Free Spirit Professional®

Self-directed, self-paced professional learning teachers can use to build agency and improve their practice, with easy-to-digest ideas that can be implemented in the classroom the next day. Teachers start their professional journey with a clear aim: to teach well so students thrive socially, emotionally, and academically. All too often, though, the hard realities of teaching (mandated curricula, scripted lesson plans, overloaded schedules, students' personal struggles) hamper the best of intentions. Navigating these challenges and avoiding burnout calls for teachers to build strong relationships among colleagues, students, families, and communities. Those relationships in turn help teachers create contexts for deep learning, reflection, and student-centered instruction. This book provides strategies and tools for doing all this. This must-have resource: • Provides student teachers and new teachers with a clear set of actions to move into their position and teach well right from the start. • Offers practical, step-by-step guidance for building relationships with colleagues and administrators, affirming students' identities, navigating challenges with other professionals, and putting love and care at the heart of teaching. • Helps educators build a foundation and philosophy for teaching and collaborating and includes stories from educators and sample dialogues. Dr. Elizabeth Soslau wrote this book to be a resource for self-directed, self-paced professional learning that teachers could use to develop and improve their practice, with easy-to-digest ideas that can be implemented in the classroom the next day. It's a guide that every student teacher, in-service teacher, host teacher, and student teaching field instructor needs.

Help gender-expansive students feel safe, included, and affirmed at school. Gender-expansive youth need school policies and practices that focus on their happiness, health, safety, and privacy. Schools and teachers need concrete, accessible strategies and tools for supporting them. This book empowers every educator with those tools and strategies. Whether educators are brand new to or already familiar with gender diversity topics, they'll find opportunities to learn and practice in a judgment-free, low-stakes way. This must-have resource: • Helps educators understand, advocate for, and implement research-based best practices for gender-expansive youth. • Includes discussion prompts and reflection activities at the end of each chapter. • Shares strategies for affirming students through social transitions at school. • Supports educators by offering model language to address challenging questions related to gender in school communities. • Provides concrete actions educators can take to adopt gender-inclusive language and create learning environments that welcome students of all genders. • Offers perspectives from gender-expansive youth in their own words. Written by educator and advocate Dave Edwards, founder of the Gender Inclusive Schools organization, this book grew from the resources and education-specific trainings he has developed working with school districts, independent schools, and educators throughout the United States and in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Digital content includes reproducible forms from the book.

Develop a mental-health mindset and rediscover the inspiration that brought you to teaching. In The Empathetic Classroom, educator and licensed therapist Maria Munro-Schuster helps K–12 teachers navigate emotional stress, combat exhaustion, connect with students, and avoid burning out. She also gives tools for better teaching, for teaching that feels better, and for classrooms where emotional intelligence, safety, and empathy are embedded as a part of practice. This book goes beyond typical books on teacher burnout, focusing on holistic mindsets and strategies that support your mental health and that of your students. Full of tools and strategies to incorporate into the classroom, this approachable book combines teaching best practices with research-backed techniques from the field of counseling psychology. You'll find sound advice on maintaining boundaries, confronting intrusive thoughts, responding to trauma, incorporating play into classrooms, and many other methods of remaining connected to themselves and their students. Learn how to: • Create a safe space for students-and educators-to learn and grow • Understand how your past and your triggers influence your teaching-and recognize trauma in students • Validate emotions to curb disruptive behaviors By situating mental health concepts and techniques within established teaching best practices, The Empathetic Classroom helps you adapt your approach, your environment, and your interactions with students. And by focusing on self-regulation, boundaries, and connection, you can rediscover your inspiration. Find emotionally safer and more energizing ways of doing what you love while protecting your own mental health.