Tag: Teaching and Learning

Tribute to teachers, landscape

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Along a hillside, alone and unplugged So I heard that cars can drive themselves, And that a metal voice will ship groceries to my door. I sit along this hillside, and I wonder if these machines will one day Provide me the pinch of sun I see through the crooked clouds, Or the trill of the wind along an unspoiled path, Or the shortness of fall’s first breath upon my lungs. Among the rugged weeds I spot a patch of flowers, And I hear the unbroken song of leaping waves along the shore. I am alone and unplugged, and pleased to know that there is no such machine yet That can paint a vibrant rainbow across the blue-gray sky, Nor offer the numb solitude of…

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childhood memories

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The ongoing debate in education about what we want all children to know and be able to do has raged on for decades and leaves us all to question and argue the merits of our current standards, assessments and pacing guides that seem to expect so much of our students and teachers with little regard for whether any of this is really doable. The instructional shifts required by the Common Core Standards (or whatever your state calls them) has contributed to this notion that these core competencies must required of all children and all we have to do is practice them over and over. What rarely surfaces in all this dialogue is the very real issue of foundational skills that must be mastered in order to grasp these…

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Somewhere along the way, we have lost our way. Across our communities and our schools, we rush about in a manic fashion to finish this task or that one that it is no wonder why we don’t enjoy the moment or (sometimes) even remember it. It was Hall of Fame golfer Walter Hagen who first asked us to “stop and smell the flowers.” How quickly we forget. Much like life outside of school, life inside the classroom feels much too rushed for our teachers and children in light of their mad dash to “cover everything.” We all understand that a certain amount of material must be mastered to proceed from one grade to the next – even from one course to the next. Still, if…

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leadership, instructional leadership

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All great instructional leaders worth their weight have to know what great instruction looks like when they see it. There is simply no way to successfully lead school improvement and turnaround initiatives if you don’t know what you’re looking for when you walk into a classroom. The problem is that we often have different definitions of what those things are and it begs a myriad of questions related to a principal’s role in guiding teacher growth. Instructional coach? Mentor? Evaluator? Visionary? This debate found its way onto the internet recently and that made for some frustrated school leaders who chimed in on the discussion. For me, the discussion provided some deep thinking about what we mean when we say that our principals should lead instructionally.…

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Summer affords all educators some much-needed time to reflect upon and improve our practice and industry. Like many of you, I am bent on mastering the art and science of teaching and my latest quest for answers took me to a book that most would find terribly dense and boring: The Struggle for the American Curriculum from 1893-1958 by Herbert Kliebard. It’s a book for those curriculum nerds like me who want to understand why we teach what we teach. It’s a short history of the key curriculum changes in American secondary schools during the early 1900s. Kliebard begs to explain why we do what we do and he names the men (very few women voices were heard in the 1920s and 30s) whose philosophies shaped…

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Tribute to teachers, landscape

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There has never been a great orator who didn’t first learn to speak, just as there has never been an accomplished musician who didn’t first learn to play an instrument, and there has never been a gifted writer who didn’t first learn her letters. This is a simple way of saying that there is no shortcut to confidence, credibility, and wisdom. I have come to discover through some successes in my career and through many, many mistakes that (no matter our titles) we are not really leading if no one is following us, and that no one will follow us for long if we don’t know what the heck we’re talking about. Even as we preach the values of teacher leadership, most of our teachers…

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Lesson Plans, Student Engagement Strategies

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The daily dance around student engagement and lesson planning has been made much too complex in recent years, and I’m not sure why. We have countless definitions of what engagement is and what it is not, and we have varied opinions on how we should rate this concept when we observe a classroom lesson. Let’s be clear that true engagement is a highly advanced instructional skill and is much easier said than done. Still, I don’t think the definition itself is as complex as we are making it out to be. For me, I prefer to think of student engagement as synonymous with “thinking” or “learning,” and with a nod to things like student interest, choice and real-world application. The real caution here is that…

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Instructional rigor, accountable talk

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The connection between thinking and speaking is real, sort of like the connection between dating and holding hands. I say this because there is really no way to be thoughtful about something or understanding of something if you are not verbalizing it somehow, usually by talking to someone around you. Of course, this replaying of the things we know comes in other forms that we find in schools like debate, journaling, and even note-taking. No matter how it plays out, we simply cannot complete the comprehension loop if students are not required to verbalize their learning somehow. This is a critical reality for teachers if we are ever going to realize the dream of equity for all students in acquiring the next-generation skills that they…

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Tribute to teachers, lone tree

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Along a hillside, alone and unplugged So I heard that cars can drive themselves, And that a metal voice will ship groceries to my door. I sit along this hillside, and I wonder if man’s machines will one day Provide me the pinch of sun I see through the crooked clouds, Or the trill of the wind along an unspoiled path, Or the shortness of fall’s first breath on my lungs. Among the rugged weeds I spot a patch of flowers, And I hear the unbroken song of leaping waves along the shore. I am alone and unplugged, and pleased to know that there is no such machine yet That can paint a vibrant rainbow across the blue-gray sky, Nor offer the numb solitude of…

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Kids Learning, Discussion

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It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. You know what I mean, those black-and-white photos that we’ve all seen of students from the 1800s sitting quietly in rows, silent, and in fear of reprisal like something out of a Dickens novel. And there on the wall, if you look closely, are the classroom rules for all to see and heed: Be silent during class. Do not talk unless it is absolutely necessary. I’m not kidding. This was actually a common rule in most classrooms. As someone who prefers to honor our history and not belittle it, I point this out only to say that we have come a long way as educators and as school systems. Still, as we stumble and perfect better…

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