Committing to Teacher Collaboration
Strategy 1: Create an Admirable Miniature Body Politic
Strategy 2: Seek Wise Mentors and Impressionable Mentees
Strategy 3: Borrow, Tweak, and Share One Another’s Ideas
Strategy 4: Show Up for Your Colleagues
Strategy 5: Cultivate Bottom-Up Collaboration
Identifying Divergent Teacher and Principal Perspectives
The Ultimate Position of Powerlessness
Threats to a Positive and Professional Climate
Maintaining Staff Cohesion Through Communication
Strategy 1: Don’t Play the Power Game
Strategy 2: Welcome and Offer Feedback and Reflection
Strategy 3: Transform Through Transparency
Strategy 4: Employ Empathy, Not Sympathy, and Stop Administrator Stereotypes
Viewing Education From a Distance
High-Profile Shortcomings and Underreported Strengths
The Myth of Systemic Educational Failure
Connecting Citizens and Schools
Strategy 1: Highlight Successes
Strategy 2: Look in the Rearview Mirror
Strategy 3: Demonstrate Democracy
ABOUT the AUTHOR
Jeremy S. Adams is a social studies teacher at Bakersfield High School in Bakersfield, California, and a political science lecturer at California State University, Bakersfield.
He has received numerous teaching honors, including the 2014 California Teacher of the Year Award from the Daughters of the American Revolution and the 2012 Kern County Teacher of the Year Award. In 2013, he was a semifinalist for the California Department of Education’s Teachers of the Year Program, and in 2014, he was a finalist for the prestigious Carlston Family Foundation National Teacher Award. The California State Assembly and California State Senate have both sponsored resolutions recognizing Jeremy’s achievements in education. In 2018, he became the first classroom teacher ever to be inducted into the California State University, Bakersfield, Hall of Fame.
Jeremy is the founder of the Earl Warren Cup, a constitutional competition that quizzes students’ knowledge of U.S. civics and history. For the competition, he has obtained recorded questions from an assortment of influential people, including U.S. presidents, Supreme Court justices, congressional leaders, Hollywood and media celebrities, and foreign heads of state.
He has authored two books on teaching: The Secrets of Timeless Teachers (2016) and Full Classrooms, Empty Selves (2012). He and his writings have appeared in numerous national media outlets, including the Washington Post, the HuffPost, the Los Angeles Times, the Sacramento Bee, C-SPAN, and the Educator’s Room. He frequently speaks to groups of teachers and other educators, whom he passionately motivates to adopt strategies and attitudes that help them find meaning and purpose in their profession.
Jeremy received his bachelor’s degree in politics from Washington and Lee University and his master’s degree in education (curriculum and instruction) from California State University, Bakersfield, where he was named the Outstanding Student in the School of Education.
To learn more about Jeremy’s work, follow @JeremyAdams6 on Twitter.
To book Jeremy S. Adams for professional development, contact [email protected].
INTRODUCTION
Resilience accommodates the unexpected.
—JOHN LEWIS GADDIS
At the high school where I have spent my entire career, there was a brief period during which the students would not stop pulling the fire alarms. Every few days, multiple