Last night, I was part of a conversation with a group of 20-somethings who are, God willing, approaching parenthood in the next couple of years. The conversation turned to school choice: where they will likely send their children to school when the time comes. This led to dialogue, not debate, about our local school systems. … [Read more…]
Last week, I wrote about my trepidations with launching a reading intervention with some 7th and 8th grade students. As is so true with many things in education, the past week did not go anything like I planned. It was already a four-day week because of Monday’s Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday. Bitter cold temperatures … [Read more…]
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…]
I was thrilled to be joined by eight other educators from Fort Madison Community School District at the Decoding Dyslexia Iowa Conference this past week. We were treated to a host of sessions that furthered our knowledge around dyslexia and structured literacy. Our keynote speaker on Thursday morning was Mindy VanZuiden, a reading tutor and … [Read more…]
Spring break is right around the corner for Fort Madison Community School District. We have one week until we get that much-needed week away from school. This is the time of year when our “windows of tolerance” can be nearly closed. We are frustrated with escalating student behaviors, data that is not moving in the … [Read more…]