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36 Tools for Building Spirit in Learning Communities

By: R. Bruce Williams

Revitalize the spirit of your school community and strengthen your common vision and purpose!

Today's schools struggle with increasing demands for accountability—challenges that can fracture educational communities. This transformative resource emphasizes that change must come from within through revitalized spirit and strong culture. It offers activities and templates to help educators create a common vision, new vigor, confidence, and purpose, along with the tools to create real change by focusing on seven aspects of school culture:

Participative processes such as mentoring
Visible achievements
Common understandings
Guided reflections
Inspiring success stories
Community-building rituals
Powerful symbols

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Product Details

Grade Level: PreK-12
ISBN: 9781412913454
Published By: Corwin
Year: 2006
Page Count: 192
Publication date: June 08, 2006

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Description

"A master at facilitating programs, Williams offers 36 tools that are grounded in years of practical experience for helping teams turn the change process into manageable, user-friendly tasks. He reinvigorates learning communities with spirit, vigor, and mutual support as they address their specific challenges."
--Robin Fogarty, President
Robin Fogarty and Associates

Revitalize the spirit of your school community and strengthen your common vision and purpose!

Many of today's schools suffer from stress fractures as they struggle with challenges of achievement gaps, class sizes, differentiating instruction for diverse students, and responding to ever greater demands for accountability. Longtime facilitator R. Bruce Williams gets to the heart of the matter, emphasizing that change is not just external, but also comes from within through revitalized individuals and strong culture.

Williams provides administrators with essential tools to nurture the spirits of hard-working professionals and raise morale in school communities. Each chapter ends with step-by-step activities that build on featured concepts and speed the transition from theory to practice, from struggle to success.

The book focuses on seven important aspects of underlying structure that can leverage new patterns of confidence and achievement:

Participative processes such as mentoring
Visible achievements
Common understandings
Guided reflections
Inspiring success stories
Community-building rituals
Powerful symbols

In powerful, well-formed cultures, common spirit is strong. This book provides everything educators need to work together to transform their learning community into a culture of vitality, energy, vision, and purpose.

Key features

New perspectives for school morale building in stressful times
Filled with tools for school leaders and training facilitators
Wealth of activities
Beneficial for all schools but must-have for schools experiencing difficulty in carrying out their educational mission.
Over 50 charts and forms speed immediate implemenation

Author(s)

R. Bruce Williams

Bruce Williams has more than thirty five years of international consulting experience, and is noted for his expertise in group facilitation and in planning and team building methodologies. Williams' specialty is facilitating participative, interactive group workshops whether they are focused on strategic planning and consensus building or instructional methodologies for the classroom. He has conducted successful workshops on brain compatible learning and school change facilitation, and he frequently presents in the areas of cooperative learning, higher order thinking skills, and authentic assessment. With seven years' experience in teaching English as a second language in Japan and Korea, Williams is highly experienced in working with diverse populations. Thirty-six years' experience in adult training also make him a valuable resource in facilitating school change. In addition to conference workshops in 2002 in Australia and New Zealand, he has been invited three times to present workshops for teachers in Singapore. In April of 2004, Williams was the keynote speaker for 400 principals and teachers in Beijing.

Table of Contents

Dedication

Introduction - Overview

Chapter 1 - Implementing Participative Processes

Chapter 2 - Illuminating Visible Achievements

Chapter 3 - Developing Common Understandings

Chapter 4 - Leading Guided Reflections

Chapter 5 - Proclaiming Victorious Stories

Chapter 6 - Rehearsing Community Building Rituals

Chapter 7 - Creating Powerful Symbols

List of Tables and Figures

Templates

Index

Reviews

"A master at facilitating groups, Williams offers 36 tools that are grounded in years of practical experience for helping teams turn the change process into manageable, user-friendly tasks. He reinvigorates learning communities with spirit, vigor, and mutual support as they address their specific challenges."

Robin Fogarty, President
Robin Fogarty and Associates

Other Titles in: Professional Learning Communities | Leadership | School Change, Reform, & Restructuring

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Review Copies

This book is not available as a review copy.