Time is never an educator’s friend. The school year is so packed with teaching and learning there is scant time for review, consideration, and design. Summer is a school’s fifth quarter, the stretched extension of a school year for professional reflection and planning. If not then, when? Continue reading
Summer – School’s Necessary Fifth Quarter
Victory Dance in the End Zone of the School Year
Teachers and children celebrate the end of the school year – the last day of an academic season – as the passage of time. Step up your celebration to a victory dance in the end zone of the teaching and learning year. Celebrate the success of your work – you caused children to learn. Continue reading
Being What We Teach
Teachers always reflect what they teach. The band director plays an instrument, the shop teacher runs a lathe, the English teacher speaks in complete sentences, and the history teacher overwhelms us with facts from the past. Pandemic teaching caused us to “be” our more abstract values – problem solvers, evidence-based, collaborative, and collegial. We were exemplars of our best selves. Continue reading
Recentering Our Matters
Old Boomer educators don’t die; they just fade away. We need to retire Boomerisms with our Boomers. Continue reading
Add Student Executive Functioning Skills to Your Student Performance Box Score
An analysis of post-pandemic student learning points too easily at academic deficiencies. From the pandemic, we learned that our concept of studenthood was limited and children today have needs much greater than the 3 Rs. Continue reading
Smart Is As Smart Does
A while ago Holiday Inn Express enjoyed using “I’m not a rocket scientist, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night” as an indicator of the smart and well-informed traveler in their clientele. They seemed to say, “smart … Continue reading
Institutional Elasticity Stymies Growth
Forward progress following a crisis is not propelled by a return to the past but by understanding what must be different in the furture and making change happen. Continue reading
Learning, Perhaps
Although a school year stops on a date specific, learning happens in the unanticipated future. Perhaps. Continue reading
Pandemic-informed Teacher Evaluation
The pandemic caused change. As we emerge from the pandemic, ask yourself as you seek the old normal, is that the best we can do. Some things learned in the pandemic need to become new practices. Continue reading
Hybrid School Year – A Rethought, Pandemic-informed School Calendar
The school calendar is a prime example of – we do things now because that is how it was done when I was in school. The pandemic is teaching us that there is a better way. Continue reading