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Books & Articles
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Stopping the Brain Drain of Skilled Veteran Teachers Retaining and Valuing their Hard-Won Experience
"Dr. Fibkins understands the value of the influence experienced teachers have on their students, colleagues and the general culture of their schools. His candid and direct style is refreshing as he challenges the beliefs of those who strictly look at the “bottom line” with budgets and do not consider the unanticipated consequences of their near-sighted planning. Dr. Fibkins makes it clear that eliminating your most knowledgeable teachers simply because they cost a district more money must not be a substitute for addressing ineffective teachers regardless of experience levels. He challenges our mental models about what is ‘old’ and offers insightful suggestions for changing our perspectives and practices, particularly those that, if left uncontested, will be diluting the quality of public education and other vital services."—Paul Casciano, Superintendent of Schools, William Floyd School District
Veteran educators are being encouraged to take early retirement in order to create jobs for less-experienced, lower-paid novices. Veteran educators are not alone: early retirement promotions have become the norm for aging workers in America. Consequently, there is a brain-drain of skilled workers at the national, state, and local levels. The early retirement of our most talented veteran educators is leaving our schools without the necessary leadership, hard-earned experience, proven skills, and wisdom to meet the evolving challenges our country faces. Indeed, there are long-term consequences of losing skilled educators while they are in the prime of their professional lives. Addressing these concerns, this book challenges the "good news only" theory of early retirement promotions which suggest that veteran educators are no longer needed as they age and that their retirement is the only way schools can survive financially in times of economic uncertainty. This theory contends that everyone involved gets a reward: the novice educators get jobs and the veterans get some cash. This trade is seemingly no problem, until the veteran educators are out the door and the school staff, students, and parents are left without their steady guiding hands. Instead of hastily luring prime educators out the schoolhouse door with planned buyout promotions, schools should offer our most gifted veteran educators career alternatives that will encourage and reward them to remain on board, thereby allowing them to lead novice and mid-career staff, students, parents, and community members. Examining the negative consequences of early retirement promotions on school culture, administrative leadership, teacher and student performance, community reaction, Stopping the Brain Drain of Skilled Veteran Teachers will not only expose some of the major drawbacks of early buyouts of veteran educators, but will also suggest creative career alternative to keep such teachers on board.
Buy this book online from www.rowman.com (keyword fibkins)
Phone 1-800-462-6420
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An Administrator’s Guide to Better Teacher Mentoring
"An Administrator’s Guide to Better Teacher Mentoring calls for mentoring both novice and veteran teachers. Informed by years of experience in the public schools, this research-based book reveals Dr. Fibkins’ engagement in the trenches of American education. ’The key to bringing about an era of no teacher left behind,‘ says Fibkins, ’lies with involving veteran teachers.‘ Filled with personal anecdotes and observations. this Guide provides support for administrators and teachers interested in changing a school’s culture."
—Ross M. Burkhardt, past president of the National Middle School Association (NMSA) and 1998 National Teacher Hall of Fame inductee
This book address a major gap in the current mentoring programs at the secondary level. Staff development resources are often concentrated on helping new teachers be successful in their early school experience. Yes, a good idea, but a limited vision. Meanwhile many veteran teachers go without the mentoring assistance they need to be effective classroom teachers. While a few become mentors themselves, many veteran teachers just settle, slowly giving up, and become at risk of failure, burnout, and thinking only of retirement. This book is a call to school superintendents, building administrators, department chairs, school board members, union leaders, parent leaders, and teacher educators to address the need to provide ongoing mentoring for all teachers.
Second Edition
- Paper ISBN 1-60709-677-3 / 978-1-60709-677-1
- Cloth ISBN 1-60709-676-5 / 978-1-60709-676-4
- Electronic ISBN 1-60709-678-1 / 978-1-60709-678-8
Buy this book online from www.RowmanEducation.com
Phone 1-800-462-6420
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Teen Obesity: How Schools Can Be the Number One Solution to the Problem
There is an epidemic of student obesity in America, and educators are ideally situated to identify,
intervene, educate, and support overweight students who are headed for long-term illness or
premature death. Such an effort will require changes in the way that schools operate. These changes
can be implemented with a low-cost budget by restructuring staff and resources that are currently in
place. I propose a "Circle of Wellness" model for schools that includes an intervention effort to promote a health-oriented cafeteria; increased physical activity; healthy levels of blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar; life-skills training groups offered by counselors; outreach to parents; easily available intervention for overweight staff; and easy access and referral to community health, mental health, and recreation resources.
Paper ISBN 1-57886-512-3 Cloth ISBN 1-57886-511-5
YOYA Review (PDF)
Reviews from back cover (PDF)
Buy this book online from www.RowmanEducation.com 1-800-462-6420 or fill out this order form/book details (PDF).
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What Schools Should do to Help Kids Stop Smoking
There is an epidemic of teens using and abusing tobacco in America. The good news is schools are ideally placed to intervene in order to help students who are headed for serious illness and for some, an early death. The problem is very real and visible. For example, visit any secondary school and one can easily find large groups of students smoking on school grounds and in nearby areas. In some schools the numbers are staggering. And that includes schools in communities of every economic level and students from every academic group and culture. They represent a major health problem needing intervention, not suspension or expulsion. In my experience in developing the Five-Hour-A-Day Intervention Program I found that many student smokers want help and want to help others break the habit. Many of the students in this program voiced that while cigarette smoking does initially help reduce the pressures common to adolescent life, over time their smoking become "the" problem and negatively impacts on their health, self esteem, peer relations, and for many their school performance as they are regularly suspended from school and eventually drop out. I argue that schools need a proactive program that, in lieu of the never ending cycle of suspensions, offers a welcoming intervention program that can help student smokers arrive at a starting point to reduce or stop smoking and in recovery be trained to be a resource for their peers. Punishing, suspending, expelling student smokers doesn’t work for students nor for caring educators who find themselves boxed in systems that have no pathway for recovery from addiction. Simply put, schools need to provide students with an alternative that offers a way out of addiction with dignity, and an intervention process that will free educators such as assistant principals from spending much of their valuable time corralling smokers. This book then is an important and useful guide for educators and community health leaders on how to implement a school-based intervention program using staff now in place in the schools and connecting with supportive community health agencies. The book also makes the argument that schools are where the vast majority of teens show up every day. My experience has shown me that student smokers can be sold on a recovery process if directly engaged in a welcoming and helpful conversation about joining an easily accessible intervention group offered during the school day. Selling health and recovery needs to become a major goal and skill of educators. The 5-hour-a day intervention program described in this books shows educators how they can be proactive and successful in this effort.
ISBN 978-1883001858
Forward (PDF)
Amazon
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An Administrator’s Guide to Better Teacher Mentoring
There is a consensus among parents, politicians, education reformers and educators that schools should help every child be an active and successful learner and responsible citizen. Central to this outcome is a focus on how to mentor new, mid-career, and veteran teachers so they can be successful contributors to this goal. This book provides a model for secondary school administrators on how to identify, train, and support school staff to be mentors for their peers who need caring, trusted, skilled intervention in order to maintain a high level of effectiveness. And for some teachers, it offers an opportunity for a new beginning after failure so they don’t abandon their teaching career without help. A school-based mentoring program utilizing skilled staff sends the message that as educators we all need someone to turn to for support so, like our at risk students, we to do not fall through the cracks and falter.
Paper ISBN 0-8108-4280-7 Cloth 0-8108-4401-X.
First Edition.
Forword (PDF)
Buy this book online from www.RowmanEducation.com 1-800-462-6420 or fill out this order form/book details (PDF).
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An Educator’s Guide to Understanding the Personal Side of Students’ Lives
This book provides a road map on how to elevate the teacher’s advising role, the most underused helping resource in the school, to its rightful place as a source of academic and non-academic help for students. Students need teacher advisers who can help them successfully navigate through the risks of adolescent life. This guide will hopefully help encourage educators to join in this effort and view their new role as advisers as a much needed and desired enhancement of their classroom role. A win-win program for students, parents, and educators, this book includes 36 case studies of high school students that support why it is important for educators to be advisors and mentors.
Paper ISBN 1-57886-057-1.
Buy this book online from www.RowmanEducation.com 1-800-462-6420 or fill out this order form/book details (PDF).
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Students in Trouble: Schools Can Help Before Failure
School administrators, counselors, teachers, and support staff are faced daily with a growing number of
students who are affected by personal issues, alienation, and the anonymity found in our large
secondary schools. Unfortunately, in their effort to support students, caring educators often find
themselves boxed in by an out-of-date and flawed intervention system that limits their potential to help.
This book offers the argument that the present secondary school intervention system—which focuses on
few counselors with good intentions—cannot handle the numerous problems that arise in secondary
schools. This book is a roadmap for educators on ways to develop an effective school-wide intervention
system that will reach every student.
ISBN 1-57886-246-9.
Buy this book online from www.RowmanEducation.com 1-800-462-6420 or fill out this order form/book details (PDF).
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Innocence Denied: A Guide to Preventing Sexual Misconduct by Teachers and Coaches
As suggested by Edward Stancik, a special investigator for the New York City school system, there is no
epidemic of sexual misconduct in schools. Still the practice in many schools of looking the other way,
ignoring such behaviors, and maintaining a public posture that "it can’t happen here" is off target. Sexual misconduct does occur in many secondary schools, and in most cases the response is limited to
warning teachers and coaches about the legal aspects and liabilities involved. In this book I argue that
these approaches only make teachers and coaches unwilling to offer help to needy students. In the end,
educators are still at risk because they are left without effective training on how to set boundaries and
carry on helpful supervision and monitoring. To help eliminate sexual misconduct in schools, this book
provides step-by-step training procedures that can be used as part of the schools’ staff development
program to teach educators about the importance of setting boundaries. Real-life case studies
documenting inappropriate teacher-student relationships are included.
Paper ISBN 1-57886-314-7 Cloth ISBN 1-57886-313-9.
Buy this book online from www.RowmanEducation.com 1-800-462-6420 or fill out this order form/book details (PDF).
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The Teacher-As-Helper Training Manual
As budgets tighten, counselors need all the help they can get in the fight to keep at-risk teens from going over the edge. This manual helps counselors to enlist teachers as allies and train them to help students effectively and safely. In the first part of the book, counselors learn how to prepare to sell teachers on the helping concept. In the second part of the book, they will find all they need for a one day training session in which they explain the helping concept, listen to teacher concerns, admit pitfalls, and stress the importance of professional training in helping skills. In the third part of the manual, counselors will find a training series which will enable them to teach basic helping skills, to help students safely, and to apply helping skills to various problems. This manual offers a new and needed resource to bring teachers on board in the helping process and create a school-wide helping community where no students can fall through the cracks, be relegated to the margins of school life, or drop out.
ISBN 978-0893904111
For more book details and to purchase the book online from Resource Publications, www.rpinet.com/products/thtm.html or at Amazon.
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The Empowering School: Getting Everyone on Board to Help Teenagers
Everyone knows many teens lead troubled lives. In this book I argue that it is time to stop looking for
scapegoats and start being proactive. I believe that schools can create a positive differenced in the lives
of troubled students if everyone in the school community - administrators, teachers, counselors, support
staff, students, and parents - get on board and act as helpers when they see a student headed for
trouble. I call this kind of school "the empowering school." I have seen this approach work in a number
of secondary schools in which I have served as a teacher trainer, counselor, and mentor. In the book I
call upon my experience in the schools to take school leaders through the seven steps required to set
up an empowering school program. The problems affecting today’s teenagers cannot be solved by any
one group in the school. A few counselors, social workers, and school psychologists are no match for
the many problems faced by today’s teens. New helping alternatives are urgently needed now! I argue
we need collective action by every member of the school community that will insure early identification
of troubled students, quick intervention, and ongoing support as they develop new skills to be successful
in their academic and personal worlds. Administrators, teachers, and support staff who serve on the front lines, along with students and parents, are ideally positioned to support counselors in a school-wide helping process.
ISBN 0-89390-330-2
For more book details and to purchase the book online from Resource Publications, www.rpinet.com/products/es.html .
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Peer-Reviewed Chapters in Books
- "All Eyes on the School," in When a College Works with a Public School, Institute for Responsive Education
(1984).
- "Organizing Helping Settings to Reduce Burnout," in Stress and Burnout in the Human Service Professions, ed. Barry A. Farber, Pergamon Press (1983).
- "Ownership and Dialogue in Transforming Teachers’ Work," in Essays On Teachers’ Centers, ed. Kathleen Devaney, Far West Laboratory (1977).
- "The How’s and Why’s of Teacher Centers," in Supporting the Learning Teacher, Ed. Marilyn M. Hapgood, Agathon Press (1975).
Journal Articles
- "Ten Ways to Help Your Student Right Now," Safe Learning Magazine (04/2001).
- "How to Handle Suicide Threats," Safe Learning Magazine (11/2000).
- "Training Middle School Teachers to be Effective Helpers," Schools in the Middle (04/1999).
- "Stronger Advisory Programs Can Stop the Spread of School Violence," Middle Ground (10/1999).
- "Taking Inventory of Your Guidance Program," Schools in the Middle (10/1999).
- "When a Beloved Teacher and Coach Dies," NASSP Bulletin (03/1998).
- "How to Handle a Transition to a Middle School Model," Schools in the Middle (06/1998).
- "How to Guide Students Who Become Star Athletes," NASSP Tips for Principals (12/1998).
- "The How’s and Why’s of Restructuring and Reenergizing Guidance and Counseling in Our Secondary Schools," Education Viewpoints, New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association (1996).
- "The How’s and Why’s of Providing Mandatory Counseling for High School Students," Student Assistance Journal (03/1995).
- "The How’s and Why’s of Developing Group Counseling Programs," Student Assistance Journal (09/1994).
- "Empowering Teachers as Counselors," Teaching Today Magazine (11/1993).
- "Combating Student Tobacco Addiction," NASSP Bulletin (12/1993).
- "What Makes a Middle School Excellent," The Principal (03/1985).
- "The How’s and Why’s of Teacher Centers," Kappan (04/1974).
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Copyright 2009-2012 All rights reserved. William (Bill) Fibkins, author and educational consultant.
phone 631.734.8096
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