Instructional Partnerships

Manual written for teachers, administrators and other school professionals covering all the essentials of creating and sustaining effective co-teaching programs for students with disabilities and other special needs.

An innovative professional development strategy that facilitates change, improves instruction, and transforms school culture! Instructional coaching is a research-based, job-embedded approach to instructional intervention that provides the assistance and encouragement necessary to implement school improvement programs. Experienced trainer and researcher Jim Knight describes the "nuts and bolts" of instructional coaching and explains the essential skills that instructional coaches need, including getting teachers on board, providing model lessons, and engaging in reflective conversations. Each user-friendly chapter includes: First-person stories from successful coaches Sidebars highlighting important information A "Going Deeper" section of suggested resources Ready-to-use forms, worksheets, checklists, logs, and reports

Help ELLs achieve success with an integrated, collaborative program! Teacher collaboration and co-teaching are proven strategies for helping students with diverse needs achieve academically. Now this practical resource provides a step-by-step guide to making collaboration and co-teaching work for general education teachers and English as a second language (ESL) specialists to better serve the needs of English language learners (ELLs). The authors address the fundamental questions of collaboration and co-teaching, examine how a collaborative program helps ELLs learn content while meeting English language development goals, and offer information on school leaders' roles in facilitating collaboration schoolwide. Featuring six in-depth case studies, this guide helps educators: Understand the benefits and challenges of collaborative service delivery Choose from a range of strategies and configurations, from informal planning and collaboration to a fully developed co-teaching partnership Use templates, planning guides, and other practical tools to put collaboration into practice Evaluate the strategies' success using the guidelines, self-assessments, and questionnaires included Collaboration and Co-Teaching helps ESL, ELL, and general education teachers combine their expertise to provide better support for their ELLs!

This book describes in simple terms exactly how schools should align and organize professional learning to ensure significant positive change in teaching and student learning. The author's partnership principles-a humanizing approach to professional learning-apply to workshops, intensive learning teams (a focused form of professional learning communities), and instructional coaching. This is the first in a two volume series that is designed to provide a simple (not simplistic) framework and a set of tools for improving teaching in schools. (The second volume, The Big Four, was proposed last year.)

Teachers and administrators will learn how to create the respectful, trusting relationships with families necessary to build the educational partnerships that best support children's learning. The book will cover the mindset and core beliefs required to bond with families, and will provide guidance on how to plan engagement opportunities and events throughout the school year that undergird effective partnerships between families and schools.

Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.

THIS IS A UNIQUE BOOK. IF YOU CARE ABOUT SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLING AND THE WAY IN WHICH PARTNERSHIPS MAY HELP TO STRENGTHEN AND IMPROVE THEM AND THE INSTITUTIONS THAT PARTNER WITH THEM, YOU SHOULD READ IT! School partnerships have a long history in the United States. The inception of public schooling was a type of partnership with the community. The concept of local school boards and local control was integral to the establishment of schools and the idea that public education was a public good has deep roots in the country. Partnerships denote relationships which are mutually beneficial to the parties involved and which result in joint benefits for those who create and engage in them. The partnerships presented in this book provide ample evidence of the value and benefits of these arrangements. The book contains stories and research about school partnerships from a variety of groups and perspectives, which are focused upon multiple issues within educational institutions and communities within the United States. The final chapter, presents an analysis across all the partnerships to identify the elements that fostered and hindered their success and the primary lessons learned. This analysis should provide meaningful information for those engaged in developing and operating similar partnerships or those involved in conducting research on or about them. Although the cases presented in this book occur within the United States, the findings may also have relevance for similar initiatives in other countries. Praise for Creating School Partnerships that Work: A Guide for Practice and Research: Kudos to Dana Griggs and Frances Kochan for compiling the rich accountings of eight different school partnerships all in one place. Readers will learn a great deal from both the individual accountings of a broad array of partnerships as well as the collective analysis of the partnerships and lessons learned across them. Creating School Partnerships that Work:A Guide for Research and Practice is a must-read book for anyone who ever has been, is, or desires to be involved in any type of school partnership. Nancy Fichtman Dana, Professor, School of Teaching and Learning University of Florida, Gainesville Creating School Partnerships that Work: A Guide for Research and Practice is a must read for scholars, researchers, practitioners, and community members seeking to identify elements of successful school partnerships that foster students' academic and personal successes. This edited volume shares stakeholders' perspectives on multi-dimensional school partnerships, which have successfully led to sustained collaborations across diverse purposes that are mutually beneficial for all groups. The usefulness of the content analysis presented in the final chapter, which identifies elements both fostering and hindering partnerships with recommendations, cannot be overstated. Mary Barbara Trube, Professor Emerita, Ohio University-Chillicothe Contributing Faculty & Dissertation Mentor, Walden University Early Childhood Education Adjunct Faculty, Florida SouthWestern State College Mentor & Early Childhood Consultant, ILEAD Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

Education partnerships are central to – and often a requirement of – most education reform initiatives promoted by state and local governments, by foundations, and by business funders. Many fail for failure to understand the dynamics of their complex relationships.This book provides insights and guidance to enable prospective and existing education partners to develop answers to the questions that are critical to success: Why engage in this partnership? How can you communicate the potential benefits of partnership to motivate teachers, faculty, administrators, and community members? How do you select the best organizational structure and procedures for a partnership? How can you maintain open, deliberative discussion while respecting different histories and cultures? How can you produce compelling evidence that the partnership is worthwhile? Based on their observation of a five-year-long publicly funded partnership, research data, and the literature, the authors identify the principles that they consider critical to answering these questions. The authors do not minimize the differences and complexities inherent in partnership work, because they believe that doing so would be to present coherence and homogeneity where none exists. Instead, they seek to make evident how these principles underlie many different partnership situations. Thus, rather than presenting a package of best practices, or a cookie-cutter approach, this book presents the organizational principles for planning and implementing education partnerships, along with sets of strategies for working through them. The authors present the diagnostic tools for undertaking a deliberate and research-based approach to planning, designing, and managing a partnership. By surfacing participants’ often-differing motivations, and the practices and assumptions they bring to the table, the book provides the foundation for developing a constructive relationship. In scope, the book extends beyond school-university partnerships to include schools’ collaboration with state and local governments, nonprofit organizations, and the business sector.

How can districts bring instructional improvement to scale within and across schools? The authors of Collaborative School Improvement argue that districts can play a powerful part in helping schools build the capacity to engage in inquiry-based reform—but that this effort requires a shift in districts’ traditional role as a professional development provider. Drawing on case studies from three districts, the authors identify eight key practices for effective school-district collaboration. By helping districts teach—and model—an inquiry-based process, Collaborative School Improvement promises to offer powerful new support for scaling up data-driven instructional reform."