The Power of Teacher Teams: With Cases, Analyses, and Strategies for Success, Jan/2012

How to successfully improve teaching and learning with teacher teams

While most educators believe working in teams is valuable, not all team efforts lead to instructional improvement. Through richly detailed case studies, The Power of Teacher Teams demonstrates how schools can transform their teams into more effective learning communities that foster teacher leadership. The benefits of successful teacher teams include:

1. Improved performance for both teachers and students
2. Meaningful professional development
3. Group adoption of a new curriculum
4. Shared insights into student work
5. Better classroom management
6. Support for new teachers
7. New roles for teacher leaders
8. Opportunities for mentor support

School leaders will find guidelines, methods, and concrete steps for building and sustaining effective teacher teams. Also included are one DVD with video case studies and one CD with reproducibles. The most important reason for building teacher teams is to enhance student learning through improved instruction—and that story is at the heart of this book.

About Te Authors:
Considered authorities on the subjects of teacher education, teacher leadership, and professional development schools, Troen and Boles deliver workshops on Teacher Teams and Teacher Leadership, speak at conferences and seminars, and regularly consult to schools and school districts in the United States and internationally. As classroom teachers, they founded one of the nation’s first professional development schools to link colleges and public schools in partnerships for the preservice education of teachers as well as the ongoing professional development of veteran teachers.

They are the authors of Who’s Teaching Your Children: Why The Teacher Crisis is Worse Than You Think and What Can Be Done About It (Yale University Press, 2003) as well as numerous articles and book chapters on teachers and teaching. Most recently they have joined national leaders of professional organizations of educators, state education agencies and universities in the Teacher Leadership Exploratory Consortium, convened by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) to develop model national standards for teacher leadership.

Troen co-directs the Induction Partnership Initiative at Brandeis University, guiding schools in developing the capacity to support new teachers. She also leads school administrators in regularly scheduled online, networked seminars investigating a wide range of issues surrounding induction practices and professional development for new and experienced teachers.

Boles is a Senior Lecturer on Education and Faculty Director of the Learning and Teaching Masters Degree Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She received her doctorate from Harvard, and her courses examine the latest research on school reform, teacher education, teacher teams, and new forms of teacher leadership.