52 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very important book, February 8, 2010
This review is from: Teaching As Leadership: The Highly Effective Teacher's Guide to Closing the Achievement Gap (Paperback)
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This is a very important book.
The authors have analyzed two decades' worth of observations, questionnaires, and interviews generated by the Teach for America program and used it to determine what differentiates highly effective teachers from less effective ones. It turns out that highly effective teachers share six traits: They set big goals, invest students and their families in them, plan purposefully, execute effectively, continuously increase their effectiveness, and work relentlessly. The book explains what these traits mean, offers examples of their implementation, and recommends strategies that teachers can apply to their classes.
I thought the the two chapters on effective execution were the most valuable parts of the book. That's because they reinforce other research (for example, Madeline Hunter's from the late 70s - late 80s and Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins' "Backward Design"). Those teachers who plan well, teach well, and assess well get the best results. It sounds obvious-- and in many ways, it is-- but it's not so easy to do in the real world of the classroom. This book demonstrates that it can be done.
It also demonstrates that it must be done if we are to close the achievement gap, the low achievement by minority and poor kids, that bedevils the schools. There is no hope of solving the persistent social problems of poverty and ameliorating the effects of racism as long as that gap exists.
Now, there are some important qualifications here.
First, what the book says is specific to teachers working in poor and minority communities. That's because the point of Teach for America is to recruit and train teachers to work in those communities. It seems logical that the recommendations in the book could and would work to improve education in general, but the the analysis in the book does not prove that, and the authors make no such claims.
Second, Teach for America teachers are not typical of teachers in general. The program is very highly selective (only 15% of the 35,000 or so applicants are accepted each year), and most of the applicants are top students from selective colleges. Could "regular" teachers do what the TFA teachers are doing? That research hasn't been done yet.
Third, one of the traits the book examines is that highly effective teachers work relentlessly. The examples offered certainly support that; indeed, they are inspiring. However, can those teachers keep up the pace as the years roll on? A teaching career is a marathon, not a series of hundred-yard dashes, and so I wonder about the burn-out factor in the long run.
This is a very important book about a critical subject. So much of what is written about reforming education is not based on what actual teachers are doing in actual classrooms with actual kids. This book is entirely based upon data gathered in that real world. The trick now is to find out whether the conclusions based on that specific data can be applied in the schools in general.
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27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Some Good Ideas But Weigh the Philosophy, February 18, 2010
This review is from: Teaching As Leadership: The Highly Effective Teacher's Guide to Closing the Achievement Gap (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I come from a family with a teacher who has won many accolades and we all have teachers we remember fondly and also not as fondly so it is with that perspective that I read this book, as did my family member who is a teacher. Teaching as Leadership offers great anecdotes from teachers who have made a difference in the lives of disadvantaged students but none of them really speak about whether this came at their own personal cost or how their laser focus impacted their families (did they have children of their own when they came home?). Chapters one and two try to build inspiration and ask you to set high standards and involve the families in the process. Both are important ideas that can be executed to differing levels of success depending upon your community. If family members in the community work two and three jobs to stay afloat, all speak a different language than the language of instruction, and/or are in the midst of social crises, than they are understandably limited in how much more they can give to their child's education without support services from the government. That being said, the last chapter asks teachers to work relentlessly... Many teachers work as they they are the CEOs of large corporations putting in 60 to 80 hour weeks that go unnoticed because so much of their work is taken home with them. The burn-out factor is a huge problem and chapter six asks teachers to, "Assume personal responsibility for dramatic student learning...and overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles." How many people could last 25 years in a job that demands that of them every day? Is the shift to making teachers as responsible for the students as parents realistic and sustainable? The family member that was a teacher found the book to have many good suggestions for impacting student achievement and was able to create useful checklists for classroom use. This member also liked the idea of teaching as leadership so it is recommended but with the advice to think about not only what can be achieved but what can be sustained.
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24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Game-Changer for Teachers, January 31, 2010
This review is from: Teaching As Leadership: The Highly Effective Teacher's Guide to Closing the Achievement Gap (Paperback)
I train teachers for a living, and Teaching as Leadership is a game-changer for our field. Farr takes the overwhelming process of becoming an effective teacher and breaks it into six strategic steps--set big goals, invest students and their families, plan purposefully, teach effectively, increase effectiveness, and work relentlessly--and offers an abundance of tactical resources (both in the text and in the INCREDIBLE online supplements) to help teachers take these steps in their own classrooms. The book is not only a clear what-to-do, but additionally, drawing heavily on both rigorous research and powerful anecdotes from great teachers (a potent combo), Farr makes a clear case for why great teachers take these steps and how they change kids' lives.
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