Systems to Transform Your Classroom and School

"There are steps teachers and administrators can take-tweaks, if you will-that make a classroom or school a place that's safe for children, one where every student feels noticed and known, one that challenges kids and entices them with the intrinsic rewards of real work done well."
-Nancie Atwell

Since 1990, Nancie Atwell and the faculty of the K-8 Center for Teaching and Learning have charged themselves with a mission. "Our job is to innovate for the good of children," Nancie writes, "and then to pass along to other teachers the lessons we learn about instruction that makes a difference." Systems to Transform Your Classroom and School makes CTL's powerful innovations accessible to every teacher and administrator.

Nancie and her colleagues have created a culture of engagement and excellence by combining smart practices and policies with rich, community-building traditions and rituals. Systems to Transform Your Classroom and School introduces essential practices such as CTL's:

• daily morning meetings
• student-generated bill of rights
• school-wide "You can't say you can't play" rule
• outreach to parents
• spiraling K-8 curriculum in science and history
• student-and teacher-self-assessment and goal-setting
• student-led evaluation conferences
• systems for school and classroom management
• workshop approaches to teaching math, reading, and writing-including warmups, mini-lessons, conferences, and rigorous yet kid-friendly expectations based on the research and experience of a faculty of master teachers.

Nancie invites you to:

• reflect on your own practice and goals
• view CTL's systems at work on the accompanying DVD
• read about her school's solutions to common problems of teaching
• access resources-forms, guidelines, and protocols-developed by the CTL faculty.

"If we want students to feel a sense of belonging to something that's bigger than they are," Nancie observes, "it's essential that their teachers feel that way, too." Join your own colleagues, along with long-distance colleagues at the Center for Teaching and Learning, to discover how Systems to Transform Your Classroom and School can help turn your teaching ideals into a practical, successful reality.

Read a sample chapter, and watch a sample video clip.