Professional development research suggests that teachers learn best from and with each other in ongoing, job-embedded activities. "A Facilitator's Guide to Professional Learning Teams" provides a way of engaging school faculties in sustained, onsite professional development that builds capacity and collegiality, improves teaching quality, and…

Integrating curriculum with content standards and working with other educators to develop a teaching program makes instruction not only collaborative but also cohesive. This book offers teachers a customized, personalized process to prepare their curriculum while folding content into a larger curriculum map. The author leads K-12 educators…

This booklet discusses how to develop successful substitute teachers, explaining that most substitutes do not receive the respect necessary to be effective. School districts must take such steps as adopting fair substitute hiring practices, allowing for the regular placement of substitutes in the same school over the year, and including…

This paper focuses on some of the strategies that were crucial to the eventual success of Writing across the Curriculum (WAC), or, as it is called at the College of Mount Saint Vincent, WTL, Writing to Learn. The paper also mentions some of the pitfalls. According to the paper, the budget for WAC is $100 annually--when divided by the number of…

The primary activity of teachers is teaching; specifically, instructional time in the classroom--a generally individual practice. Other than instructional time, the activities that most consume teachers' time are those related to the courses they teach but that are not instructional time--lesson planning (short-term planning including short-range…

This paper presents three appendixes from a workshop that addressed how to identify sources of collateral damage in mentoring programs and how to correct them. The first appendix includes a summary of problem areas that mentoring teams may face as reported in the literature (e.g., transition from teacher training to teaching, selection and…

This publication examines research on an instructional practice called teacher teaming as conducted in K-12 schools. Teacher teaming involves grouping two or more teachers together with responsibility for a group of students for instructional purposes. The report describes the major literature about the relationship that exists between teacher…

This study examined forms of collaboration existing between Dutch secondary teachers within different departments, noting reasons for any differences. The paper begins by examining the literature on teacher collaboration, then describes the study. Researchers collected data from three secondary schools using interviews, observations, documents,…

Teams can boost creativity, morale, and communication, but they can also unleash disharmony, create tension, and waste time. To maximize teaming benefits, administrators must share authority, cultivate teacher leadership, train all team members, use situational leadership, model effective team leader behaviors, provide incentives, support each…

Suggests that mentoring shows great promise and proven results in supporting new teachers, describing the successful Beginning Teacher Assistance Program at the University of Wisconsin River Falls and examining: what makes mentoring work, the importance of commitment to the theory of mentoring, benefits for mentees, overcoming obstacles to…

Discusses work the authors did together addressing racial diversity in a writing center. Foregrounds their differences as well as their mutual vision, creating a bumpy ride for readers and interfering with modernist expectation of oherence, yet exposing the seams they think their readers need to see in order to understand how the fabrics of their…

Describes a collaborative, or peer-group, faculty mentoring program at East Carolina University's medical school which incorporated development of skills in key areas for career development, a structured values-based approach to career planning, and instruction in scholarly writing. (EV)

Focused, sustained staff development occurs too seldom in U.S. schools. The "just-in-time" approach involves learning teams composed of teachers who teach a specific content area at the same time or at contiguous grade levels. "Bite-sized" training sessions, facilitated by a staff-development professional, occur every few…

Staff at disadvantaged schools lacking sufficient technology must take matters into their own hands. Guerilla technology tactics include finding all the hidden technology on campus, scanning the school budget carefully, helping others spend their technology money, and scrounging free computers at universities and local businesses. (MLH)

Examines two cases of university department-based, practice-centered peer inquiry projects as a means of faculty development. Compares the leadership, structure, and outcomes of each department's project. Discusses the role of department culture, the norms of scholarly collaboration, standard work patterns, curricular standards, university status,…