This article was originally published on Finding Common Ground. How many of us have sat through pointless or less-than-informational parent-teacher conferences? It often goes a little something like this: Mom asks, “How is Jeff doing in your class? I see he earned a “C,” and I
Contributed by Spike C. Cook Ed.D. There has been a great deal of research indicating students experience a summer learning loss, but have you ever thought that could happen to educators? The answer is a resounding yes! Of course the summer is a great time to relax
A Parallel Protocol for Increasing Learning Contributed by Barb Pitchford and Paul Bloomberg Teaching is complex work and because of the complexity of the work, teachers naturally connect with colleagues to solve problems, make decisions, and share challenges, frustrations, and successes. Current research has shown that although
Contributed by Rita Janes and Elizabeth Strong After completing a Mathematics Investigation with my children, I always find it most important and extremely valuable to reflect back over and assess the entire Investigation implementation. Reflection provides me time to think consciously about the strengths and weaknesses
The person with the most logistics responsibility is a school system is probably the director of transportation. Everybody recognizes that if the transportation system sends three half-full busses down the same route every day that there is probably something wrong. The pieces are not working
Jessica, an alumna of Techbridge, came to visit. We talked about her plans for the future; she shared that she has a job lined up at Adobe after graduation. But Jessica’s journey to Adobe almost didn’t happen. During her interview—her first for an internship—Jessica was
Have you listened to a motivational speaker lately? I found myself watching a video of a well-known motivational speaker (who shall remain nameless!), and I was mesmerized. Afterwards, I realized that I already knew just about everything the speaker shared with her audience—nothing new—but the
As a young child, I remember my Mom teaching me how to remember all of the conjunctions (those little words that connect words and parts of a sentence to other parts of the sentence). She told me the conjunctions were “and”, “or”, “but”, or “nor”
This post was originally published on Finding Common Ground. So many standards, so little time… How can classroom teachers be expected to teach, assess, re-teach, and reassess student understanding of each and every standard in a grade level or course within a limited number of school days
This post was originally published on Finding Common Ground. In a partnership…students work alongside teachers to own their learning and reach worthy goals. Is that really possible? It all depends on us. Students come equipped to discover, explore, and with innate talents for learning, and it’s our