Connected Principals

Learning goes deep. Evidence of higher order thinking.  Real and substantive conversations.  Personal learning.  Autonomy, mastery, purpose, choice, self-direction. 21st century skills integration. Reflecting

n no way, do I want to add to the burden of the already-filled-to-the-brim, new teacher stress bucket. I do however, want to share just 20 tidbits which I hope will help ease new teachers into a fun, successful school year

One of my core beliefs about school these days is that we need to get teachers off of the hamster wheel of the current school-day model. Teachers need time to collaborate, to plan, to innovate. And schools need to find ways to build frequent - I believe weekly - time for everyone to sit in a room and work together to make schools better.

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young." Henry Ford

A year ago, I wasn't on Twitter. Now my PLN is invaluable. If every other form of PD was taken away from me, I would continue to grow and learn because of the people and resources at my finger tips on Twitter. A year ago, I didn't really blog. Now it's part of who I am. It's how I actively try to make sense of the world. And it has connected me to people who challenge my thinking and help me to be a better teacher.

Great post... worth reading more than once. "...I believe the classroom should be a place that is sometimes in the world and sometimes removed from it."

Observing a Classroom? Watch the Students, Not the Teacher

I love the student jobs he describes... who owns the learning in your classroom? Who should?

So, I got thinking about what I want for my grandchildren and decided that I would try to begin to describe it and put it 'out there'.  

I want, more than anything else, to leave a legacy in education. I want what I spend my time doing to add value to the profession and to support teachers in helping their students self actualize. I also want to be part of lighting a fire that results in a learning revolution.

Here are three tools that educators can provide students to help prepare them to "self arrest" in the event of an academic or social slip. Personal Relationships: Connectedness: Educational Autonomy:

You have to have strength in order to be an effective leader. The question here is not as much about being strong as it is about how you exert that strength. We can either exert our strength through strength or we can do it through being soft.

Having experienced what it means to learn in a community of learners, teachers are inclined to count such learning as more authoritative and authentic than any other and to think of such learning as the proper aim of instruction

On the Connected Principals blog, 24 administrators from around the world share best practices in education. They come from the U.S., Canada, England and China; they come from private, public and independent schools; and they come from different perspectives and experience levels.

"Lead, follow, or get out of the way." ~ Thomas Paine It's simple. It's wrong.

But I think we will find that at the end of that battle, we won't really feel too much better, we might have said some things that we might not be able to take back, and we will be in a position where a solution may be even more distant than when we began the fight.

7. Where can I find samples of various exemplary AUPs?

The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion.  He hardly knows which is which.  He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing.  To him he's always doing both. ~Jamie Hepp

"...we need to keep reminding ourselves that ed reform is not technology reform and that embedded, transformative technology is not simply digitizing what we've already been doing."

I worry that we don't take the time to say it often enough. How many times do you notice something stellar - even if it is small - that supports incredible learning? How often do we say it?