I read any text on teaching teams with nostalgia. I began my career in 1984 on a strong 7th-grade team in Irvington-on-Hudson (N.Y.). We met every Monday morning to coordinate our plans for the week and discuss how to help students learn.

As a beginning teacher, I found the sup- port and wisdom of my colleagues invaluable. My belief in teaming grew in Cincinnati in the ’90s. We met daily to discuss strategies and design curricula that pulled our subject areas together into meaningful thematic units. One of my fondest memories of teaching was watching 100 9th-grade students in our cafeteria working on science fair projects with their English, science, social studies, and math teachers.

We certainly could have used Teacher Teams That Get Results to enhance our work. Gayle Gregory and Lin Kuzmich provide clear guidance to help teachers create and enhance professional learning communities. And when teachers learn and work together, student collaboration and inquiry improve. I especially like how each of the author’s 61 strategies includes purpose, process, examples, and a reproducible chart to use with colleagues. Gregory and Kuzmich know teachers and teaching. They have produced a ready-to-use text that all educators can use at their next team meeting.

The text begins with a brief review of what we know about adult learning and group development. Then the authors launch into strategies to create successful teams. The strategies fall into four key areas:

• Creating a growth-oriented climate;
• Sharing knowledge and skills;
• Building resilience and creating solutions; and
• Determining priorities and creating excellence.

The book suggests creating a positive climate by developing a sense of team and celebrating successes. In the knowledge section, the authors present methods to expand the teaching tool kit. While seasoned staff developers will be familiar with many of these strategies, it is worth the price of the book to have ready-made handouts for techniques such as Four Corners, Jigsaw, KWL, and Pluses & Wishes. (And if you don’t know these, definitely buy the book!).

My favorite strategy is #42, Musical Chairs. This strategy appears in the resilience section and pushes every member of a team to converse and to move. In musical chairs, two lines face one another. At each musical break, those in the first line move down one space to face a new partner. This facilitates shared expertise and allows everyone to talk. And it even worked with my 10th graders when they dis- cussed character development in Julius Caesar.

In the last section of this book, on determining priori- ties, the techniques are less flashy but more effective. The strategies target student results and contain more charting activities to focus the team on what teachers must do to enhance student learning. Examples include the use of SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) to solve problems, Think Abouts, and Data Chats, which center on student needs and what we can do to meet them.

I do have minor complaints. Some of the research is a little dated, and the overview of learning would benefit from more recent work. However, a more relevant gap in the text is the minuscule space allotted to the argument that professional learning teams get results — or how they do it. Why should we work in teams? Working in teams takes a lot more time (and my headmaster would note it costs more money) than working in isolation. Gregory and Kuzmich list 14 benefits of teaming and cite one study. As this is a book of strategies for teaming, a chapter might have been devoted to why we should consider the book’s topic at all. This fine book will not help me convince my headmaster to embrace teaming as a method to help students learn or to “get results,” as the title implies. And I think he wants to be convinced.

Nonetheless, I recommend this text as an excellent resource for staff developers working with teaching teams. The book provides creative and ready-to-use strategies to enhance team meetings and grow a sense of community among teachers who work together.