Group items tagged

15. Did I take advantage of spontaneous learning opportunities when students’ interests had obviously shifted, or did I maintain an inflexible mindset and vow to never deviate from an archaic lesson plan?

17. Was our class set up to promote creativity and collaboration or memorization and silence?

19. Were 21st Century skills embedded within daily assignments?

22. Did I gain professional wisdom by speaking to my collegial mentor?

25. Did I avoid professional negativity by declining to gossip at work?

24. Was the technology in my classroom used in an authentic manner? (Shannon Reed)

26. Did I manage my stress level by enjoying time with my family and friends, by exercising several times a week, by zoning out while engaged in a hobby, and by simply chilling out every once in a while?

28. Did I laugh often with students and colleagues?

31. Did I allow students to co-write their own project-based, learning contracts?

34. How many colleagues did I observe in-action in their classrooms this past school year?

did I remember the names of all co-workers?

39. How balanced were the assignments this year in terms of requiring creativity, practical thinking, and analysis? (Adam Johnson)

40. Did I participate in a professional learning community outside of my school via Twitter?

46. Did I consistently blog as a form of professional self-reflection?

47. Am I a stronger teacher today than when I first stepped into the classroom at the beginning of the school year?

Spend some time when you are not thinking about the classroom, and stay connected to your support group of friends and family

One of the easiest ways to burn out as a teacher is to get stuck in the same routine and practices year after year. Keep it fresh by reading new research on teaching, and by learning, talking, and collaborating with peers inside and outside of your school building

Give teachers opportunities to connect with each other about their teaching. When they don't have time or opportunities to connect, share, and plan together during the day, they start feeling isolated.

knowing what others are doing in their classrooms, and seeing how your work fits into the bigger picture is motivating, inspiring, and increases feelings of self-worth

Incorporate humor and laughter into your classroom

By talking to your child in advance, you can ask more specific questions about grades or behaviors, says Graden.

Ask about what's happening in the classroom — both academically and socially.

Most experts suggest telling the teacher about your child. Describe what they're like at home, what interests and excites them, and explain any issues at home that may be affecting your child at school.

"It's important for everyone to understand what the goal is at the end of the year," says Graden, the school superintendent. "That way you all have a stake in that success."

"Go in looking for an opportunity to get involved with supporting your child,"

The Harvard Family Research Project's Tip Sheet for Parents suggests reviewing your child's work, grades and past teacher feedback. Ask your child about his experience at school and make a list of questions ahead of time to ask during the conference.

community including students, teachers and families. For our teachers, it was an especially emotional transition.

Any change in a school’s daily schedule impacts the entire school

One of the most enjoyable parts of our journey was when we piloted the new schedule for a week in February 2018, seven months before our permanent launch date. While this pilot highlighted some of the schedule’s flaws, it also assured those who were not yet on board that this was a good move.

Teachers have reported that longer class periods are elevating the use of multiple modality instruction and allow now students time to go deeper into discussions and projects, or even begin homework during class time.

ence of learning to rethink their daily schedule is truly the next frontier.

I never heard anyone of them say “we love our daily schedule.” For many school leaders, leveraging research in the sc

It has been emotional, and it is a process that makes school systems, administrators, teachers, students and parents think deeply about their priorities and what student-centered truly means. But it is worth it because we now know more about how the brain learns, works, thrives and changes, and we can use that understanding to create a daily schedule that allows each student to be more challenged, creative, healthy and engaged.

4. School days are short.

5. Students get a 15-minute break every 45-minutes of class.

6. There are no standardized tests.

7. Teachers are as revered as doctors.

Top-notch ISEE scores mean very little if the family unit is not a cultural match for the school.

If you want to dive into the thick of concepts tested, I strongly recommend downloading the guide. However, if you’re looking for something a bit more digestible, start with this post and do further reading at your leisure.

“This requires slowing down, checking to be sure we understand correctly, and sharing back what we hear.”

Meeting anger or frustration with genuine, compassionate interest builds trust.

Changing course based on input is a sign of integrity, not weakness.”

A key value she worked to communicated was about listening to dissent and changing course if necessary.

Fiarman found that making quick visits to classrooms every day communicated respect and made her far more knowledgeable about instruction.

it engenders trust when your boss can speak to the specifics of your work.”

for practice to be an effective tool for improvement, students need to be pushing the limits of current performance and getting continuous feedback – very difficult to orchestrate for 30 students working in their bedrooms. Second, as soon as teachers give grades for practice work, the incentive is for students to play it safe and not push into challenging or unknown territory.

Here are their ideas on making feedback less threatening and more productive:             • Separate coaching from evaluation.

“Coaching sessions should include no rubric scoring or other evaluations,”

Be thoughtful about receiving criticism. “The person getting the feedback has the power to decide whether it’s on target, fair, or helpful,” say the authors, “and to decide whether to use the feedback or dismiss it.”

When feedback rubs you the wrong way, it’s also important to dig deeper to understand what’s really going.

Be noisy about the importance of improving your school’s feedback culture – for students, for teachers, for parents, and for yourself.”

In this article in All Things PLC, consultant/author Douglas Reeves confronts these widely espoused misconceptions about grading:

if grades were effective motivators, homework completion, classroom engagement, and overall diligence would be sky-high. Not so!

“Asking such questions helps me counteract my unconscious bias,” says Fiarman. “Recognizing the pervasiveness of bias is an important first step. Acknowledging that I might make mistakes because of this bias – then actively working to counter it – builds trust.”

the only feedback that matters is that the work was finished on time and correctly.

it’s unfair and demotivating for students to have their final grade pulled down for practice work.

Myth #3: Grades drive future performance. True, there’s a correlation between good grades and college success, and between poor grades and dropping out of school, but Reeves questions whether grades cause success and failure.

While it is possible that intelligence and work ethic forge the path from kindergarten to Ivy League and Wall Street, it is also possible that zip code, tutors, and connections – all artifacts of family socioeconomic status – are the underlying causes.”

Teachers giving zeros for missed assignments and refusing to accept late work lets students off the hook – and starts a spiral of doom with their final grades.

Averaging grades through a semester punishes students for early failures versus rewarding them for using early problems to improve final performance.

“Rather than using the last two months of the semester to build momentum and finish strong,” says Reeves, “because of a punitive grading system, they are doomed to failure well before the semester is over. There is nothing left for them to do except cut class, be disruptive, or ultimately, quit school.”

“grading policies are matters of equity, with disparate impacts on students, particularly based on ethnicity and gender. Boys and minority males receive lower grades just as they are more likely to be more severely disciplined for an infraction. Girls receive higher grades for the same level of proficiency. If racial and gender disparities of this sort took place in any other area of public life, the consequences would be swift and sure.”

Instead, he suggests replacing each statement of fact – Punishment deters unwanted behavior – with a testable hypothesis – If I penalize students for late, incomplete, and absent homework, then student achievement will improve – and conducting real-time experiments within the school.

He’s found that non-evaluative comments are “easy to receive, easy to give, and easy to act on.”

Teaching sentence stems can be helpful: I’m not sure I understand the opening of this piece… I’m not sure why you did this; can you explain it more?

Be specific.

Prior to peer feedback, the teacher should introduce a rubric and lead the class in a group critique of an exemplar paper, focusing on suggestions that will make a difference.

The teacher might also display samples of feedback statements and have students break into groups and rank them from helpful to unhelpful, taking note of sentence starters and phrases they can use in their own feedback conversations.

Be timely. One of the greatest advantages of well-orchestrated peer feedback is that students can get comments on their work immediately, rather than waiting days, perhaps weeks, for the teacher to wade through piles of papers.

“Unfortunately,” Eden concludes, “by second-guessing teachers’ judgments about how to maintain order, policymakers and district administrators are likely harming the education of many millions of well-behaved students in an effort to help the misbehaving few.”

“[T]hey are encouraged more than ever to present themselves as ‘sexy’ – not about being attractive or beautiful, but a very narrow, commercialized idea of sexy. What’s particularly complicated is they’re sold that idea [of sexiness] as being a source of personal power. There is a complete disconnect between that image of sexiness and an understanding of their bodies, their own wants, needs, desires, and limits, what those might be, having those respected.”

young women “are almost conditioned, starting in middle school, to have their bodies publicly commented on by young men, [and] they don’t think they have any power to really stop it.” In schools, she says, the “everyday chipping away of girls’ self-worth by reducing them to their bodies is completely ignored.”

We tend to silo conversations about sex as if it is not about the same values of compassion, kindness, respect, mutuality, and caring that we want our children to embody in every other aspect of their lives.”

The Internet – “Unfortunately,” says Orenstein, “the first thing kids Google is porn. The average age that kids today are exposed to porn, either intentionally or not, is 11. We have to ask what it means that kids are learning about sex from that realm before they’ve even had their first kiss and how that’s shaping them, their attitudes toward sexuality, and their expectations of sex.” Parents and schools need to explicitly teach kids to apply a critical lens to what they’re seeing, and shape values that will help them safely and wisely navigate this very challenging era.

“If you want to be a lifelong employee anywhere today, you have to be a lifelong learner.” He quotes education-to-work expert Heather McGowan: “Stop asking a young person WHAT you want to be when you grow up. It freezes their identity into a job that may not be there. Ask them HOW you want to be when you grow up. Having an agile learning mind-set will be the new skill set of the 21st century.”

‘Okay, we’re now welcoming you to the majority, where you should be’—with the white people, so to speak.” But “inherently within that, you are sacrificing who you are as a person—and it’s not like that would ever happen on the opposite end.” There had been costs to going to Spence. One of those, she now realizes, was “sacrificing my Blackness.”

The parents had demands of their own, including an immediate halt to curriculum changes.

Many schools for the richest American kids have gates and security guards; the message is you are precious to us. Many schools for the poorest kids have metal detectors and police officers; the message is you are a threat to us.

Shouldn’t the schools that serve poor children be the very best schools we have?