Foreword by Mark Truckenbrod Acknowledgments About the Authors 1. Piecing Together the Personality Puzzle 2. Nothing Succeeds Like Success 3. Establishing High Expectations 4. Practicing Skillful Communication 5. Defining Instructional Protocol 6. Winning the Crowd 7. Understanding Practices and Assessments 8. Motivation 9. Motivating High Student Achievement 10. Recognizing and Promoting Excellence 11. Developing Powerful Classroom Management Skills 12. Epilogue: Becoming a Legend Appendix I: Practical Instructional Advice Appendix II: Homework Points to Remember Appendix III: Create Your Own Personal Icon Appendix IV: One Final Story Index
How can you be remembered as a respected educator among your students and colleagues? What do you need to know to become an exceptional teacher? Becoming a Legendary Teacher presents the key characteristics of excellent teachers. The authors demonstrate how professionals can learn to recognize their own talents and skills, cultivate successful traits in their teaching experiences, and translate those qualities into outstanding leadership in their schools. This resource includes: - Techniques for conveying your high expectations for learners - Advice on creating a well-organized and positive classroom environment for all learners - Strategies for motivating students to excel in an era of high-stakes testing - Opportunities to practice skillful communication tips and relationships with students, their families, and colleagues - Suggestions for creating a teacher's own motivational model in a climate of accountability. Becoming a legendary teacher is a worthwhile goal that develops and refines teaching skills to help ensure that students want to come to school, want to learn, and want to succeed in your classroom.
William Freeman was a middle school social studies teacher for 11 years and a high school principal for 22 years. During his tenure as principal, he taught classes in philosophy to high school students and instructed as an adjunct professor in the educational, administrative, and business master's degree programs for Aurora University and Olivet Nazarene University. Having retired in 2006 from the public sector of education, Freeman continues to work as an educational consultant, an adjunct professor, and holds the position of professional development specialist for the School of Graduate and Continuing Studies at Olivet Nazarene University. In addition to his background in instruction and administration, he has been a North-Central Accreditation facilitator and a trained administrative analyst. His special area of expertise is in effective instructional techniques and strategies. He has written curriculum for gifted students at the middle school level, created a philosophy curriculum for high school students, and has written several instructional modules at the university level to improve classroom instruction and administrative performance. He is a frequent motivational and educational speaker at leadership conferences and instructional workshops. In addition, he has been a baseball, basketball, and track coach, as well as an athletic director, class sponsor, and student council advisor. He was selected as the outstanding administrator in the state of Illinois, recognized as an "Administrator of Merit" by the Illinois State Board of Education, honored as an Illinois Lincolnland Legend, and was awarded the Willis E. Snowbarger Award for Teaching Excellence by Olivet Nazarene University. David Scheidecker had been a high school English teacher for 27 years, with 20 of them as the head of an English department. His professional activities included serving as a reader for the Advanced Placement English literature and Composition exam, acting as a consultant to the college board, curriculum design, and miscellaneous instructional concerns. Scheidecker had worked extensively in curriculum design and revision at his own high school. He aslo was recognized as a "Teacher of Merit" by the state school board of Illinois.