The Skillful Teacher: The Comprehensive Resource for Improving Teaching and Learning, 7th Edition, Dec/2017

The latest edition of The Skillful Teacher is the comprehensive resource for all educators – no matter where they are in their career. Building on decades of research, The Skillful Teacher offers evidence-based instructional strategies for today’s classroom including easy-to-understand scripts and videos.  The Skillful Teacher is used world-wide as a hands-on, practical guide on instruction – not a theoretical perspective on education.

Written by one of the nation’s leading experts in teachers’ professional growth, each chapter in the text addresses a different dimension of instructional practice and provides in concrete and practical terms the guidelines, tools and strategies educators can use to meet the challenges of everyday classroom life.

The seventh edition of the book has been enhanced and expanded in many ways including:

1. A candid exploration of anti-racism and cultural competency - issues that are especially timely in our current political and social climate
2. An in-depth study of the power of quality feedback and its relationship to student achievement
3. Identification of the planning decisions that can impact the quality and effectiveness of a lesson
4. How teachers’ beliefs influence student motivation and effective effort
5. On-line resources that provide readers greater opportunities to engage in the content and observe key instructional moves

Learn about the reasoning behind what we write, how we write, and why we write publications like The Skillful Teacher.  Jon Saphier explains the spirit that animates our work in the following brief.

Spirit of The Skillful Teacher

There is a spirit that animates every page of The Skillful Teacher and always has in all seven editions. It is behind what we write, how we write, and why we write. We hope it comes out as clearly to you as it does in driving our intentions.

Throughout you will see we value:

EXPERTISE

The work we do is the most demanding anyone can imagine. To be successful, especially with students who are behind, discouraged, or injured emotionally, calls for a range of skills and a depth of knowledge far beyond what our voting public realizes. The knowledge and skill base for good teaching is huge and it is complex.

REFLECTION

Teaching is decision-making. The most successful teachers reflect deeply on what they do and its impact on students. And they adjust what they are doing (“the match”) if it didn’t work the first time around.

HUMILITY

All of us can get better. In fact, we need to devote ourselves to that commitment with humility. There is so much to learn, even for the most experienced and competent among us.

EQUITY AND OBLIGATION

We can reach all students. Family income and neighborhood conditions are not permanent restrictions on children’s academic attainment. Skillful teaching is a democratic leveler of urgency, of necessity, and of fairness.

COMPASSION

We are in the business of growing people, not just teaching content. Therefore, those aspects of teaching expertise that grow interpersonal capacities of our students—empathy, community, agency, and responsibility—are primary in what we aim for.

TEAMWORK

Improving our effectiveness in reaching all our children must be a deeply collaborative effort. The work is too difficult and too important to function alone. 

SPECIFICITY

To learn anything new and/or complex, it is incredibly valuable to see and hear exactly what it looks and sounds like in action when done well. But in addition, we need someone to explicitly point out what the key attributes or moves in skillful performance are, otherwise we might not notice them amidst the incredible complexity of interactive teaching.