Description

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In The Classroom Troubleshooter: Strategies for Dealing with Marking and Paperwork, Discipline, Evaluation, and Learning through Language, author Les Parsons provides practical, no-nonsense solutions to the problems that plague a teacher's day. This handy, easy-to-use guide incorporates a number of invaluable rubrics, checklists, templates, reference sheets, questionnaires, and student guidelines.

• Included are strategies to help teachers
• Avoid being overwhelmed by paperwork and other types of "administrivia"
• Mark "smart"
• Anticipate, prevent, respond to, and manage a host of discipline problems
• Develop and administer evaluation instruments for projects, research, essays, and objective-style tests
• Increase student comprehension of textbooks
• Implement and mark journal writing
• Guide talk-based learning
• Reflect on how individual teachers can impact on the overall functioning of the school

The Classroom Troubleshooter empowers teachers to control their environment and to reclaim time and energy so that their gifts and skills can be directed into teaching and learning with their students.

About the Author

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Les Parsons taught a variety of subjects, including English and language arts, for more than thirty years. As an English consultant, workshop leader, and university lecturer, he has worked with classroom teachers at all grade levels. His work with innovative curricular initiatives ranges from implementing response journals across the curriculum and writer's workshop techniques to designing effective evaluation systems and promoting practical equity policies.

Les' latest book, Bullied Teacher: Bullied Student, tackles the controversial issue of how adult and student bullying combine in a school to produce a bullying culture and then details what to do about it.

Here is how Les describes his approach to writing and education:
"I think through writing. During the process of writing, my goal is not necessarily to publish, but try to understand a little bit more about my world and myself. As a lifelong educator, I write to discover the best ways to learn and the right ways to teach. If I uncover a kernel of truth about a unique perspective on an educational issue that I haven't encountered before, I try to publish in order to share what I've learned.

"As teachers, we can make a difference. If we can equip young people with the right tools, skills, and knowledge, and furnish them with an equitable, compassionate view of the people around them, they will make a difference in the world they inherit."