TNTP, a national nonprofit organization working to ensure that all students get excellent teachers, recently released a first-of-its-kind resource on effective teaching written by and for practicing teachers.
The resource, Unlocking Student Effort , is a paper that includes five essays written by the winners of TNTP’s 2012 Fishman Prize for Superlative Classroom Practice, a prestigious $25,000 award intended to spotlight excellence in teaching and the practices of the nation’s most effective educators.
Unlocking Student Effort focuses on a common challenge many teachers face: How to engage reluctant students in rigorous academic content. In their essays, the 2012 Fishman Prize winners explain how they overcome this challenge in their classrooms.
Individually, the essays provide a glimpse into five remarkable classrooms where students are achieving at high levels. Collectively, they offer a range of strategies from teachers who are having breakthrough success in some of the nation’s most challenging school settings.
- Shira Fishman, a 9th-11th grade Math teacher in Washington, DC, and the teacher for whom the Fishman Prize was named, describes how she builds a sense of urgency and community in her classroom during the first five minutes of each class period.
- Whitney Henderson, a 7th grade Writing teacher in New Orleans, LA, writes about showing students how the seemingly irrelevant academic content they study applies to the futures they dream of.
- Jamie Irish, an 8th grade Math teacher in New Orleans, LA, vividly illustrates how he rallies students around the challenge of outperforming their peers at a more affluent, selective enrollment school just two miles away.
- Katie Lyons, a 6th-8th grade Literacy/Social Studies teacher in Chicago, IL, describes how she engages her students in rigorous historical material by connecting it to their own lives and the diverse neighborhood around them.
- Leslie Ross, a 9th grade Biology teacher in Greensboro, NC, shows how she leads her students to success in her highly rigorous biology course by gaining their trust and building a powerful sense of team spirit.
The paper is intended to be the first of an annual series from TNTP, written each year by a new cohort of Fishman Prize winners on a new topic related to best classroom practices.
The application period for the 2013 Fishman Prize will open early November 2012.
To learn more and download the full paper or request a print copy, visit tntp.org/fishmanprize.
