Great Teaching: What Matters Most in Helping Students Succeed

"Great Teaching offers a compass for teachers seeking direction, reorientation, and renewal. DiGiulio strips away the distractions and has put together an exceedingly readable, valuable, and affirming guide for preservice and classroom teachers to reflect upon their practice."
Alan Canestrari, Assistant Professor of Education
Roger Williams University

Did you know that you are a great teacher? Amid the parents and the paperwork, the assessments and accountability, the evaluations and the e-mail, many teachers can′t find time to reflect on, much less assess, their own teaching. This concise guide brings teaching back to its fundamental roots, proving that how you teach is just as important as what you teach.

Great Teaching focuses on the core skills and qualities of great teachers--like caring, enthusiasm, clarity, and questioning--and then shows teachers how to find those skills and qualities within themselves. Drawing on his 33 years of experience, DiGiulio has developed specific techniques for:

• Assessing yourself and identifying your strengths
• Distilling your workload to the essentials and fundamentals
• Learning from your colleagues and planning cooperatively
• Using an 8-step framework to redefine your view of teaching

Get back to basics, realize that less is more, and flourish as you develop the skills and qualities that make you the great teacher that you are!

Robert DiGiulio is Education Professor at Johnson State College in Vermont. He earned his Ph.D. in human development from the University of Connecticut, and recently earned his D.Ed. in socio-education from the University of South Africa. He began his teaching career in the New York City public school system, where he taught for a number of years. His 33-year career as an educator includes teaching at the elementary, middle, junior high and college levels, with experience ranging from crowded urban schools to a one-room schoolhouse. He has also served as a school principal educational researcher, consultant, and writer.

As an educational consultant, he co-developed Teen Test, a vocational counseling program for adolescents. He coauthored educational computer software called Language Activities Courseware and authored its teachers guide. His Teacher magazine article The Guaranteed Behavior Improvement Plan was recognized as having one of the highest total readership scores of any of that magazines articles.

He has authored numerous books including When You Are a Single Parent, Effective Parenting, Beyond Widowhood, and After Loss, selected by Readers Digest as their featured condensed book in May 1994. He is a contributing author to The Oxford Companion to Womens Writing in the United States, and Marriage and Family in a Changing Society, and is the coauthor of Straight Talk about Death and Dying.

Most recently, he has written Nonviolent Interventions in Secondary Schools: Administrative Perspectives, a chapter in Peacebuilding for Adolescents: Strategies for Educators and Community Leaders, edited by Ian H. Harris and Linda R. Forcey. Dr. DiGiulio′s most recent books are Great Teaching: What Matters Most in Helping Students Succeed, Educate, Medicate, or Litigate? What Teachers, Parents, and Administrators Must Do About Student Behavior, and Positive Classroom Management: A Step-by-Step Guide to Successfully Running the Show Without Destroying Student Dignity, both published by Corwin Press.

Dr. DiGiulio′s interests include international education, child behavior, and teacher education. He won a 2002-2003 Fulbright Scholar Award to the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland. He was a Delegate to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 2003 Conference on Teaching and Learning for Intercultural Understanding. Dr. DiGiulio is also a member of the Vermont Society for the Study of Education, and serves on the Project Harmonys Advisory Board on Education Programs. He resides with his family in northern Vermont.