Designing professional learning that meets the diverse needs of special education professionals is exciting, challenging, and critically important. The staff at the Children's Center for Communication/Beverly School for the Deaf in Massachusetts support deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing children from ages 3 to 22 with a range of communication and…

Multiliteracies provide a unique opportunity to students with extensive support needs (ESN) because they extend literacy practices to include print-based texts along with the visual, audio, gestural, and spatial modes, thereby engaging students in literacy practices and higher-level skills regardless of their fluency in language or learning…

Administrators often assume new teachers come prepared with the foundational skills required to be effective teachers. Not only is this frequently a false assumption, but some of these skills do also not fully make sense until a teacher has responsibility for a classroom. To assist in the transition process, many teachers will attend orientation…

We live in an age rife with evaluations. Everyone is busy evaluating everyone. Teachers evaluate students; administrators evaluate teachers; the public evaluates administrators. Testing agencies are having a field day creating instruments for evaluating everyone and everything. The circle feeds on itself. In my 45 years of teaching experience, my…

When a newcomer arrives, classroom teachers may wonder what to do. This article provides seven practical tips for getting started with a newcomer, nurturing healthy relationships, and facilitating learning experiences. Teachers can ease the transition for newcomers by attempting to perceive situations from the student's perspective. Awareness of…

Cooperating Teachers are an integral part of physical education teacher education candidates' field experience. With an increasingly diverse student population, it is important that teachers have the knowledge and skills to teach high quality, and socially-just physical education. In addition to the increased focus on equity, diversity and…

This article features thumbnail descriptions of 26 "Teaching Moments" presented at the Society for Marketing Advances 2016 Annual Conference. A wide variety of marketing education interventions are presented, from games that teach marketing fundamentals and enhance faculty effectiveness when counseling students, to visualizing data, and…

This article explains how teachers can understand, notice, and supportively respond to readers who struggle with self-monitoring during text reading. The unique strategic processing demands for readers who struggle support the argument that teaching children to find and notice errors is different than fixing a word, or getting it right. Three…

Most worthwhile improvements in teaching practice are not simple, and the change process is complicated. It can also take a long time if it involves breaking long-established habits and modifying belief systems. Not only is adoption at scale difficult, but transfer into practice "at all" is often tricky, even with the best professional…

As interest in teacher leadership has grown, many leading organizations have developed tools and guidance to support schools, districts, and teacher leaders themselves. In collaboration and consultation with the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Midwest Educator Effectiveness Research Alliance, REL Midwest and the Center on Great Teachers and…

In "Teaching Core Practices in Teacher Education," Pam Grossman and her colleagues advocate an approach to practice-based teacher education that identifies "core practices" of teaching and supports novice teachers in learning how to enact them competently. Examples of core practices include facilitating whole-class discussion,…

Disc golf is a lifetime activity that can be enjoyed by students of varying skill levels and abilities. Disc golf follows the principles of ball golf but is generally easier for students to play and enjoy success. The object of disc golf is similar to ball golf and involves throwing a disc from the teeing area to the target in as few throws as…

Every teacher seeks to be an "effective" teacher. Every teacher wants to have a positive, remarkable, and lasting influence on students' lives. But what makes for an effective teacher? What role does teacher preparation play in teacher effectiveness? What do effective teachers do during planning, instruction, and assessment? How do they…

Students with disabilities often struggle in science and underperform in this important content area when compared to their typical peers. Unfortunately, many special educators have had little preparation to develop science content knowledge or skills in methods for teaching science. Despite their lack of content knowledge, special educators are…

For many teachers, engineering can be intimidating; teachers receive little training in engineering, particularly those teaching early elementary students. In addition, the necessity of differentiating for students with special needs can make engineering more challenging to teach. This article describes a professional development program…