Self-directed, self-paced professional learning teachers can use to build agency and improve their practice, with easy-to-digest ideas that can be implemented in the classroom the next day. Teachers start their professional journey with a clear aim: to teach well so students thrive socially, emotionally, and academically. All too often, though, the hard realities of teaching (mandated curricula, scripted lesson plans, overloaded schedules, students' personal struggles) hamper the best of intentions. Navigating these challenges and avoiding burnout calls for teachers to build strong relationships among colleagues, students, families, and communities. Those relationships in turn help teachers create contexts for deep learning, reflection, and student-centered instruction. This book provides strategies and tools for doing all this. This must-have resource: Provides student teachers and new teachers with a clear set of actions to move into their position and teach well right from the start. Offers practical, step-by-step guidance for building relationships with colleagues and administrators, affirming students' identities, navigating challenges with other professionals, and putting love and care at the heart of teaching. Helps educators build a foundation and philosophy for teaching and collaborating and includes stories from educators and sample dialogues. Dr. Elizabeth Soslau wrote this book to be a resource for self-directed, self-paced professional learning that teachers could use to develop and improve their practice, with easy-to-digest ideas that can be implemented in the classroom the next day. It's a guide that every student teacher, in-service teacher, host teacher, and student teaching field instructor needs.