Thoughts on 21st Century Teaching and Learning
Years ago, I remember working with a Grade 6 language arts teacher in a coaching cycle. She was frustrated with the lackluster book reports she was getting from her students. She was inspired to rethink her approach after a school wide PD on Universal Design for Learning (UDL). She had always felt intuitively that student-centered […]
When I first started planning our school’s annual mini-conference three years ago, I had one simple goal: to create opportunities for our teachers to connect with other educators beyond our school walls. I knew that meaningful professional growth often comes from fresh conversations, new perspectives, and seeing great teaching in action. And if it were […]
Where to begin? Six months ago feeling really low amidst the ongoing pandemic and aching to shift from surviving to thriving? Three months ago trying to articulate a vision? Three weeks ago really digging into the development of this project? Or last Friday after its first incarnation. A first step towards something, dare I say, […]
My school’s Head has encouraged all of us to make use of the question formulation technique and really encouraged our students and ourselves to ask good questions. In our social studies classes our students learn to ask questions about history and society. Our science lessons prompt questions about worms, stars, lactose and our diet. I’ve […]
The Challenge of Exiting International Teaching In 2008, my wife and I were ready for a new experience. We had been living in a vibrant neighborhood in Chicago, and while we weren’t rolling in dough, we both were making enough to enjoy our child-free twenties. However, we also both felt a bit stuck. I’d been […]
Our first year of instructional coaching is now midway through. Our student centered coaching model, based on Diane Sweeney’s work, has, at its heart, the collection of evidence of learning to respond to the specific student needs. Data. You might think that means it would be easy to measure the impact of our coaching. I […]
Most educators might agree that opportunities to connect with students are the real gold, the real richness of the work. Not just being witness to those amazing light bulb moments, which are also pretty powerful, like my friend and colleague, Dan Kerr, just wrote about, but participating in that moment directly, helping to manufacture the opportunity […]
In the course towards my M.Ed. in Ed Leadership, Diverse Learners, we’ve been asked to consider the data on learning an different racial and ethnic groups at our school. The degree program is through the American College of Education, and so it has a US focus, where it’s typical that historically marginalized groups show an […]
As I was preparing for my workshop, Get Connected! Your Students and Colleagues Need You at this year’s AASSA Conference, a workshop that intended on getting teachers connected via Twitter, and would help them create a professional e portfolio, I knew I wanted to include some evidence of the assertion I was trying to make. […]
Sometimes we hear education buzzwords and descriptions of practices, but don’t always understand “how” to engage in a particular practice. Given the work involved in teaching a classroom of students, it’s hard to find the mindspace to understand enough to engage in new ideas. I recently had a conversation with colleagues about the difference between […]