Becoming a Win-Win Teacher

Becoming a Win-Win Teacher: A Guide for First-Year Teachers offers beginning teachers a balanced, positive framework for creating an effective, successful, and satisfying teaching experience. Jane Bluestein shows how new and veteran teachers alike can use a win-win approach to teaching that involves thinking, planning, and making decisions in ways that take the needs of others into consideration-students as well as other members of the school community-while meeting personal and professional goals.

A dynamic and entertaining speaker, Jane Bluestein has worked with thousands of educators, counselors, health care professionals, parents, child care workers, and other community members worldwide. She has appeared internationally as a speaker and talk-show guest, including several appearances as a guest expert on CNN, National Public Radio, and The Oprah Winfrey Show.Bluestein specializes in programs and resources geared to provide practical and meaningful information, training, and hope in areas related to relationship building, effective instruction and guidance, and personal development. Much of her work focuses on interactions between adults and children, especially children at risk. Her down-to-earth speaking style, practicality, sense of humor, and numerous stories and examples make her ideas clear and accessible to her audiences.Bluestein is an award-winning author whose books include Creating Emotionally Safe Schools; High School's Not Forever; 21st Century Discipline; Being a Successful Teacher; Parents in a Pressure Cooker; Parents, Teens, & Boundaries; The Parent's Little Book of Lists: Do's and Don'ts of Effective Parenting; Mentors, Masters, and Mrs. McGregor: Stories of Teachers Making a Difference; and Daily Riches: A Journal of Gratitude and Awareness. Bluestein's latest book is entitled The Win-Win Classroom.Formerly a classroom teacher in inner-city Pittsburgh, PA, a crisis-intervention counselor, a teacher training program coordinator, and a volunteer with high-risk teens at a local day treatment program, Bluestein currently heads Instructional Support Services, Inc., a consulting and resource firm in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

About the Author
Prologue: Why I Teach
Introduction
1. Win-Win Teaching
Part I: Commitment
2. Teaching as a Calling
3. Climate Advisory: Entering Win-Lose Territory
Financial Realities
It's Harder than it Looks
Lack of Support
Difficult Students, Difficult Parents
Value and Status
Issues of Autonomy and Discretion
4. Winning in a Win-Lose System: Why We Stay
The Good News
Touching the Future
Feedback and Satisfaction in Service
Variety, Joy, and Creative Expression
The Power of Connection
It Gets Easier
5. What to Pack: Your Personal Assets
Part II. Survival
6. Assume Your Professional Identity
It's About Time
Stepping Up: You in a Leadership Role
Looking Like a Teacher
What Matters Most: Who You Are in the Classroom
Life in a Fishbowl
Protect Yourself
7. Understand Schools in Context
The World Has Changed and Schools Have Not Kept Up
Kids Are Not Who They Used to Be
The Challenge of Change
8. Learn the System
What you Need to Know
Navigating Politics and Agendas
Dealing With Toxic Environments and Situations
9. Build your Support Team
The Value of Collaboration
Finding an Effective Mentor
Building Your Support Team
PART III. Students
10. Make a Connection
Disconnected Students
The Value of Connectedness
Connecting With Kids
Beyond the Grade Book
11. Avoid Win-Lose Power Strategies
Behavior Management and Teacher Preparation
Our Most Beloved (and Persistent) Win-Lose Traditions
12. Create a Win-Win Classroom
Relationships
Structure and Routines
Flexibility and Fairness
Choices
Asking for What You Want
Positive Consequences
Following Through
Good Directions
Recognition and Positive Feedback
Keeping a Cool Head
Offering Emotional Support
Encouraging Problem Solving
Build Community
Instructional Issues That Impact Behavior
PART IV. Self
13. Growing Your Career
Growing What You Know
Reflection
Opportunities and Next Steps (When You're Ready)
14. Take Care of Yourself
Feeling the Heat
Your Health, Your Body, and Stress
Seeking Balance
Acknowledgments
References
Index