I was sitting in the hair salon talking with my stylist when a young lady approached and asked if there were any stylists in the salon who could braid her hair. Since I was there for my back-to-school hairdo and in an effort to make
We aren’t in the business of preparing our students to take tests for the rest of their lives. We aren’t in the business of helping our students learn to navigate school as the end-all, be-all model of life’s journey. Nope. As Jeff Wilhelm reminds us
What’s your ultimate goal as an educator? You want to inspire your students to think. You want them to be able to express thoughts clearly. That’s exactly why you assign essays. Your students, however, don’t understand the purpose of essay writing and think writing essays
One of the first things I figured out about innovation and leadership is that there is a seed of creative brilliance in every single person. It doesn’t matter where their scores fall on standardized tests, or how their status ranks on the playground or in
We all know lesson planning takes time and a lot of effort. Co-planning for co-teaching requires dedicated time and collaborative effort by two or more people. Whether co-planning with another educator or a student teacher, the co-planning process involves additional tasks not found in individual
Consider two classrooms in which teachers are posing questions to students in order to check for understanding. In classroom A, the teacher asks a question and calls on a student whose hand is raised. The student answers incorrectly. The teacher reacts by saying, “Good try. Let’s
In the world of Instructional Coaching, we often hear about the importance of 1:1 coaching and relationships, collaboration around a common and compelling goal, and tracking a teacher’s or student’s progress toward that goal (Knight). However, if we take a more systems-approach to coaching and
We have all been there. We have divided students in groups of four to complete a task together. Immediately, one student takes over, a couple of others happily “check out,” and the other is frustrated because “there’s nothing to do.” What went wrong? Read on
The dreaded IDK. We’ve all been in the situation when a question is posed and we hear crickets in the classroom. Students look at us like we’re from Mars. How we respond in this moment determines who’s going to carry the heavy load of thinking.
Breathe in, Hold for 10, and Try These 5 Techniques for Student Talk Read page 25 from Read, Write, Talk We all know the statistics and, well, we chat right over them! Teachers do far too much talking in the course of the day, and students do