Empowering Excellence: Creating Positive, Invigorating Classrooms in a Common Core Environment

by Jeff Halstead

Overview

Empowering Excellence inspires a revolution in teaching and assessment practices. These methods of teaching and grading represent a major step ahead in how teachers assess and interact with students. Empowering Excellence presents 12 significant “shifts” that encourage motivation, build confidence, and measure what students know and are able to do based on the Common Core State Standards or equivalent standards in a highly supportive, student-centered environment.

Teachers, administrators, and education professors will find ideas that will transform classrooms into places where students are filled with confidence and empowered to strive for excellence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781475809855
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	07/02/2014
Pages:	134
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.10(d)

About the Author

Jeff Halstead is also the author of Navigating the New Pedagogy: Six Principles that Transform Teaching and dozens of other articles published regionally and nationally. An educational trainer, staff developer and National Board Certified English teacher, Halstead lives with his family in Spokane, WA.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Shift 1: Make a Great First Impression
Shift 2: Teach with Passion
Shift 3: Build Optimism and Growth Mindsets
Shift 4: Make Grading Meaningful
Shift 5: Build a System of Student Support
Shift 6: Grade by Mining Student Data
Shift 7: Assess Work Ethic Separately
Shift 8: Communicate Progress Clearly
Shift 9: Channel the Desire for Improvement
Shift 10: Reflect, Revise and Differentiate
Shift 11: Apply Formative Feedback Liberally
Shift 12: Celebrate Success
Closing
About the Author
Index

Editorial Reviews

It’s no surprise to those teaching America’s students that public education is in an era of intense change, including dramatic changes to teacher evaluation and the implementation of the Common Core State Standards. Jeff Halstead, a practicing and accomplished educator, brings to life shifts that have the power to transform student learning. Empowering Excellence can be a great resource to guide Professional Learning Community (PLC), department, grade-level and other instructional teams to give structure and meaning to today’s emerging education environment.

James Meadows

The 21st Century has ushered in dramatic changes in teaching and learning. Empowering Excellence meets those challenges and offers strategies to leverage learning and improve teaching. Jeff Halstead provides accessible, do-it-now ‘shifts’ that can transform the classroom. Drawn from his years as a teacher and coach, Halstead speaks from the heart to other educators ready for change.

Cindy McMahon

In Empowering Excellence, Jeff Halstead provides a comprehensive array of practical strategies designed to help every teacher create a classroom that will maximize student learning and encourage students to strive for excellence. Filled with ideas to create a positive and hopeful learning environment, Halstead’s book empowers teachers to engage students in higher-level learning activities that create optimism and inspire success.

Susie Gerard

Jeff Halstead has captured the essence of teaching by bringing the student, teacher, content, and assessment together in a manner that creates clarity and growth in students. Empowering Excellence provides strategies for any teacher wishing to increase their students’ confidence and understanding by making grading and reporting an integral part of the student-teacher-learning relationship.

Rick Biggerstaff

Empowering Excellence is brimming with accessible, real-world ideas to help teachers demystify classroom-based assessment and empower students to take charge of their academic progress. Arranged as shifts, Halstead provides tips and techniques for implementing a standards-based approach to instruction and assessment that values learning over grading, relationships over traditional power structures, and student data as means for self-assessing teacher effectiveness as well as student mastery.

Debbie Tully

Author Jeff Halstead details 12 changes teachers can make to motivate students, build their confidence and measure what they know when the Common Core State Standards or equivalent standards have been implemented. These 'shifts' include making grading meaningful, communicating progress clearly and celebrating success. Teachers, administrators and education professors will find ideas that can transform classrooms into places where students have the confidence to strive for excellence.

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