a million dollar teacher

AN EXCEPTIONAL GUIDE TO EXTRAORDINARY TEACHING

It’s a guide for teachers who want to take their teaching to the next level where you don’t teach to make a living but to make a difference. You awaken genius, power and magic in the classroom. You inspire and empower your students and transform their lives. You create a little miracle in their world, as well as in your own.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

A Million Dollar Teacher
This isn’t a book about effective teaching.
It’s also not about how to earn a million dollars.
It’s much more than that.

It’s about how to take a class of ordinary kids
and turn them into heroes and champions, geniuses and giants.

It’s about how to awaken genius, power and magic in the classroom.
It’s about how to create little miracles in the lives of your students.
It’s about making a difference in their world as well as in your own.

It’s about being a million dollar teacher.

Change is happening. Teachers around the world are waking up to new possibilities, they are shedding their old identity of “underpaid, overtaxed and unrewarded social servants” and beginning to assume the role of leaders of social change.

They are reclaiming their true power.

This book is about that power to teach and transform. It tells the story of six exceptional teachers (David, Fatima, Arun, Mei, Sergey and an unnamed archangel of education) who are making a difference in the classroom and beyond.

They are teaching the world to change and evolve.

But then, any human that dares to enter a class of 40 students with love in their eyes is exceptional. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea to teach.

Only those who can, teach.

A million dollar teacher is a celebration of teaching and a tribute to the profession.

TOPICS AND CONCEPTS

A Million Dollar Teacher is a goldmine of strategies principles, resources and inspiration for teaching. The following is a list of some of the tools, topics and concepts covered in the book. Though they are not usually named or explicitly stated in the book, you’ll be able to identify them easily through context and examples. Beliefs and attitudes Bloom’s taxonomy Communication and leadership skills Creative visualization Dealing with student issues like bullying and peer pressure Educational psychology Emotional intelligence (emotion management) Goal-setting Theory and practice of multiple intelligences Lateral thinking Learning styles (visual, auditory and kinesthetic) Lessons in self-esteem and personal development Lessons in service and contribution Maslow’s hierarchy of needs Mind mapping Motivation strategies Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) Optimizing the brain for learning (alpha state) Personality development. Pygmalion effect ( Rosenthal effect) Role and involvement of parents and the society Suggestopedia. Super learning techniques Teaching life skills The role of music and yoga in learning Values and moral education

Here are some excerpts and quotes taken from the book: He was like a rockstar, a master showman. When he swayed, his students swayed. When he talked, they listened. -------------------- Your students won’t remember you for the verbs and the nouns you taught them or how many algebraic equations you gave them to solve. They’ll remember you for the little acts of support and kindness you showed, for the encouragement you gave when they were shaky and unsure. They will remember you for the way you taught them to think and believe in themselves. They will remember you because you believed in them. They’ll look back one day and see what a difference you made in their lives. They’ll be surprised to find that you always knew that they had greatness in them. They’ll know that they are what they are and what they’ve become largely because of the possibilities you had showed them and the way you treated and taught them. -------------------- We are teachers, not Buddhas. We do get angry sometimes but our anger is not at the student but his behavior. -------------------- Teachers hate homework and exams as much as the students do. They don’t really enjoy staying up late checking heaps of answer books. -------------------- Being happy with mediocrity was not his style. He set high standards and expected nothing less than the very best from his students, and very often he got it from them. He always gave his students a fine reputation to live up to. -------------------- He didn’t say, “This chapter is the hardest in the book.” He said instead, “It’s one of my favorites. You’re going to love it.” -------------------- “Everyone’s a genius,” he repeated. “Some geniuses shine so brightly that they illuminate the world, while others fade into oblivion never ever knowing that they were geniuses.” -------------------- “Children are not always cuddly kittens and playful puppies,” the head teacher cautioned. “They could be mischievous monkeys, or worse, they can act like dumb asses.” That was a mouthful of metaphors but Mei wasn’t sure whether she liked the last part, the silly simile. -------------------- “Why can’t we fly like the birds?” asked one student. “Birds have wings, stupid, and we don’t,” answered another. “We can never fly like the birds.” The teacher turned her gaze toward the students and declared: “We can fly.” “We can?” the children asked in unison. One could see in their eyes a positive expectation rather than disbelief. After all, they had witnessed so many extraordinary things in the past few months that they wouldn’t be so easily surprised by just about anything. Not even by the possibility of suddenly spreading out their wings, and taking off into the air. “Indeed we can fly,” continued the teacher nonchalantly, “and we can fly much higher and further than any bird that ever chartered the blue sky. The bird is limited by the span of its wings and the range of its sight in how far it can go. But there is no limit to what we can do.” Each one of these eleven bubbly young beings seemed ready to take flight at the slightest cue from their teacher. How credulous kids can be! And how incredibly powerful the influence of the teacher! “A teacher affects eternity. He can never tell where his influence stops.” The teacher remembered these quotes from Henry Adams and realized how thankful she was that she was a teacher. She couldn’t tell how she could ever affect eternity, but she was definitely going to have a massive influence on the way these kids saw life. She would push the limits of their vision to such an extent that they would begin to see limitless possibilities wherever they looked. She herself was starting to see these possibilities in her own life. Another quote came to her mind. She had read these lines by over and over in the past few days. These lines had somehow strengthened her belief in herself to the degree that she was beginning to feel she was capable of creating miracles. The quote read: Come to the edge. We might fall. Come to the edge. It's too high! COME TO THE EDGE! And they came, and he pushed, And they flew. The children were waiting. They wanted to know how they could fly, further and higher than the bird. “Come to the edge,” she said, and made them all stand at the edge of the field and asked them to look at the sun floating in the vast blue sky ahead of them. Then she took a deep breath. -------------------- The students sometimes wondered how absolutely ridiculous their teacher could get. He could as easily be a clown or a chimpanzee as he could a magician or an angel. One day, he handed the report cards and sat gravely at his desk. The students, every one of them, looked at their own progress report, then at each other’s. They had all flunked - nowhere near the pass mark, none. They knew they had let their teacher down once again, and they hung their heads in guilt and shame. Suddenly the teacher rose from his chair, circumnavigated the class with his keen eyes, then giggled. The students thought he had lost his senses. Then he burst into a thunderous laughter. “Laugh!” he thundered. “Everyone laugh!” The students began laughing too, first reluctantly and softly, and then boisterously. They laughed until their jaws ached, stomach muscles cramped and eyes filled with tears. Then, when they were all exhausted and could laugh no more, they looked at their teacher and waited silently. They knew something important was going to come. Their teacher always had some method in his madness.