From Ken Miller, President
TEI Teaching is a human relations business. Teachers spend up to 80% of their time interacting with other people. The degree to which they are successful is the degree to which they are effective with the human factors in education. If you are like us, you may have begun your teaching career without a single course in what you spend the vast majority of your time doing as a teacher - interacting and communicating with students, colleagues, administrators, parents, and numerous others. How many teachers today ever had a course to teach them the single most important of all teaching skills, listening? I didn't. None of my friends did. The human factor was the missing factor in our education. We had great courses in our subject areas and in curriculum and instruction, but none in how to listen effectively, or any of the many skills that are vital to effective communication and productive relationships with students.
TEI was founded twenty years ago to meet the needs of teachers for quality education and training in practical, proven skills and methods that would make a positive difference in their relationships and interactions with students. Beginning with Teacher Effectiveness Training, we have built a catalogue of courses that address human factors in education in a variety of ways. We continue to add new and important courses, and this year we begin offering new graduate courses online, an exciting breakthrough in delivering courses to teachers. Next year we will offer some of our face to face courses online. We also will introduce a new course in Leadership Development for Educators.
TeacherEducation.com
Welcome to our new Web site. The new technology provides unbelievable opportunities for delivering courses and connecting people. We have experienced it firsthand. We invite you to participate in something exciting and important, as we begin to build a place on the Internet where educators all over the world can come together to connect, provide support, and dialogue with each other about issues they face and solutions they have found. This is our ultimate vision. We don't know the exact form it may take, though we do know it will take time to evolve. We ask you to e-mail us any and all suggestions. We will begin with Tips and Victories.
There are no panaceas for the problems in education. They are too complex and run too deep. Nonetheless, we have occasionally discovered some fairly simple things teachers can do that are proven work to make life better at school, plus make you feel better about yourself as a teacher. A chain of small effective steps can make a big difference in how you feel about yourself as a teacher. Check out Tips and Victories. Tell us what you think, or try a Tip and e-mail us a report. We promise you prompt personal feedback. The idea is to make this interactive and build a collective body of practical knowledge that will grow over time.
