Tools & Talk: Data, Conversation, and Action for Classroom and School Improvement

by Michael Murphy

Ready-to-use tools kick start discussions about how to build responsive, brain-based classrooms, create engaging student tasks, and form a classroom community of respect and learning. Data-gathering tools begin to help teachers and coaches examine student engagement, how lesson and classroom design work together to support optimal learning, whether the school and classroom environment welcomes all students, and how well teachers are managing instructional processes. With an emphasis on strengthening supportive relationships rather than evaluation and a "gotcha" interaction, Murphy shows principals, assistant principals, instructional specialists, and anyone in a position to affect instruction how to gather and use data to improve teaching and contribute to schoolwide change.

139 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2009

About the author

Bestselling author Michael Murphy has been called the father of the human potential movement, one of the most influential movements in twentieth-century American culture. His bestselling book Golf in the Kingdom (1972) inspired the creation of the Shivas Irons Society, a nonprofit group dedicated to finding beauty and discovery through the game of golf, and has recently been adapted into a movie starring Malcolm McDowell (2010). His other books include Jacob Atabet (1977), An End to Ordinary History (1982), In the Zone (1995), and The Kingdom of Shivas Irons (1997). He lives in California.