Group items tagged

Principals are important in creating the environment for teacher success, and principals need support, too.

Teacher Policy Research annotated studies on teacher retention

"The authors highlight the dynamics in which "Teacher leadership provided considerable momentum in the institutionalization of competency education practices.""

Fallacies in how the US views and aims to fix challenges in education

Great reflection by one teacher on her shifting thinking about schools and learning. 

One teacher's shift in beliefs and practices in education, from teacher-centered to student-centered.

"As school boards address the overall challenge of social media use within schools, they should focus on the reality that the impact no longer lies only on the individual and local schools. Social networks include students and teachers all over the world and, therefore, teaching and coaching on digital literacy for teachers and students is where the focus should rest. Knowing how to build successful communities of learning and how to integrate social connectivity within a learning environment is a much more needed outcome than finding a way to control and monitor specific users and content."

An effective introduction to the concepts underlying our approach to teacher-directed teacher learning.

The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students. The TIM incorporates five interdependent  characteristics of meaningful learning environments: active, constructive, goal directed  (i.e.reflective), authentic, and collaborative (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra,  2003). The TIM associates five levels of technology integration (i.e., entry, adoption,  adaptation, infusion, and transformation) with each of the five characteristics of  meaningful learning environments. Together, the five levels of technology integration and  the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments create a matrix of 25 cells.

PD shouldn't be done to teachers, it should be generated BY teachers. Sounds a lot like the good kind of meetings I've been to, including the Partnership. Ensures relevance and ownership of the process. Maybe a method the Partnership should learn more about

Teachers know that making lessons relevant helps motivate students. The most frequent approach is to link curriculum to learner interests. Two educators, Mario Fantini and Gerry Weinstein, in two now out-of-print books, Making Urban Schools Work and Towards Humanistic Education, pointed out that it would be more effective to link curriculum to the concerns of learners. (You can find used copies of both through Book Finder.) What do kids worry about? What anxieties sometimes keep them up at night? What peer interactions churn up their emotions? How do they deal with their fears about the future, college admissions, employment or bullying?

"Yet the reaction from most "reformers," especially those with the most money, is to pretty much stay the course, to treat education as something that schools define, deliver, assess and confirm. Technology allows us to do that "better" than we have in the past, in some conversations "better" than teachers can. It allows us to "achieve" at higher levels, to compete more effectively with the world, and to stoke the push to make every child "college ready." This is not "beginner's mind"-type thinking." The Storified link is particularly worth checking out.

Teachers crossing the country to identify successful practices and start their own school.

In the big picture, it's not the teachers, it's poverty.  Obviously.  And those who say otherwise are being paid big time by those who want to profiteer off the system.

This is the article I am reading in prepartation for the Nellie Mae Cross Site Conference.

A nice opinion piece on teacher rating systems in today's NYT

Riverdale is applying "design thinking" to its teaching and learning environments... Check out the links to Ideo and to Design Thinking for Educators. Note: The October conference is being moved to mid-winter, to align with teachers' needs.