coaching sessions. It examines that barriers against external interruption in place, quieting internal distractions in session with a coach can be a formidable challenge.

The article focuses on the study of contemporary education through comparison of educational activities with games. Many educators, as well as school bureaucracies, consciously or unconsciously are involved in activities which resemble games. Four games played in many educational organizations are "Bureaucracy," "Deviance," "Performance" and "Game." The introduction of these games to studying an educational organization can be revealing of bureaucratic structures. The fit between social arrangements, such as organizations and creative and/or intelligent personalities, becomes evident through analysis of the games being played. Bureaucracy is a low-level game to add more resources to the school, or to climb in the traditional power structure. If played as a game, Bureaucracy readily leads to fantasy. When examined, Bureaucracy releases hostile feelings induced by organizational stress. The frustrations felt by people caught up in bureaucratic structures can be revealed in stark relief, especially by teachers and students. Deviance is a useful game for exploring the meaning which various outside people represent to the organization and to ascertain behaviors or actions which appear somewhat different from those acceptable to the group.

The article discusses the concept of mastery learning and its implications for the educational achievement of students. The author addresses concerns relating to the level of performance that students need to achieve before being considered good enough. Topics explored also include the use of competency-based schemes by schools in giving accolades, challenges associated with the mastery learning process, and contributing factors in the effective transfer of learning. INSET: Websites for Sample Test Items Measuring Wider-World Mastery.

The article discusses the significance of visible thinking on students in the U.S. Thinking routines are one element of visible thinking, which help learners to ponder on topics that might not seem to invite intricate thinking. Visible thinking has six key principles which include learning as a consequence of thinking, good thinking is not only a matter of skills but also a matter of dispositions, the development of thinking is a social endeavor and fostering thinking requires making thinking visible. Moreover, its goal is to deepen learning in the content areas and fostering thinking skills and dispositions in schools which creates a chemistry that can be truly transformative for learners and teachers.

The article presents information on formative assessment, for which along with the teachers even students are equally important users of that information. Formative assessment began with offering students a clear picture of learning targets. To make significant achievements, students need to know what learning targets they are responsible for mastering, and at what level. Teachers often use strong examples, or exemplars, but avoid using weak examples because they worry that students will accidentally emulate them. Teachers must create the conditions for learning, however, students ultimately decide whether they feel capable of learning and whether they will do the work. Formative assessment provided an understanding of specific steps that students could take to improve. To know where they are going, students must know what excellent performance looks like. The final essential step in making formative assessment work is to keep students in touch with what they can do to close the gap between where they are now and where they need to be. This strategy breaks learning into more manageable chunks for students. Students gain insight from explaining the learning that their work represents and what they plan to work on next.

The article focuses on the assessment in teaching used by mathematics teachers to determine whether the lesson was accessible to all students, what the students learned and how one can improve the lesson to make it more effective. The article author was a was a devotee of discovery learning, sometimes called inquiry learning. This instructional approach involves designing learning activities that help students discover concepts and make sense of facts and principles for themselves, rather than relying on textbooks or teacher explanations. Students need to be able to look at mathematical situations from different perspectives. Incorporating student's reasoning into both written assignments and classroom discussions was a crucial step toward making assessment an integral and ongoing aspect of article author's classroom instruction and now it has become a staple of her mathematics teaching. One of the main strategies she uses to assess students' learning is incorporating writing in mathematics assignments. There are many ways to present writing assignments that yield as much information as possible about what students are thinking. Solving mathematics problems often requires making false starts and searching for new approaches. A good technique for assessing students' understanding as well as differentiating instruction is to make an assignment adjustable in some way. Solving mathematics problems often require making false starts and searching for new approaches.

The article discusses the significance of adaptations that teachers must make to curriculum in order to better provide special services to various students based on standardized tests or medical diagnoses, in addition to the importance of clearly communicating and clarifying the meaning of such adaptations.

The article examines the cognitive level, length, and syntax of pupil responses to teacher questions. It shows that the cognitive level, length, and syntax of pupil responses are highly contingent upon the cognitive level of teacher questions. Evidence is provided that there is a significant association between the cognitive level of pupil responses and the length and syntax of those responses. The study provides empirical support for the assumption that the characteristics of pupil responses are significantly related to the level of teacher questions.

The article discusses the curriculum laboratories in the urban educational school system of Detroit Public Schools. The purpose of curriculum laboratories is to create relevant, effective curriculum procedures and supporting materials. The task of the Detroit Public Schools Curriculum Laboratories is to assist educators and other involved personnel in the development of improved learning strategies. A main point that could be considered in the curriculum laboratory is that there should be a solid historical and philosophical basis for the concept.

The article examines available research studies concerning the importance of teachers' ability to explain on effective teaching and education. Explaining was defined as the skill of engendering comprehension of a process, concept or generalization. The studies about the ability to explain involve two changes in the design for the study of teaching effectiveness. First, only short segments of teaching have been observed; and second, the role of the teacher is limited to the explanation or presentation of specific cognitive material.

The article is designed to stimulate the development of more effective educational proposals and to call attention to a generally overlooked component of any successful program. The component that is necessary for alleviating educational disadvantage is diagnostic attention. This requires greater appreciation for the way in which time is used, in which staff is deployed, and in which the deficiencies of massive, some what conventional, programs are recognized. Diagnostic attention could result in vastly improved productivity on the part of pupils and far greater pride on the part of faculty members. Three cases in different environments such as classrooms in urban and rural areas illustrates what is meant by diagnostic attention and what the results might be if this procedure could be included in the program. These three cases remind all of those who strive to alleviate cultural deprivation that one must crawl before one walks and walk before one runs; to attempt to teach basketball skills to a crawling infant is impossible, frustrating and self-defeating. Diagnostic attention must be manifest in individual programs, for the types of problems that have been illustrated in the three cases cannot be identified in group activities and probably cannot be treated in massive applications. Applying diagnostic attention is not nearly as time-wasting as attempting to solve problems without first identifying their underlying causes.

Discusses teaching machines and auto-instructional programs. Information that one has been hearing a good deal of talk lately about teaching machines; Concept of self instruction a concept of individual instruction; View that good teachers are scarce, and, at least in relation to demand, are getting scarcer.

The article offers information on research supplement. It also identified criteria for the selection of articles. First to be stated is that the manuscript should convey data. It should involve some evidence to strengthen the reliability of the measures implemented in the study. The article should concentrate with teachers' behavior and that of students as variables. It should also offer a discussion of the results in a way that the meaning of the research is comprehensible to readers. An invitation for authors to submit manuscripts related to research in education is presented.

The article focuses on the proper way to teach "controversial" topics in Social Studies. It mentions that instead of being shy from several controversies in the classroom, teachers tend to consider edgy topics as an opportunity for them to practice critical thinking and social-emotional skills necessary for the debate of sensitive issues. It also offers the insights of University of Wisconsin-Madison professor-on-leave Diana Hess on the role of exchange of multiple views in education.

The article discusses efficiency of pre-assessment instruments in evaluating student readiness. It acknowledges introduction of national standards that make these pre-assessment tests more crucial to teachers, the use of these tests in designing effective lesson plans, and how these tests offer insights into the mind of students. It also explores different instructional unit goals and reasons why multiple-choice format tests are not deemed effective in determining students' interests. INSETS: Planning a Graphing Unit Pre-Assessment;Pre-Assessment for a Unit on World War II.

The article discusses the significance of developing thinking skills on young children in the U.S. It states that the development of critical thinking skills begins early for the idea that young children can become thoughtful problem solvers if they are encouraged to plan and reflect on their actions. It suggests that teachers must be intentional in their practices and diligent about evaluating their effectiveness to promote thinking in children. There are several strategies that could help teachers such as provide opportunities to plan and reflect, wonder together with children, encourage children to elaborate on their ideas, ask children to solve problems and use encouragement not praise.

This article discusses the links approach in education. During the conference on Bringing the Third World to Campus and Community, speaker Jack Hamilton, proposed that teachers internationalize the curriculum, either by creating new courses or by incorporating into existing courses strategies for enabling students to discover relationships between their towns and developing nations. He suggested, for example, that journalism students do research in their college communities and write articles for the local paper describing the links they discovered, thereby educating the public as well. Each chapter in Hamilton's book, Main Street America and the Third Worlds, describes different local links: banks, hospitals, colleges, and restaurants, for example. He was concerned that many people were not reading his or other reporters' stories about such faraway places because they seemed irrelevant to their lives. So he began experimenting with the links concept. Hattiesburg, Mississippi, was the laboratory Hamilton chose to test his theory that, even in the smallest towns, links to developing nations not only exist but are a vital part of the lives of people in the community. In Hattiesburg, he uncovered all kinds of connections. He concluded that if it is true in Hattiesburg, then it must be true nearly everywhere.

The article asserts that schools are interconnected systems. What leaders do in one school necessarily affects the fortunes of students and teachers in other schools around them. As exemplary or high-profile institutions draw the most outstanding teachers and leaders, they drain them away from the rest. For every magnet or lighthouse school that attracts most of the local resources and attention, dozens of surrounding schools may operate more like outhouses low status places in which districts dump their difficult students and weaker staffs. There's a better way to think about school reform. Sustainable education leadership is about being responsible to and for all the schools and students that leadership actions affect. Sustainability is ultimately and unavoidably about social justice. Barrett Magnet High School with its downtown location in a depressed Northeast rust belt city is one of the top 150 schools in the U.S. Sheldon High School is in the same city and district as Barrett Magnet. These schools are interconnected and indivisible. The fortunes of one are perversely linked to the failures of the other.

The article presents information related to the efforts of England's National College for School Leadership in offering leadership training to the school teachers. The College was founded to provide a single national focus for school leadership development and research, to become a driving force for world-class leadership in the schools of England and to promote excellence and innovation in education. Launched in 2000, it was the brainchild of the central government, which currently subsidizes the College to the tune of $150 million annually. The College is housed in a state-of-the-art conference center in Nottingham, England. The college is committed to an evidence-informed approach to school leadership and leadership development. The college was influenced by Hallinger and Heck's view that school leadership and its effects must extend beyond the principalship and permeate the school community. The experts views on distributed leadership are studied and worked closely with some of them to enhance the understanding of the concept. Indeed, that is one reason why it is a national college for school leadership rather than principalship, which would reflect a narrower perspective.

The article presents information related to the efforts of the New York city Mayor Michael Bloomberg in bringing about reforms in the field of education in New York city. In 2002, New York City elected Bloomberg as a new Mayor. He was a self-made man who deeply believed in the transformative power of free markets to remake lives. A special bill approved in 2002 by the New York State Legislature made the mayor solely accountable for school performance to the New York State Department of Education. He was free to do whatever he saw fit to turn around what was widely viewed as a dated and broken system plagued by a gamut of problems that ranged from low test scores to patronage-riddled schools and districts. In June 2005, 60,000 of the system's 80,000 teachers, responding to a union poll, gave the Bloomberg reformers an F grade for failing to respect the judgment and professionalism of the school workforce. As a New York City Department of Education district administrator from 2003 to 2005,1 witnessed firsthand the results of applying business-style management borrowed from the private sector to schools, teachers and students.

The article presents information related to the efforts of the educators of the two Chicago-based high schools that used both innovation and traditionalism to instruct the students. Educators in the John Hersey High School, a middle-income suburban school, located 20 miles outside Chicago, are committed to ensuring that all students master the basic skills that give them access to higher-order content and controversy. The school's average ACT score rose from the 60th percentile nationally in 2000 to the 75th percentile in 2005 even as the percentage of students taking the ACT increased from 80 percent to 100 percent as a result of Illinois' requiring all 11th graders to take the ACT exam. Hersey High's early success caught the attention of the Chicago Charter School Foundation, which was looking for a high school model that would effectively serve low-income and minority urban students. In fall 2002, Civitas opened its first school, Chicago International Charter School North town Academy Campus, in a shuttered Catholic school building on Chicago's north side.

The article presents information related to the efforts of the Senior Instructional Leadership Corps (SILC), an educational leadership program, implemented in Winnetka, Illinois-based New Trier High School in encouraging the senior students of the school into a partnership assisting a classroom teacher. The assistance of the seniors has infused vitality into the senior year of the school. This leadership program, which involved 26 seniors in its first year, now enables more than 150 seniors to work with a teacher mentor each year. To date, 684 students have assumed a SILC role in their senior year and 186 teachers have served as mentors. Such engagement through leadership is what the creators of SILC wanted. The program evolved in the late 1990s out of concern over the lack of leadership opportunities available to New Trier seniors. New Trier is a large high school in an affluent suburban community north of Chicago, with a predominantly white student population. Among the 4,000-plus students, competition has always been fierce for a few coveted leadership roles in student government, clubs, service organizations and athletics.

The article focuses on problem of changing schools in the mid session. It states that any changes of this sort are usually profoundly disturbing for students and present serious problems for teachers and school administrators. The author throws light on the study that focused on the statistic in a U.S. General Accounting Office regarding this problem. The study indicated that by the end of 3rd grade, one of six children in the United States had attended three or more schools. Students often changed schools more than once during the school year. According to the data, during a four-year period, the proportion of students who remain in school for the full year can fall below 50 percent in many schools. Moreover, these in-and-out mobility rates are unevenly distributed over the school population. Poor and minority students, the children of farm workers and of military personnel and homeless, immigrant, and foster children were found to be particularly prone to higher mobility rates.

The article presents information on ongoing assessments for learning that are a needed complement to standardized and develop testing abilities in early childhood classrooms. Assessments of learning have received much attention in the wake of No Child Left Behind and widespread concern about the effectiveness of public education. Information gained through performance based assessments is generally rich and detailed, ripe for use in curriculum planning. Assessments for learning that are based in authentic classroom activities help teachers remember the rich opportunities for learning inherent in such everyday tasks as looking at a book, dramatizing stories, and working with pattern blocks. The Bridging system enables teachers to create an ongoing individual learning profile for each student, showing the student's performance on each assessment activity. Most early childhood teachers are trained and respected as education generalists. Each Bridging activity is based on key concepts that one draws from nationally developed standards for various curricular areas. The Bridging assessment manual highlights the relevant concepts for each activity so that teachers have a framework for conducting the assessment activity, interpreting the results, and revising and implementing curriculum.

The article presents seven specific assessment and grading practices that can enhance teaching and learning processes among teachers and students in the United States. Summative assessments summarize what students have learned at the conclusion of an instructional segment. The summative assessments clarify the targeted standards and benchmarks for teachers and learners. These assessments tend to be evaluative and teachers typically encapsulate and report assessment results as a score or a grade. Diagnostic assessments provide information to assist teacher planning and guide differentiated instruction. Diagnostic assessment is as important to teaching as a physical exam is to prescribing an appropriate medical regimen. Formative assessments occur concurrently with instruction. The performance assessment tasks yield evidence that reveals understanding. Teachers should set up realistic, authentic contexts for assessment that enable students to apply their learning thoughtfully and flexibly, thereby demonstrating their understanding of the content standards. The authentic performance tasks at the beginning of a new unit or course provides a meaningful learning goal for students. One of the assessment practice that supports learning involves presenting evaluative criteria and models of work that illustrate different levels of quality. Responsiveness in assessment is as important as it is in teaching. Teachers need to allow students to work to their strengths.

Highlights the importance of teacher skills in supporting English language learners. Background on English language learners; Importance of the quality of instruction that English language learners receive; Development of the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol Model, a lesson-planning and delivery approach for teaching language to English language learners.

Explains the roles of teachers in teaching student writers. Information on how writing teachers act as coaches; List of benefits in assessing writing; Factors that teachers should consider in planning for instruction; Explanation on how a teacher's consulting opportunities occur.

Offers observation on knowledge arts. Information on how people create knowledge; Explanation on thinking routines; Reflections on teaching for understanding; Importance of knowledge arts for teachers.

Discusses the role of schools in the moral development of students. Factors to consider in guiding the emotional and moral growth of students; Influence of teachers in the emotional and moral lives of students; Information on the depression and disillusionment experienced by students.

The article focuses on different ways and means to improve spelling instruction. The concern about spelling is reinforced by the results of standardized tests which have been given over a period of years. The Language Arts Curriculum Committee, which is one of six voluntary general curriculum committees, decided to see what could be done about the problem. Some of the following were mentioned as possible contributing causes of poor spelling instruction--poor and inadequate format spelling program, the routinized use of a formal spelling program, insufficient time for teaching spelling, not enough attention to spelling in everyday writing situations and words taught are of no immediate use to pupils. In attacking the spelling problem the Committee determined to try a number of approaches. In one case, four different formal spelling programs were selected for the study and comparison, in grades two through eight in ten different schools. The most difficult problem is that of evaluating the effectiveness of the various approaches and methods that are being used. Teachers have been encouraged to try out any ideas they might have for evaluating results.

Probes on the conflict between politician and reading researchers about the philosophy on how to teach reading in United States. Implication of the 1994 National Assessment of Education Progress report on the whole language philosophy; Importance of a teacher's role in the reading development of students; Advice to teachers on how to teach reading.

Analyzes the role of the assumption that good teachers can teach any subject in the patterns of teacher reassignment in U.S. high schools. Changes in percentages for selected content area classes; Description of the assignment patterns of teachers; Possible explanation for the growing differences in assignment of teachers among content areas.

The article highlights two studies which suggest that student participation in a teacher's lesson affects subsequent preference for using the teaching styles noted in the research. These teaching styles are the discovery style and the expository style. In the studies, the student response variable was not experimentally varied, so the authors thought that it was possible that other differences existed among groups which may account for the preference shifts derived from the experiment. The authors cautioned that the results were obtained with undergraduates preparing to be teachers and that it may be that increased experience tends to stabilize teaching behavior to the point where it is relatively uninfluenced by student response.

The article features the author's hallucination of a military-industrial conspiracy to capture control of education in America. The author imagines that state legislatures are imposing an industrial cost accounting system on the schools of their states. He thinks government agencies are pressuring school administrators to regiment teachers and pupils so that time, space, movement, deployment of staff, allocation of materials, decision-making procedures, and authority all take on a precision characteristic of a military manual or a Ford production schedule. The author imagines reading technological treatises which offer feasibility studies for the replacement of human teachers with computers and technology.

The article reports on learning how to teach from school children's interests. Teaching from children's interests needs special skills and requires designing learning activities from a topic that strikes the child's curiosity and fancy. Several factors are identified as skills that are needed by teachers in learning to teach from children's interests including the ideational fluency and spontaneous flexibility. Several studies that attempt to identify the ways in which teachers can acquire the needed skills are presented.

The article examines the relationship between the teaching styles of student teachers and their cooperating teachers. It investigates the development of teaching styles by young teachers at Teachers College, Columbia University. Samples of the candidates' teaching behavior were obtained during the "observation-participation" experience when they were working in tutorial sessions with small groups of children in language arts lessons. The article indicates that there are no relationship between the indices of the student teachers and cooperating teachers prior to their contact. However, there were relationships in several of the indices very shortly after student teaching began.

The article discusses the arguments pertaining to the role of behavioral objectives presented in the booklet entitled "Educational Accountability: Beyond Behavioral Objectives." A list of the major points concerning the inadequacies of behavioral objectives approach in education were discussed in the booklet. It was stated that behavioral objective were limited in use, were represented in a symptomatic approach to change behavior, were holding back the creativity of the classroom teacher, and were causing the demoralization of teachers.

The article presents a discussion on why schools do not need the Individually Prescribed Instruction (IPI) system. One question about the IPI system is that by implementing it, individual differences are highlighted and it results to differing beliefs about teachers, learners, and the learning process. Open-ended questions must be included in the IPI system so the program will improve. The functions of the teachers in the IPI system have changed and that should not happen. Some teachers are not satisfied with their role in the program.

The article asserts that supervisory services should be provided to substitute teachers. Substitute teachers are categorized into four classes, recent college graduates, persons who do not want a permanent assignment due to other commitments, persons with college degrees but lacking in certain education courses required to become fully or permanently certified and those permanently certified teachers who have retired and wish to supplement their income by substituting. According to the author, supervisory services that should be provided to substitute teachers should emphasize greater proficiency, cooperative group planning, understanding policies regarding student grouping and understanding the procedures for acquiring instructional resources.

The author comments on the collective negotiation process between the school administration and teachers based on his experience as a former part of the administrative negotiation team. He shares that collective bargaining is a waste of time and competencies of people in small districts and he would not recommend it for larger districts. He describes the meeting wherein personnel man speaks for the administration while one teacher does the talking for the side of the teachers by common agreement; and everyone else present sat in silence. Each group uses pamphlets on negotiation process that only promote division between them. He expresses that a widening communication gap continues in the district.

The article discusses the role of paraprofessionals in the midst of educators in schools and educational institutions. Teachers' assistants represent the hands, hearts and minds that work right along with teachers, principals and school administrators for the purpose of assisting students reach their full potential. Common paraprofessional responsibilities include listening to children read, participation in reading games, story dramatizations, and other activities to enrich the reading program, helping in arithmetic skills, working in spelling assignments, social studies projects and science experiments, accompanying children's singing, and serving as a paint mixer whenever there is an art program.

The article presents a way of evaluating educators that will make a developmental difference in education. Before evaluating the teacher, one must first know what to evaluate and why should the educator be evaluated. It proposes that most efforts at teacher evaluation are far too narrowly focused and too oversimplified. Hence, there is neglect on the important factors that are critical in the improvement of teaching. It mentions that a lot of schools assess their educators to make determinations about what their salaries will be for the next school year.