Nonfiction Book Award Status: GOLD
Synopsis
We all know the results of great teaching: happy, successful students who are engaged in the classroom and love learning. But how do these results come about? Are there common traits, tools, or approaches used by the most gifted teachers across different subject areas that can be emulated to produce high-level outcomes? To uncover these secrets, we would need to be given exclusive access to their classrooms, observing them work their magic in person to see for ourselves how they’ve developed their techniques to spark their students’ imaginations.
In Great Teachers: Exploring Excellence in Education we take you inside the classrooms—and the heads—of some of America’s greatest teachers, opening the door to those inspired teaching strategies that distinguish excellence in the field of education. While most of these strategies are generally known, the real secret is how they were applied by these teaching geniuses.
From Leonard Bernstein and Christa McAuliffe to Teachers of the Year across the nation and across a variety of subjects, Great Teachers invites us in to witness the historic shaping of students’ futures while unlocking their common themes and successful approaches that other teachers can employ to light that same spark in their own students. No matter the grade or discipline, Great Teachers energizes and empowers all teachers to return to our own classrooms and dare to be great.
Highlights:
- Features a wide variety of subject areas: History, Social Studies, Elementary Reading, Music, Modern Languages, Science, Athletics, K-2 Special Education, plus a special focus on great School Administrators
- Profiles a number of National Teachers of the Year and Hall of Fame teachers
- Introduces a new learning theory based on observation of how our profiled master teachers communicate
- Provides the most extensive analysis ever done of Christa McAuliffe’s teaching technique
- Looks at Leonard Bernstein’s unique gifts as a teacher through a new lens
- Includes a Glossary of Terms and practical Appendices which provide a unique Classroom Evaluation Tool of teachers in all disciplines based on the observable features of Great Teachers
- Bonus Features—Christa McAuliffe’s first-year struggles, how Henry Winkler overcame dyslexia, an exploration of Bad Teaching, and more!
Author Bio
Award-winning teacher Dr. Kevin P. Bartram has spent 30 years in the classroom, both in public schools and at the university level. His high school program was one of the finest in the nation, earning a Grammy Signature Award and Exemplary Program Award in the state of Maryland. Bartram is Past-President of the College Orchestra Directors Association and past chair of the Fredericksburg (VA) Arts Commission. He has degrees from Northwestern University, the University of Missouri-Columbia, and Shenandoah University. Bartram is Music Director of the Fredericksburg Symphony Orchestra and is an active clinician and guest speaker about teaching techniques and educational excellence. He and his wife Connie, an elementary music teacher, have two boys–Nicholas and Willie, both Eagle Scouts. Now, after spending the past 20 years in higher education, he returned to teach high school and middle school in the Fredericksburg (Va.) City Public Schools in Fall 2021. Learn more at www.kevinpbartram.com.
