To continuing attracting investment and high wage jobs, America must build an educated and skilled workforce. Study after study shows the quality of teaching is paramount to student achievement. Next to parents, teachers are the most important person in determining the destiny of a student’s academic success.
Created by the Foundation for Excellence in Education, Excellence in Teaching is a professional development and award program that recognizes Florida’s most effective teachers and produces materials to share their “secrets of successful teaching” with teachers across the nation.
Through this initiative, the Foundation for Excellence in Education honors Florida’s greatest teachers – educators whose students made significant progress in reading and math based on the results of Florida’s annual standardized assessment.
The 2008 Excel Award winners were divided into ten groups, based on five categories in reading or math: those working with high achieving students, students performing below grade level, students learning the English Language, students with disabilities and all students.
During the first annual Celebration of Teaching in fall of 2008, Florida’s greatest teachers participated in focus groups hosted by the University of Florida’s Lastinger Center for Learning. The teachers shared their experience and expertise and answered questions like “How do you use data in the classroom?” “How do you motivate students?” “What is the best way to deal with disruptive students?” and more. Following the focus groups, the Lastinger Center team at the University of Florida compiled and analyzed the data from the teachers.
Together, the Foundation and the University of Florida created Secrets of Successful Teaching, an interactive guide to the traits, techniques and tools of Florida’s greatest teachers designed to help educators, principals, parents, reformers and community and business leaders improve the quality of teaching in American classrooms.
In the coming years, the Foundation will expand the model developed in Florida to states across the nation to reward hundreds more excellent teachers and replicate their successful strategies in every American classroom.