Education
TOTALLY POSITIVE TEACHING
Course No. ED437E, ED537E
“A great teacher is never forgotten.” So begins the challenge to each teacher in the profession. In Totally Positive Teaching: A Five-Stage Approach to Energizing Students and Teachers, Joseph Ciaccio has developed a list of five ways the great teacher lives a positive and effective life in the classroom. While there are places that are simply over the top in the notion of how positive you can be, you won’t be disappointed in the substance and strategies of this book. The five focuses are: Meeting mutual needs; Changing counterproductive feelings; Ending behavior problems; Helping underachievers, and Using active-learning strategies. Each focus is deceptively simple; some people would disbelieve the power of these strategies but each is based on emerging brain-based research. It addresses classroom management, lesson strategies, and emotional intelligences.
The real agenda of Ciacco’s book is to show the power we all have to deal with the discouragement of ineffective results, classroom meltdowns and student and teacher boredom. He illustrates how to think creatively and effectively to open different possibilities in tough situations. You will wonder, at first, if such methods are really as good as they sound, but with plentiful examples, solid research and a huge collaborative resource bank, the author may just help you shift from a former strategy in favor of a much more exciting, humane and dynamic one. Unlike most other methods-oriented books, this work puts a major emphasis on meeting both student and teacher needs simultaneously. It sometimes makes the assumption that we, as teachers, are experiencing problems due to our own negative perceptions, but very positive and creative teachers will find much validation and inspiration in this book.
| We advise you to review and download the course syllabus before registering. | Syllabus |
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Learned how to develop strategies that meet the needs of their students as well as themselves.
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Learned how to prevent student behavior problems and build student leadership.
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Learned ways to use more active teaching strategies to help underachievers.
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Learned how to develop personal skills for dealing with negative situations.
