Todd Whitaker - The Ten-Minute Inservice: 40 Quick Training Sessions that Build Teacher Effectiveness

Contents

More praise for The Ten-Minute Inservice

Todd Whitaker and Annette Breaux offer concise, practical suggestions for reinforcing effective teaching practices. The Ten-Minute Inservice is a powerful resource for school leaders who want to make the most of every opportunity to promote growth and improve school climate.

Justin Baeder , director, The Principal Center

An integral piece of building teacher capacity is the transformation of faculty meetings, from a time for sitting and listening to an opportunity for reflecting and learning. Whitaker and Breaux demonstrate how simply that can be done with quick, easily implemented inservice activities that focus on the fundamentals of teaching.

John G. Gabriel , principal, John Champe High School, Loudoun County, Virginia; coauthor, Dealing with the Tough Stuff

Cover illustration: Bienchen-s/Shutterstock

Cover design: Charles Brock, FaceOut Studio

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for:

ISBN 978-1-118-47043-5 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-1-118-55115-8 (ebk.)

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FIRST EDITION

About the Authors

Dr. Todd Whitaker has been fortunate to be able to blend his passion with his career. He is recognized as a leading presenter in the field of education, and his message about the importance of teaching has resonated with hundreds of thousands of educators around the world. Todd is a professor of educational leadership at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Indiana, and he has spent his life pursuing his love of education by researching and studying effective teachers and principals.

Prior to moving into higher education, Todd was a math teacher and basketball coach in Missouri. He then served as a principal at the middle school, junior high, and high school levels. He was also a middle school coordinator in charge of staffing, curriculum, and technology for the opening of new middle schools.

One of the nations leading authorities on staff motivation, teacher leadership, and principal effectiveness, Todd has written thirty books, including the national best seller, What Great Teachers Do Differently . Other titles include Shifting the Monkey, Dealing with Difficult Teachers, Teaching Matters, Great Quotes for Great Educators, What Great Principals Do Differently, Motivating and Inspiring Teachers , and Dealing with Difficult Parents .

Todd is married to Beth, also a former teacher and principal, who is a professor of elementary education at Indiana State University. They are the parents of three children, Katherine, Madeline, and Harrison.

Annette Breaux is one of the most entertaining, informative authors and speakers in education. She leaves her audiences with practical techniques to implement in their schools and classrooms immediately. Administrators agree that they see results from teachers the next day.

Annette is a former classroom teacher, curriculum coordinator, and author of Louisiana FIRST, a statewide induction program for new teachers. Annette also served as the teacher induction coordinator for Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana. She coauthored New Teacher Induction with Dr. Harry K. Wong.

Her other writings include 101 Answers for New Teachers and Their Mentors; REAL Teachers, REAL Challenges, REAL Solutions; 101 Poems for Teachers; Seven Simple Secrets: What the BEST Teachers Know and Do; 50 Ways to Improve Student Behavior; and Making Good Teaching Great .

Teachers who have read Annettes writings or heard her speak agree that they come away with user-friendly information, heartfelt inspiration, and a reminder that theirs is the most noble of all professions.

How to Use This Book

If youre an administrator or a staff developer, your days are already crammed with meetings, projects, and crises. Still, youre charged with finding ways to maximize teacher effectiveness. So weve given you forty simple, easy-to-implement inservices designed to improve teaching and learning, each of which can be completed in ten minutes.

Even the books design is deliberately simple, its format easy to follow. Each inservice is divided into three parts:

In other words, the three sections will tell you what each inservice will accomplish, give you the content, and then show you exactly how to move from talk to action. Theres no particular order to the inservices. Some do refer back to the previous inservice or build on its lesson. But each stands alone, and you can skip around as your teachers needs require. There is no right or wrong way to use the book. Decide which inservices will work for you and when youd like to use them. Each inservice will give you a quick, effective way to provide useful, meaningful, ongoing training for your teachers. And theyve all been designed to take the least possible amount of time.