Seven Insights for Teaching Success: A Teacher’S Guide to Producing Positive Outcomes

By Donna L. Holman

As a teacher, youll encounter many personalities, attitudes, and characters when you step into a classroom.

Even if youre super-excited and prepared, you may realize your students do not always share your enthusiasm, cannot comprehend what you are trying to teach, or arent mentally or psychologically ready for the information you are trying to convey.

Donna L. Holman, who has spent more than twenty-five years in the classroom helping students reach their potential, shares strategies to succeed in this guide for new and veteran teachers alike. Learn how to:

foster a safe, supportive environment; encourage critical thinking and collaboration; establish strong relationships with your students; and leverage a mindset of daily commitment to personal growth and development.

You must believe that you are the best candidate to lead your students to success. You are their guide, their advocate, their protector, and their motivator. You have greatness within youand must convince them that they have greatness within themselves.

Welcome to teaching-the most valuable profession that prepares individuals for every other occupation in the world.

Discover solutions-driven practices to help students achieve with Seven Insights for Teaching Success.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Apr 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781480860476

Donna L. Holman

Donna L. Holman has devoted nearly 30 years of her life to making the classroom an inviting, exciting and safe environment where students can be themselves while discovering their potential. She firmly holds that all children can learn and that they can achieve whatever they believe as long as they have devoted, caring adults to serve as role models and mentors. Growing up in the rural midlands of South Carolina, she graduated Edisto High and Columbia College with honors. She began her career at Felton Laboratory School, a K-8 institution at SC State College, where she taught French and Spanish. She introduced the Aviation Club and served as co-advisor of the Broadcasting Club, an innovative, student-centered program recognized in Building Dreams, Helping Students Discover Their Potential by author and motivational speaker, Mychal Wynn. After 12 years at FLS, Mrs. Holman returned to her alma mater, EHS and while there, she joined a school-to-work program for teachers which led her to a correspondent position at the Times and Democrat newspaper. She has received an M. Ed. in counselor education but remains in the classroom at Orangeburg-Wilkinson High as a French and Spanish instructor. In addition to her SC teaching certificate, Mrs. Holman is an FAA certificated commercial pilot and an Independent Associate with LegalShield. She and her husband, William are the proud parents of a daughter and a son, Ashleigh and Dalton. They enjoy working together on their farm where evenings are often spent relaxing with their animals on Holman Island.

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Copyright © 2018 Donna L. Holman.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-6046-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-6047-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018903925

Archway Publishing rev. date: 04/13/2018

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 Believe in yourself

Chapter 2 Prepare Yourself for Success

Chapter 3 Prepare the Learning Environment

Chapter 4 Prepare Your Students for Success

Chapter 5 Engage and Encourage all Learners

Chapter 6 Communicate Effectively with Everyone

Chapter 7 Be Real

A Few Thoughts on Technology, Essential Oils and Music in the Classroom

About the Author

About the Foreword Author

Resources

Let us remember: one book, one pen, one child and one teacher can change the world.

Malala Yousafzai

Foreword

T eaching is one of the best professions and the most difficult. Experts agree that today’s students are unlike any generation before them, therefore, the emotional demands placed on teachers are at an unpredictable level. In Seven Insights for Teaching Success , Donna Holman offers the reader hope, inspiration and direction. Gone are the days of educational experts offering advice to teachers without having the experience of being present and accounted for in a classroom in a school with students.

Donna Holman is one of us, making a conscious choice to show up every day to create conditions for success for every one of her students. Though she teaches in an environment others would classify as tough, she embraces the elements of what so many view as dismal and impossible and helps her colleagues and students cultivate new and exciting pathways to success in spite of the odds. Considered one of the best and innovative practitioners in our profession, Mrs. Holman finds solution-based instructional practices helpful in driving both, social-emotional and academic success in her classroom.

Having served as her principal-in residence while filming the award-winning BBC documentary, An American High School, in 2015, I was in awe of Mrs. Holman’s ability to rise above the complex issues our school community and students presented. She brought her best stuff every day and provided hope to students who had lost hope; inspiration to those who needed an extra push in the right direction and purpose to those who were academically proficient, but lost in life.

The contents of her book are pedagogically prescriptive while providing the reader with specific strategies that can be implemented in classrooms anywhere. A firm believer in the power of relationships, Mrs. Holman exemplifies the example we all desire in our teachers at every level. 

Presently serving as a superintendent of a school district, I see the need for a different type of professional development for our teachers. The type of PD needed must have at its’ center, a desire by teachers, who are fighting on the front lines in our schools and communities to share their experiences with other like-minded teachers who want to move from problem-centered analysis to solution-driven mastery. I predict Seven Insights for Teaching Success will make even the marginal teacher a teacher with the desire to become a master teacher.

The pages of this work, written by a teacher for teachers, will take you on a journey you will recommend others taking. More importantly, it will affirm and validate many of the practices you employ in your own classroom. Enjoy the journey as you recognize the power of teaching and being an active member of this incredible profession; the greatest of all time. 

Stephen G. Peters, ED.D

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.

John F. Kennedy

Introduction

W hen I think back on the major influences in my life, I reflect upon those few extraordinary teachers who showed genuine concern for me and who challenged me to be a better version of myself. I grew up on a farm in rural Cope, South Carolina during the late 1970s and early 1980s so I was taught by my parents to tend to animals, to ride and train horses, and to plant and gather crops. Most of my days were spent outdoors working with my older siblings where I internalized the importance of protecting nature. In order to develop academic skills, I attended public school from 1st through 12th grades.

My 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. Turner, not only helped me to focus on grammar and reading, she made sure I was exposed to character education. Her maternal guidance was the spark that ignited the fire in me to become a teacher. I remember sitting in a circle on a large, colorful rug with