“…every trouble wants to draw the very best of you into the world.” —Mark Nepo, from Seven Thousand Ways to Listen When trouble happens sometimes we want to avoid conflict, look the other way, or pretend that there aren’t any problems until things go back to normal.
As the traditional school year draws to a close so does the superintendent hiring season. Most superintendent searches take place from late November to the end of June. While the opportunities for becoming a superintendent are there, many aspiring candidates find only frustration and disappointment.
Let the Students Become the Teachers The main premise of John Hattie’s Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement (2013) is that the most effective way for children to learn is for the teacher to guide students to become their own teachers.
Listen to Jenni Donohoo and Megan Tschannen-Moran discuss demystifying collective efficacy on the Leaders Coaching Leaders podcast with Peter DeWitt: What Is the #1 Factor Influencing Student Achievement?–Collective Teacher Efficacy! Amazing things happen when a school staff shares the belief that they are able to achieve collective
What is your goal? This is a question I pose to teachers whenever they ask my advice about a lesson or when I am trying to find out more about what’s going on in a classroom before I come in to guest teach. Sara Holbrook and I
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) mentions the phrase “Universal Design for Learning” (UDL) four times, citing it as a way of ensuring students’ civil rights, and stating that schools should “use technology, consistent with the principles of universal design for learning, to support the
In 1970, an actor played a lecturer, aptly named “Dr. Fox” at the University of Southern California School of Medicine. Dr. Fox was presented as an expert in the field of Game Theory and proceeded to present a lecture that included, by design, a high dose of excessive
As we gear up for the return of the school year, it is easy for much preparation to be spent addressing the physical components of a school and/or classroom (Is the classroom decorated? Do we have enough desks? Is the school presentable?), rather than designing
Power from Within Collective teacher efficacy (CTE), the perceptions of teachers in a school that the efforts of the faculty as a whole will have a positive effect on students (Bandura, 1977, 1986, & 1997), has a 1.57 effect size (Eells, 2011, Hattie, 2014). It
One of the most popular PD models, particularly when schools close for the summer, is the large-scale conference with guest presenters and experts in a variety of areas. Hundreds, if not thousands, of participants attend these events. Why is it that we continue to organize conferences,