It is nearing the end of September, and the work remains difficult. As I’ve written several times since the start of this school year, our district is implementing lots of change. Lots. via GIPHY We have gone from a four-building district to a two-building district, meaning new grade levels and new staff are housed under … [Read more…]
In Daniel Willingham‘s book, Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning is Hard and How You Can Make it Easy, he explains: “‘Knowing’ doesn’t mean being able to understand an explanation; it means being able to explain to others.” True evidence of learning is having the ability to restate, coherently, what you “know.” We want to “evaluate … [Read more…]
Everything is Figuroutable, and most things worth figuring out take time, hard work, perseverance, and collaboration. Proof of this very concept has come to light over and over again, including this past week. Collaborating with Coaches Our FMCSD instructional coaching staff was tasked with refining our district’s work around identifying essential standards for social emotional … [Read more…]
As our school district embarks on “Systems Coaching 2.0” (not the official name, but rather one given by our instructional coaching staff), I am recognizing inevitable resistance. The resistance is showing up in multiple forms, including passive resistance, outright “This is ridiculous,” comments, refusal to participate in conversations, angry looks and angry exchanges. While I … [Read more…]
It’s probably a bit too cliché to write about gratitude the week in which we celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving, but I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I’m proud to say that I regularly practice an attitude of gratitude, but that attitude was developed over time and is a constant work in progress. For … [Read more…]
This week has proven to be yet another in which I have found myself in pursuit of perseverance. As I’ve been writing recently, our district is shifting its instructional coaching model from an invite-only model to a systems coaching model, which means that we no longer wait to be invited into classrooms to support teachers … [Read more…]
In the spirit of this Thanksgiving week, this post is dedicated to those things for which I am presently most grateful for. Each picture included in the post is worth a thousand words… to me, anyway, as they represent my immense gratitude! I am stealing George Couros’s weekly email format: I will be writing about … [Read more…]
I have had the good fortune of working with amazing teachers for my entire 25 teaching career. On each team that I’ve been a part of, we have worked together, laughed together, cried together, shared ideas, lesson plans, successes and failures. Teaching in a silo, without the support of others, whether self-chosen or forced on … [Read more…]