A one-stop shop to answer your most pressing questions about what it takes to facilitate. Workshops, committees, teams, and study groups are a regular part of an educator's professional life, and any educator can find themselves in the facilitator role, with a responsibility to aid the group in achieving its goals. The Effective Facilitator's Handbook is here to help. Professional development expert Cathy A. Toll has written a guide for busy facilitators, starting with four simple rules for successful facilitation: listen, start with the end in mind, lead with productive tools, and stay organized. The processes, tools, and templates in each chapter are easy to apply and offer advice about how to create a welcoming environment, set the right tone, understand the group's dynamics, improve communication, and more. This book walks you through the unique purposes, pitfalls, and needs of specific types of groups, whether it's a professional development workshop, a committee focused on one decision or problem, a team that regularly collaborates for student success, or a study group learning about a specific issue. But Toll also considers the bigger picture and connects the patterns behind different types of facilitation skills that will serve you in a variety of situations and settings. As an effective facilitator, you'll be able to increase the value of group time, foster engagement, and help teachers improve their practice so that they can bring their best to the classroom each day.

In K-12 education, your job title or place of work should not prevent you from offering unique insights and pathways for creating change. You have a voice. Working in education today is to continually be on the precipice of change. However, far too many educators don't recognize the power they have to control and shape that change into what's best for students. Individual contributions create collective change, and you are an integral part of the change inevitably happening around you. With that in mind, Ashley Lamb-Sinclair invites you to identify and examine your personal leadership style (or change archetype), which includes what motivates you, how you respond to adversity, how you position yourself in the larger story, how you help move that story forward, and how you deal with the unexpected. How do you create change? You might be a Diplomat if you build relationships and value fairness and integrity. Champion if you are passionate about a cause and advocate for people and ideals. Creative if you approach things through novelty and ingenuity. Storyteller if you are thoughtful, attentive to details, and a clear communicator. Inventor if you are a forward thinker who operates through free experimentation. Sage if you are perceptive, insightful, and persuasive. Investigator if you have an analytical curiosity, ask probing questions, and conduct thorough research. Guardian if you have compassion for and are drawn to nurture and protect others.Many schools tend to ignore or underestimate the powerful catalysts for change that exist in their buildings. Don't let the change story continue without its most vital character-you! Find the lightning bolts of lasting change only you can wield. Become unstoppable!

Students learning math are expected to do more than just solve problems; they must also be able to demonstrate their thinking and share their ideas, both orally and in writing. As many classroom teachers have discovered, these can be challenging tasks for students. The good news is, mathematical communication can be taught and mastered. In Teaching Students to Communicate Mathematically, Laney Sammons provides practical assistance for K-8 classroom teachers. Drawing on her vast knowledge and experience as a classroom teacher, she covers the basics of effective mathematical communication and offers specific strategies for teaching students how to speak and write about math. Sammons also presents useful suggestions for helping students incorporate correct vocabulary and appropriate representations when presenting their mathematical ideas. This must-have resource will help you help your students improve their understanding of and their skill and confidence in mathematical communication.

What is a true learning organization, and how can your school become one? To excel, schools must embrace continuous school improvement and evaluation, as well as systems thinking. In Measuring What We Do in Schools, author Victoria L. Bernhardt details the critical role program evaluation serves in school success and how to implement meaningful evaluations that make a difference. She provides a roadmap of how to conduct comprehensive, systemwide evaluations of programs and processes; the tools needed to obtain usable, pertinent information; and how to use these data to expand teachers' and administrators' data-informed decision-making focus. Educators will learn how to Assess what is working and not working for students. Determine which processes need to change. Use data to improve practices on an ongoing basis. Although challenging for many schools, program evaluation and data analysis can begin with a single program or process, over time building on the expanded knowledge of the school's processes and the results they produce. An effective tool-The Program Evaluation Tool-enables schools to easily identify the purpose and intended outcomes of any school program, along with whom it serves, and how it should be implemented, monitored, and evaluated. These data can then be used to improve every aspect of a school's programs and processes and the outcomes achieved. Filled with practical strategies and featuring an in-depth case study, this book is designed to help educators see that evaluation work is logical and easy to do. They'll gain the confidence to do this work on a regular basis-working together to become a true learning organization.

Decision-making is an activity in which everyone is engaged on a more or less daily basis. In this book, Karin Brunsson and Nils Brunsson explore the intricacies of decision-making for individuals and organizations. When, how and why do they make decisions? The authors identify four distinct ways of reasoning that decision-makers use. The consequences of decisions vary: some promote action, others impede it, and some produce more responsibility than others. With in-depth discussions of rationality, justifications and hypocrisy, the authors show how organizational and political decision processes become over-complicated and difficult for both decision makers and external observers to understand. Decisions is a concise and easy-to-read introduction to a highly significant and intriguing topic. Based on research from several fields, it provides useful reading and essential knowledge for scholars and students throughout the social sciences and for everyone who wants to understand their own decisions and those of others.

Design thinking is a person-centered, problem-solving process that's a go-to for innovative businesses and gaining traction with school leaders interested in positive change. But understanding design thinking is one thing; actually putting it in play is something else. Authors Alyssa Gallagher and Kami Thordarson offer educators a practical guide for navigating design thinking's invigorating challenges and reaping its considerable rewards. They dig deep into the five-stage design thinking process, highlighting risk factors and recommending specific steps to keep you moving forward. The 25 downloadable and reproducible tools provide prompts and supports that will help you and your team: Identify change opportunities. Dig deeper into complex problems. Analyze topics to isolate specific challenges. Connect with and solve for user needs. Apply what you've learned about users to design challenges. Maximize brainstorming power. Create and employ solution prototypes. Pitch solutions and secure buy-in from stakeholders. Organize and analyze user feedback. Map out a solution's specific actions and resource requirements. Design Thinking in Play is a must-have for education leaders who are tired of waiting for someone else to solve their problems and ready to take action, have fun, and leverage collective insight to figure out what will really work for their school, their colleagues, and their students.

Schools across the United States and Canada are disrupting the adverse effects of poverty and supporting students in ways that enable them to succeed in school and in life. In this second edition, Parrett and Budge show you how your school can achieve similar results. Expanding on their original framework's still-critical concepts of actions and school culture, they incorporate new insights for addressing equity, trauma, and social-emotional learning. These fresh perspectives combine with lessons learned from 12 additional high-poverty, high-performing schools to form the updated and enhanced Framework for Collective Action. Emphasizing students' social, emotional, and academic learning as the hub for all action in high-performing, high-poverty schools, the authors describe how educators can work within the expanded Framework to address the needs of all students, but particularly those who live in poverty. Equipped with the Framework and a plethora of tools to build collective efficacy (self-assessments, high-leverage questions, action advice, and more), school and district leaders-as well as teachers, teacher leaders, instructional coaches, and other staff-can close persistent opportunity gaps and reverse longstanding patterns of low achievement.

What will it take to create truly contemporary learning environments that meet the demands of 21st-century society, engage learners, and produce graduates who are prepared to succeed in the world? What skills and capacities do teachers and leaders need to create and sustain such schools? What actions are necessary? Bold Moves for Schools offers a compelling vision that answers these questions-and action steps to make the vision a reality. Looking through the lenses of three pedagogies-antiquated, classical, and contemporary-authors Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Marie Hubley Alcock examine every aspect of K-12 education, including curriculum, instruction, assessment, and the program structures of space (both physical and virtual), time, and grouping of learners and professionals. In a new job description for teachers, Jacobs and Alcock highlight and expound on the following roles: Self-navigating professional learner. Social contractor. Media critic and media maker. Innovative designer. Globally connected citizen. Advocate for learners and learning. With thought-provoking proposals and practical strategies for change, Bold Moves for Schools sets educators on the path to redefining their profession and creating exciting new learning environments. The challenge is unprecedented. The possibilities are unlimited.

In How to Make Decisions with Different Kinds of Student Assessment Data, best-selling author Susan M. Brookhart helps teachers and administrators understand the critical elements and nuances of assessment data and how that information can best be used to inform improvement efforts in the school or district. Readers will learn: What different kinds of data can-and cannot-tell us about student learning. What different analyses reveal about changes in student achievement. How to interpret, use, and share relevant data. How to create a model to go from problem to solution in a data-based decision-making process. With easy-to-understand explanations, supplemented by examples and scenarios from actual schools, this book offers a path to better understanding, more accurate interpretation of assessment results, and-most important-more effective use of data to improve teaching and learning.

In this lively and practical book, seasoned educator Jonathan Cassie shines a spotlight on gamification, an instructional approach that's revolutionizing K-12 education. Games are well known for their ability to inspire persistence. The best ones feature meaningful choices that have lasting consequences, reward experimentation, provide a like-minded community of players, and gently punish failure and encourage risk-taking behavior. Players feel challenged, but not overwhelmed. A gamified lesson bears these same hallmarks. It is explicitly gamelike in its design and fosters perseverance, creativity, and resilience. Students build knowledge through experimentation and then apply what they've learned to fuel further exploration at higher levels of understanding. In this book, Cassie covers: What happens to student learning when it is gamified. Why you might want to gamify instruction for your students. The process for gamifying both your classroom and your lessons. If you want to see your students engaged, motivated, and excited about learning, join Jonathan Cassie on a journey that will add a powerful new set of ideas and practices to your teaching toolkit. The gamified classroom-an exciting new frontier of 21st century learning-awaits you and your students. Will you answer the call?

The Talking Point is all about how people learn within groups. People can be much smarter than crowds if you measure "smart" as decision-making speed. Crowds can be much wiser than individuals if you measure wisdom by depth of understanding. It is possible to understand a great deal of information yet (or maybe because of this) you can also be slow to make decisions. If rushed, crowds will make poor decisions in spite of their wisdom. So... to get good group decisions on a time scale that will keep pace with policy development needs and social necessities, groups have to be supported so that their decision-making process can be accelerated. Much has been said and written about this problem over the years. It is dangerous to have the power of groups without the wisdom of groups, and it is tragic to have the wisdom of groups without the power of groups. The Talking Point presents a meeting point for the wisdom and power of groups through the use of Structured Dialogic Design. With hopeful intentions, as a culture we have poisoned the well just when we need it most. We have touted design charettes and stakeholder processes as engagement vehicles and then ignored, marginalized or corrupted the very input that we swore to hold as sacred. This has created a myth that large scale collaboration is not possible, and the myth has led to considerable disillusionment among would-be participants and could-be sponsors. Structured Dialogic Design seeks to bust the myth about our limited capabilities to sustain boundary spanning collaboration. To bust this myth, Structured Dialogic Design needs to usher in a new wave of collaborative planning. Scholars have identified the Structured Dialogic Design methodology as the cutting edge of "third phase" science - where the reality of a situation embraces interactions between objective findings and subjective intentions. The Talking Point provides a window for observing how Structured Dialogic Design has been put into practice and paints a panorama of the issues that confront complex social system design. This book is itself a bridge between scholarship and practice, written to be accessible yet anchored to major themes in cognitive psychology, information systems, social systems, and models of group learning. The book is an invitation for transformational leaders and those who support transformational leaders to pick up a new tool in the essential quest to put our nation and our world back on track toward sustainable futures. The Talking Point is a fresh source of water in a world that is thirsty for new ways of solving complex problems.

Decision-making is an activity in which everyone is engaged on a more or less daily basis. In this book, Karin Brunsson and Nils Brunsson explore the intricacies of decision-making for individuals and organizations. When, how and why do they make decisions? The authors identify four distinct ways of reasoning that decision-makers use. The consequences of decisions vary: some promote action, others impede it, and some produce more responsibility than others. With in-depth discussions of rationality, justifications and hypocrisy, the authors show how organizational and political decision processes become over-complicated and difficult for both decision makers and external observers to understand. Decisions is a concise and easy-to-read introduction to a highly significant and intriguing topic. Based on research from several fields, it provides useful reading and essential knowledge for scholars and students throughout the social sciences and for everyone who wants to understand their own decisions and those of others.