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Reflection on leadership, life and learning

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Reflection on leadership, life and learning

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Reflecting on leadership, life and learning

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Pinterest: Principals as Instructional Leader

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Pinterest: Principals as Instructional Leader

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Ideas, resources, tools and links for school administrators.

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Lead fearlessly, love hard by Linda Cliatt-Waymna.

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Linda Cliatt-Wayman: How to fix a broken school? Lead fearlessly, love hard

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On Linda Cliatt-Wayman's first day as principal at a failing high school in North Philadelphia, she was determined to lay down the law. But she soon realized the job was more complex than she thought. With palpable passion, she shares the three principles that helped her turn around three schools labeled "low-performing and persistently dangerous."

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Why YOUR sharing Matters by George Couros

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Why YOUR sharing Matters by George Couros

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cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by andrew_mc_d

I am going to have to admit it; the term "lurker" drives me nuts.

I know that there is an amount of time where someone is becoming comfortable with the idea of social media, but many have admitted to me that they just look at all the great resources yet are uncomfortable tweeting from their own account. My response to this is that they simply " retweet " some of the great content they are reading. You do not have to have original content or come up with the next "big thing" but simply just share.

Here is an example of how sharing and a simple retweet can create a ripple effect.

This morning (in Australia), I received a tweet from someone I don't know.

Being the "cyber sleuth" that I am, before I responded, I checked out who they were and their tweets. I was not sure if it was a legitimate account or not since I did not recognize the name, although I recognized the #sd36learn hashtag that they used in their tweet. This process is something that I do for many tweeters that send me a message because there is definitely some spam out there. Here is what I found in their profile:

So...not many followers and not many tweets. Most would be thrown off by this but I was interested in what he had to share so I went through his tweets. Sure enough, I found this little gem:

So now, with his 26 tweets and his 15 followers, @MrAbdolall simply retweeted a great article that I will now be using as the basis of my " Digital Footprint " workshop (I am still in the process of creating it but feel free to use) that I will be doing in Adelaide, Australia on Wednesday. It really is that simple. As I tried to prepare for this workshop, there were so many good ideas that I wanted to talk about, but the Forbes article just made the information so nice and succinct, making it way easier to put together.

So my suggestion to new tweeters...

You may not have many followers and you may not be blogging or creating the next BIG IDEA, but what you share still matters. You never know the impact you can have by sharing a link or a blog post. Simply retweeting good information can help anyone, including someone like myself who has almost 40,000 tweets to his credit, continue to learn and grow.

Keep sharing. That's it.

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cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by andrew_mc_d I am going to have to admit it; the term "lurker" drives me nuts. I know that there is an amount of time where someone is becoming comfortable with the idea of social media, but many have admitted to me that they just look at all the great resources yet are uncomfortable tweeting from their own account.

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Why even the worst bloggers are making us smarter by Clive Thompson

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Why even the worst bloggers are making us smarter by Clive Thompson

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George Couros “What if every teacher tweeted one thing a day that they did in their classroom to a school hashtag, and they took five minutes out of their day to read each other’s tweets?  What impact would that have on learning and school culture’.

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Thinking Out Loud
by Clive Thompson

This article is adapted and excerpted from WIRED contributing editor Clive Thompson's new book, Smarter Than You Think.

In 2003, Kenyan-born Ory Okolloh was a young law student studying in the US but still obsessed with Kenyan politics. There was plenty to obsess over. Kenya was a cesspool of government corruption: Transparency International ranked it as one of the most corrupt public sectors in the world. Okolloh spent hours talking to her classmates and law professors about politics, until eventually one suggested the obvious: Why don't you start a blog?

Outside of her fellow academics, she'd never written anything for a general audience. But on this subject, she had a lot to say. Over the next seven years-some of which she spent back in Kenya-she unleashed a river of posts, everything from snapshots of dilapidated infrastructure to the details of the "Anglo-leasing scandal," in which the government paid hundreds of millions for services that were never delivered. After a few years, she'd built a devoted readership, including many Kenyans living in and out of the country. In 2007, the ruling party was accused of rigging the national election and the country exploded in violence. Okolloh wrote anguished posts, incorporating as much hard information as she could get.

The government imposed a media blackout, and her blog quickly became a clearinghouse for information on the crisis.

Publishers took notice of her work and approached Okolloh to write a book about her life. She turned them down, not wanting the pressure of "having a whole book hanging over" her, as she put it. But one day a documentary team showed up to interview her for a film they were producing about female bloggers. They'd printed up all her blog posts on paper. When they handed her the stack of posts, it was the size of two telephone books. Okolloh may not have thought she wanted to write a book, but in a sense, she already had.

And her output was just a drop in the ocean. Every day, we collectively produce millions of books' worth of writing. Globally we send 154.6 billion emails, more than 400 million tweets, and over 1 million blog posts and around 2 million blog comments on WordPress. On Facebook, we post about 16 billion words. Altogether, we compose some 3.6 trillion words every day on email and social media - the equivalent of 36 million books.* (The entire US Library of Congress, by comparison, holds around 23 million books.)

And what makes this explosion truly remarkable is what came before: comparatively little. Before the Internet, most people rarely wrote for pleasure or intellectual satisfaction after graduating from high school or college.

WE WRITE THE EQUIVALENT OF SOME 36 MILLION BOOKS EVERY DAY ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND EMAIL.

Is any of this writing any good? Certainly, measured against the prose of an Austen, Orwell, or Tolstoy, the majority of online publishing pales. This isn't surprising. The science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon famously said something like, "Ninety percent of everything is crap," a formulation that geeks now refer to as Sturgeon's Law. Anyone who has spent time slogging through the swamp of books, journalism, TV, and movies knows that this holds pretty well even for edited and curated culture. So a global eruption of unedited, everyday self-expression is even more likely to produce this 90-10 split - an ocean of dreck, dotted sporadically by islands of genius.

But focusing on the individual writers and thinkers misses the point. The fact that so many of us are writing - sharing our ideas, good and bad, for the world to see - has changed the way we think. Just as we now live in public, so do we think in public. And that is accelerating the creation of new ideas and the advancement of global knowledge.

Literacy in North America has historically been focused mainly on reading, not writing; consumption, not production. While many parents worked hard to ensure their children were regular readers, they rarely pushed them to become regular writers. But according to Deborah Brandt, a scholar who has researched American literacy in the 20th and 21st centuries, the advent of digital communications has helped change that notion.

We are now a global culture of avid writers, one almost always writing for an audience. When you write something online-whether it's a one-sentence status update, a comment on someone's photo, or a thousand-word post-you're doing it with the expectation that someone might read it, even if you're doing it anonymously.

Having an audience can clarify thinking. It's easy to win an argument inside your head. But when you face a real audience, you have to be truly convincing.

Social scientists have identified something called the audience effect-the shift in our performance when we know people are watching. It isn't always positive. In live, face-to-face situations, like sports or concerts, the audience effect can make athletes or musicians perform better-but it can sometimes psych them out and make them choke, too.

Yet studies have found that the effort of communicating to someone else forces you to pay more attention and learn more.

You can see this audience effect even in small children. In one of my favorite experiments, a group of Vanderbilt University researchers in 2008 published a study in which several dozen 4- and 5-year-olds were shown patterns of colored bugs and asked to predict which would be next in the sequence. In one group, the children simply repeated the puzzle answers into a tape recorder. In a second group, they were asked to record an explanation of how they were solving each puzzle. And in the third group, the kids had an audience: They had to explain their reasoning to their mothers, who sat near them, listening but not offering any help. Then each group was given patterns that were more complicated and harder to predict.

The results? The children who didn't explain their thinking performed worst. The ones who recorded their explanations did better-the mere act of articulating their thinking process aloud seemed to help them identify the patterns more clearly. But the ones who were talking to a meaningful audience-Mom-did best of all. When presented with the more complicated puzzles, on average they solved more than the kids who'd explained to themselves and about twice as many as the ones who'd simply repeated their answers.

GOING FROM AN AUDIENCE OF ZERO TO AN AUDIENCE OF 10 IS SO BIG THAT IT'S ACTUALLY HUGER THAN GOING FROM 10 PEOPLE TO A MILLION.

Researchers have found similar effects with adolescents and adults. When students were asked to write for a real audience in another country, their essays had better organization and content than when they were writing for their teacher. When asked to contribute to a wiki-a space that's highly public and where the audience can respond by deleting or changing your words-college students snapped to attention, carefully checking sources and including more of them to back up their work. Brenna Clarke Gray, an instructor at Douglas College in British Columbia, had her English students create Wikipedia entries on Canadian writers, to see if it would get them to take the assignment more seriously. She was stunned at how well it worked. "Often they're handing in these essays without any citations, but with Wikipedia they suddenly were staying up till 2 am, honing and rewriting the entries and carefully sourcing everything," she tells me. The reason, the students explained to her, was that their audience-the Wikipedia community-was quite gimlet-eyed and critical. They were harder "graders" than Gray herself.

Interestingly, the audience effect doesn't necessarily require a big audience. This seems particularly true online.

Many people have told me that they feel the dynamic kick in with even a tiny handful of viewers. I'd argue that the cognitive shift in going from an audience of zero (talking to yourself) to an audience of 10 (a few friends or random strangers checking out your online post) is so big that it's actually huger than going from 10 people to a million.

This is something that traditional thinkers of the pre-Internet age-particularly print and broadcast journalists - have trouble grasping. For them, an audience doesn't mean anything unless it's massive. If you're writing specifically to make money, you need to draw a large crowd. This is part of the thinking that causes traditional media executives to scoff at the spectacle of the "guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing what he thinks." But for the rest of the people in the world, who probably never did much nonwork writing in the first place-and who almost never did it for an audience-even a handful of readers can have a vertiginous, catalytic impact.

Once thinking is public, connections take over. Anyone who's Googled a favorite hobby, food, or political subject has discovered some teeming site devoted to servicing the infinitesimal fraction of the public that shares their otherwise wildly obscure obsession. (Mine: guitar pedals, modular origami, and the 1970s anime show Battle of the Planets.)

Propelled by the hyperlink, the Internet is a connection-making machine.

And making connections is a big deal in the history of thought-and its future. That's because of a curious fact: If you look at the world's biggest breakthrough ideas, they often occur simultaneously to different people.

This is known as the theory of multiples, and it was famously documented in 1922 by sociologists William Ogburn and Dorothy Thomas. When they surveyed the history of major modern inventions and scientific discoveries, they found that many of the big ones had been hit upon by different people, usually within a few years of each other and sometimes within a few weeks. They cataloged 148 examples: Oxygen was discovered in 1774 by Joseph Priestley in England and Carl Wilhelm Scheele in Sweden. In 1610 and 1611, at least four different astronomers-including Galileo-independently discovered sunspots. John Napier and Henry Briggs developed logarithms in Britain, while Joost Bürgi did it independently in Germany. The law of the conservation of energy was laid claim to by four separate people in 1847. Ogburn and Thomas didn't mention another multiple: Radio was invented around 1900 by two different engineers, working independently-Guglielmo Marconi and Nikola Tesla.

Why would the same ideas have occurred to different people at the same time? Ogburn and Thomas argued that it was because our ideas are, in a crucial way, partly products of our environment. They're "inevitable." When they're ready to emerge, they do. This is because we do not work in a sealed-off, Rodin Thinker fashion.

The things we think about are deeply influenced by the state of the art around us: the conversations taking place among educated folk, the shared information, tools, and technologies at hand. If four astronomers discovered sunspots at the same time, it's partly because the quality of lenses in telescopes in 1611 had matured to the point where it was finally possible to pick out small details on the sun and partly because the question of the sun's role in the universe had become newly interesting in the wake of Copernicus' heliocentric theory. If radio was developed at the same time by two people, that's because the basic principles that underpin the technology were also becoming known to disparate thinkers. Inventors knew that electricity moved through wires, that electrical currents created fields, and that these seemed to be able to jump distances through the air. With that base of knowledge, curious minds were liable to start wondering: How could you use those signals to communicate? And as Ogburn and Thomas note, there are a lot of curious minds. Even if you assume the occurrence of true genius is pretty low (they estimate that one person in 100 is on the "upper tenth" of the scale for smarts), when you multiply it across the entirety of humanity, that's still a heck of a lot of geniuses.

When you think of it that way, what's strange is not that big ideas occurred to different people in different places. What's strange is that this didn't happen all the time, constantly.

But maybe it did-and the thinkers just weren't yet in contact.

THE FACT THAT SO MANY OF US ARE WRITING HAS CHANGED THE WAY WE THINK. JUST AS WE NOW LIVE IN PUBLIC, SO DO WE THINK IN PUBLIC.

Thirty-nine years after Ogburn and Thomas, sociologist Robert Merton took up the question of multiples. Merton hints at an interesting corollary, which is that when inventive people aren't aware of what others are working on, the pace of innovation slows. One survey of mathematicians, for example, found that 31 percent of the most productive complained that the slow pace of publication led to duplicated work. If they had better visibility into one another's work, one suspects, they could collaborate more effectively or work more quickly or with greater insight.

As an example, there's the tragic story of Ernest Duchesne, the earliest documented discoverer of penicillin. As legend has it, Duchesne was a student at a French military medical school in the 1890s when he noticed that the hospital's stable boys who tended the horses did something peculiar: They stored their saddles in a damp, dark room so that mold would grow on their undersurfaces. They did this, they explained, because the mold helped heal the horses' saddle sores. Duchesne was fascinated and conducted an experiment in which he treated sick guinea pigs with a solution made from mold-a rough form of what we'd now call penicillin. The guinea pigs healed completely. Duchesne wrote up his findings in a thesis, but because he was unknown and young-only 23 at the time-the French Institut Pasteur wouldn't acknowledge it. His research vanished, and Duchesne died 15 years later of tuberculosis (a disease that would someday be treatable with antibiotics). It would take 31 years for the Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming to rediscover penicillin, independently and with no idea that Duchesne had already done it. In those three decades, untold millions of people died of diseases that could have been cured. Failed networks kill ideas.

FAILED NETWORKS KILL IDEAS. BUT SUCCESSFUL ONES TRIGGER THEM.

When you can resolve multiples and connect people with similar obsessions, ideas flourish and multiply. Scientists have for centuries intuited the power of resolving multiples, and it's part of the reason that in the 17th century, they began publishing scientific journals and eventually setting standards for citing the work of other scientists. Scientific journals and citation were a successful attempt to create a worldwide network, a mechanism for not just thinking in public but doing so in a connected way.

Today we have something that works in the same way but for everyday people: the Internet, which encourages public thinking and resolves multiples on a much larger scale and at a pace more dementedly rapid. It's now the world's most powerful engine for putting heads together.

Failed networks kill ideas, but successful ones trigger them.

As an example of this, consider what happened next to Ory Okolloh. During the upheaval after the contentious Kenyan elections of 2007, her blog started carrying reports of related violence. People called and emailed her with tips, and she posted as many as she could. She wished there was a tool to do this automatically-to let anyone post an incident to a shared map. So she wrote about that: "Google Earth supposedly shows in great detail where the damage is being done on the ground. It occurs to me that it will be useful to keep a record of this, if one is thinking long-term. For the reconciliation process to occur at the local level the truth of what happened will first have to come out. Guys looking to do something-any techies out there willing to do a mashup of where the violence and destruction is occurring using Google Maps?"

One of the people who saw Okolloh's post was Erik Hersman, a friend and technologist who'd been raised in Kenya. When Hersman read it, he realized he knew someone who could make the idea a reality. He called his friend David Kobia, a Kenyan programmer who was working in Birmingham, Alabama. Much like Okolloh, Kobia was interested in connecting Kenyans to talk about the country's crisis, and he had created a discussion site devoted to it. Alas, it had descended into political toxicity and calls for violence, so he'd shut it down. He was driving out of town to visit some friends when he got a call from Hersman. Hearing Okolloh's idea-a map-based tool for reporting violence-Kobia immediately knew how to make it happen. The three of them built a team and started collaborating, Kobia began coding frantically, and within a few days they were done.

The tool allowed anyone to send an incident report in text, email, or web form, which they then pinned to a Google map. They called it Ushahidi -the Swahili word for "testimony."

Within days, Kenyans had input thousands of incidents of electoral violence. Soon after, Ushahidi attracted $200,000 in nonprofit funds and the team began refining it to accept reports via everything from SMS to Twitter. Within a few years, Ushahidi had become an indispensable tool worldwide, with governments and nonprofits relying on it to help determine where to send assistance. Just hours after a massive earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, an Ushahidi map was set up, and over the following month it cataloged 25,000 text messages and more than 4 million tweets. It has become what Ethan Zuckerman, head of MIT's Center for Civic Media, calls "one of the most globally significant technology projects."

The birth of Ushahidi is a perfect example of the power of public thinking and multiples. Okolloh could have simply wandered around wishing such a tool existed. Kobia could have wandered around wishing he could use his skills to help Kenya. But because Okolloh was thinking out loud, and because she had an audience of like-minded people, serendipity happened.
Contributing editor Clive Thompson (clive@clivethompson.net) profiled artist Doug Aitken in issue 21.09. This article is excerpted from his new book, Smarter Than You Think.
*Correction appended [9/17/1:34 P.M. PST]: Globally, we compose 3.6 trillion words every day on email and social media, the equivalent of 36 million books, not 52 trillion words and 520 million books.

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Why Even the Worst Bloggers Are Making Us Smarter

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We write the equivalent of 520 million books every day on social media and email. The fact that so many of us are writing - sharing our ideas, good and bad - has changed the way we think. Just as we now live in public, so do we think in public.

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4 Ways to Share Our Instructional Leader Stories

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4 Ways to Share Our Instructional Leader Stories

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There is no more human profession in the world than education.

In fact, as content has become abundant, education has become more human. Fifty years ago, and fifty years from now, relationships will be the most important thing we do in schools. In fact, with information becoming plentiful, I would actually argue that relationships will become more important than ever. If I do not feel valued to the place that I come every day, why would I continue to show up?

Yet in some cases, we take this human profession, and reduce our most precious resource, our students, to letters and numbers. We have done this to teachers as well. Instead of hearing their stories, we rank and sort so many involved in education, and lose the faces and humanity in our practice. So many people, whether in government or administrator positions, say that standardized tests are not valued, yet so much is still measured by these numbers, both students and teachers. The emphasis should be on the people, not numbers.

This is not to say that accountability isn't important in education. Nobody wants bad teachers in the profession, including teachers, yet there is so much more to a story to a person than a letter or grade. We have to think of different ways that our stories can be shared though and put more of an emphasis on the qualitative data, not the quantitative. Both have a place in education, but the stories and observations that are shared need to be put in the forefront.

Here are some ways that we can really start to share these stories in a continuous and ongoing basis.

1. Tapping into the power of visuals. - The most powerful camera in the world, is the one that you have with you. Fortunately, most of us have one with us all of the time. People like Tim Lauer, sharing pictures of his school on Instagram, or Tony Sinanis using YouTube to highlight his students in school newsletters, actually elicits emotional responses when I see what they share. The old saying "a picture is worth a thousand words", is totally true. So then what is a video worth? These accounts are something that not only tell a lot about the happenings in the school, but they also encourage growth in their own school communities, as well as others around the world. I know many have started Instagram accounts based on Tim's work, while others have started school YouTube newsletters based on seeing Tony's account. I am not even sure where they got the idea, but I know that their sharing has probably made am impact both locally and globally, while sharing their story.

2. A Year in Photos/Videos - As many schools in North America are either done or winding down their school year, I love the "montage" idea of sharing what has happened in school. I have seen this happen at end of the year assemblies, but they are not often shared publicly. Dean Shareski does a "year in review" video every year, that shows so much of what has happened in his year and tells a powerful story. I would love to see more schools doing this.

3. Telling Your Own Story Through Digital Portfolios - I am a big believer in the power of digital portfolios. Not only do they give students the opportunity to reflect, but they give them an opportunity to share their voice and story in a plethora of unique ways. Many schools have focused on "engagement", yet I believe that we need to empower those that we serve by not only asking them to share assignments, but tell their unique stories through these platforms. In a world where anyone can have a voice, are we working with our students to help them share their voice with people around the world, or just contain them within the walls of our school, either physically or digitally. One of my favourite quotes is from Shelley Wright, when she stated, "Kids often defy expectations when you give them the opportunity." Do we encourage them to share their stories with the world in meaningful ways, or are we simply focusing on "doing school". (Here are some resources on blogs as digital portfolios.)

4. The Simplicity and Power of a Hashtag - Simply having a hashtag for your school or class, not only taps into the power of sharing, but also helps drive innovation. A hashtag is not just about communication, but it can be about culture. You may not have your community all on Twitter, so we have used things like Storify to curate and share our learning and ideas with our community. Having a Twitter account for your school empowers one voice, but having a hashtag, can empower all. There is a lot you can tell to a community in 140 characters.

The human side of education is something that is extremely important to me. Sharing those powerful stories not only paints a different narrative, but it can actually drive innovation. Seeing faces, and hearing voices, elicits a human connection to the work that we are doing. In a profession that is extremely human, we have to remember the power we have to tap into one another, when we share these stories that tell more than any letter or number ever could.

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4 Ways We Can Share Our Stories to Drive Innovation

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There is no more human profession in the world than education. In fact, as content has become abundant, education has become more human. Fifty years ago, and fifty years from now, relationships will be the most important thing we do in schools.

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All it takes is one waste-of-time meeting to give all staff meetings a bad name. That's why we asked our "Principal Files" team to share a meeting that went exceptionally well. You're sure to find an idea or two here to pump up the value of meetings in your school.
How successful are your staff meetings?

Do some go over with a bang? Others with a thud?

Creating staff meetings that are truly valuable, motivate teachers, and lead to improved student achievement is the goal of every principal. That's why we asked our Principal Files Team to share their most successful meetings of the past school year. There are no "thuds" here!

GREAT MEETINGS START ON DAY ONE

Great staff meetings start on the first day of the new school year. That's when principal Pat Green introduces two activities that help to set the tone.

One of the more tedious tasks at the start of the school year is the time spent "reviewing the rules of the road" and "reaffirming the nuts and bolts" related to a host of issues from attendance to safety, Green told Education World. "Giving out the handbook and highlighting a few things gets really boring," said Green, who is principal at Cedar Heights Junior High School in Port Orchard, Washington. "So last year I tried building the competitive spirit among my teachers by playing 'Handbook Jeopardy'."

Green's game actually combined elements of several popular game shows. She created teams of three or four teachers to be "on stage." She appointed other groups to serve as a panel of experts and as "lifelines." Prior to playing the game, Green prepared questions to highlight important handbook information in categories such as Paperwork, Teaching Techniques, and SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures).

Sample "Handbook Jeopardy" Questions

Paperwork: "Why is accurate attendance important?" or "You want to take a field trip with your class. What do you need to do prior to the trip?"

SOPs: "If you want to show a film to your students that is rated PG-13 or R, what must you do beforehand?" or "If you suspect that a report to Children's Services is needed, what do you do?"

Players select a category and a dollar amount; the higher dollar values are assigned to more difficult -- or more important -- questions. Teams are allowed to discuss a question before giving the judges their best response. If the judges determine that response is incorrect, the opposing team gets a chance to buzz in and answer. Clarification of each correct response is briefly given and then the next team gets to select a category and dollar amount.

"Handbook Jeopardy might take a little more time than a simple page-by-page review of the handbook," said Green, "but the game format enables us to review the most important information in a fun and friendly way. The energy of the game helps build a sense of team.

"And, obviously, prizes -- such as bags of Jolly Ranchers to use as student rewards -- go to the winners."

A TIME FOR GOAL SETTING

Another activity Pat Green used last September was aimed at capitalizing on the excitement, energy, and new ideas with which many teachers start the school year. She gives each staff member a sheet of paper, a pen, and a legal-size envelope. She asks them to write down three goals they have for themselves for the year. She asks them to write

one goal they really want to accomplish in the area of home/parent communication;

one personal-wellness goal; and

one colleague-support goal.

Teachers and other staff members write their goals and seal them in their envelopes. They then write their names on the outside of the envelopes.

"I keep the envelopes -- unopened -- in my office until the start of the second half of the year," explained Green. "Then I bring them out again and ask the staff to review their three goals and consider what they've done to accomplish them. I have them note actions they hope to take toward their goals in the second half of the year."

The envelopes get sealed up again and pulled out at the end of the school year for individuals to review.

"This approach gives staff a chance to set goals, get re-focused mid year, and then review their commitment at the end of the year," said Green. "I never read the goals or the notes about progress, but I use this tool as one way to help folks keep themselves focused and accountable for three positive things."

MAKING TIME TO LEARN AND TALK

Many principals use the first meetings of the year to help them establish and cement a yearlong focus. At Avery Elementary School in Webster Groves, Missouri, Six Traits of Writing was to be the school's focus last year. That focus started on the first day of school, said [former] principal Lolli Haws. "We started our planning based on the belief that we have much to learn from the 'experts' teaching in our own building," she said. "Teachers met twice each month -- once for an hour and once for an entire afternoon -- with grade-level (primary or intermediate) colleagues. The themes for each meeting were structured around topics such as looking at Six Traits resources, sharing writing ideas, discussing Six Traits literature, and practicing how to use the program's rubrics to score students' writing."

At the start of the year, teachers had many different ideas about what makes quality writing. Their expectations and their evaluation procedures were all over the park. "By year's end," Haws said, "each teacher had a very good idea of exemplary, quality writing expectations for their own grade level.

"During the year they all kept notebooks full of ideas. They had time to share, laugh, discuss, and learn from one another. Best of all, data showed tremendous growth in virtually every student's writing ability from our fall to spring writing assessments.

"The key was having time to learn and talk with each other!" concluded Haws. "As we plan for continued growth next year, that is a component of their learning they will not be willing to let go!"

A YEARLONG FOCUS

At Collins Lane Elementary School in Frankfort, Kentucky, principal Jeffrey Castle led his staff through a yearlong focus on analyzing student work. "Each teacher took a turn to present a piece of writing, an open response question and student answer, or a student project," said Castle. "Teachers reviewed student work and analyzed it. They talked about the kinds of feedback they might give students and how they might improve their own instruction to result in better student work."

As teachers worked together to develop common assessment practices, this experience became a real community builder, Castle added.

Student assessment is just one element of Castle's determination to bring the Professional Learning Communities approach to life at Collins Lane Elementary. "I had spent three years developing a climate focused on student learning, and I was ready to take the leap into leading our staff into a session focused on developing statements of our school-wide mission, vision, and commitment," Castle told Education World. "Once we developed those statements, they were blown up into posters and hung in all classrooms and hallways

"That session was one of the most miraculous in which I have ever participated. Giving teachers time to discuss their views about what they are in school for, why they teach, and what they are committed to was a real bonding experience."

KUDOS COMMENT CONTRIBUTIONS,
CATAPULT CAMARADERIE

At The Wellington School in Columbus, Ohio, Ken Rogers is the head of the middle school. "Every staff meeting begins with a listing of some of the good things that have happened in school recently," explained Rogers. "The 'Kudos' section of our meetings even appears right at the top of the meeting agenda! Kudos might be handed out for the band's latest concert, an art show, a successful service-learning project, or someone who has just finished an advanced degree."

Rogers keeps an envelope in the main office with Kudos note cards next to it. "Teachers nominate each other based on work they have done to make our school a better place. Notes say things such as Ms. D. has such a great sense of humor with kids or Mr. J. did an excellent job introducing the new math program on Parents' Night. Most of the cards are anonymous. I read aloud all of them. Then I draw a random card. The person noted on that card is the recipient of the a plastic school bus, which gets displayed in his or her classroom until the next meeting."

The school bus award is affectionately know around Wellington as the "Rosa" award because it celebrates "on the bus" behaviors and spirit, Rogers explained.

"We have several other traveling prizes," added Rogers, "like a kitchen fire extinguisher that goes to someone who has spent time 'putting out fires' and a full-size shovel that we painted gold. The Golden Shovel award goes to the faculty member who has been well you can figure that one out. Every time someone gets the shovel, they get to sign it."

SOLVING BEHAVIOR ISSUES... TOGETHER

When everybody on the team focuses on an issue, success is almost guaranteed. Even if that issue is student discipline!

Principal David Christensen knew it would take a consistent approach to address the discipline issues he heard teachers complaining about at Wirreanda Public School in Medowie, New South Wales (Australia). Teachers' concerns were all over the board; the students wouldn't cooperate, they weren't doing the work or following instructions... "While the complaints weren't from all staff, they were loud enough to start to affect the climate of the school," said Christensen. So, at one staff meeting, he set the wheels in motion.

"We began the meeting by focusing on the behaviors that 'cheesed us off' most," Christensen explained. "Each teacher listed five behaviors on [sticky notes]. I collected the notes and we grouped them on the windows in the room.

"Little by little, a pattern emerged. Teachers, it seemed, were less concerned about the most serious discipline issues. They were much more concerned about lower-level issues that disrupted the classroom and others' learning.

"We put the identified behaviors in priority order. This helped us see that all the things we were concerned about weren't necessarily serious enough to require capital punishment.

"Our next step was to discuss each group of behavior problems and assign a key word or value to it. We came up with four 'key values' -- responsibility, respect, persistence, and pride.

"Staff then considered how we could all use those key values in dealing with discipline issues in the classroom and on the playground. We agreed that when confronted with an incident, we would all use similar phrases relating to the four key values. Soon the school halls echoed with teachers asking questions such as Were you showing respect when you ....? or Were you showing responsibility when you ....?

"We reinforced those values in a wide variety of other ways too -- through our parent newsletter, at school assemblies, and in our classrooms."

Christensen feels that teachers now approach student discipline with much greater consistency. And he hears much less complaining in the staff room too.

"Solving all our discipline problems will be a long process, but I feel we have taken a good first step," added Christensen.

"BEST PRACTICES" ARE THE BEST MEETINGS

"The most beneficial meetings are those that are based on "Best Practices," principal Ernest Elliott told Education World. "We hosted a 'best-practices' session during one of our planned 'late-start' days. At that meeting, five staff members shared approaches that worked for them to increase student achievement. The presentations ranged from one teacher who shared a unique approach to preparing students for state writing assessments to a math teacher who shared her no-homework policy."

"It is very refreshing for teachers to see how other staff approach their subject responsibilities, and the level of success that each approach brings," added Elliott.

It is very difficult to prepare in-service sessions for an entire staff when educators really want to focus on their individual curriculum standards instead of 'wasting' time at meetings, added Elliot.

"The 'best practices' sessions led by colleagues were successful, time-well-spent sessions," added Elliott.

Principal Teri Stokes of Weatherly Heights Elementary, Huntsville, Alabama, concurs with Elliott's view. "Teachers indicate that workshops coworkers have given in our school have been very valuable. That's because they are usually focused on reality, not theory."

"TEAM LEADERS" AND A "TEACHER SWAP"

Sometimes the hard work of meeting with teachers can be accomplished in a "different" way. At Providence Day School in Charlotte, North Carolina, principal Tim Messick holds monthly meetings with his school's "team leaders," or grade level chairs. "Our team leaders are an integral part of our leadership plan," explained Messick. "We realized that in order for meetings to be productive we needed to set a meeting time when folks would be at a positive place in their day -- a time when they would be able to be receptive to new ideas and possible changes, actively participate in discussions, and make important decisions. That's why we hold our monthly meetings at 1:00 in the afternoon."

Subs or teacher assistants cover the team leaders' classes; and lunch is provided for the meeting's participants. Team leaders are responsible for sharing information about the team-leader meetings and leading discussions about important issues with the other members of their teams.

That doesn't mean the rest of the staff is off the hook when it comes to meetings. The faculty works in a variety of groupings to address issues and improve the school and its curriculum. "Sometimes teachers work within their grade-level teams and other times they work in vertical teams with colleagues from other grade-levels," said Messick. "I try to make it a priority in meetings that the faculty is engaged, not always talked at."

One especially good meeting last year took place on the day most teachers participated in a "Teacher Swap." The Teacher Swap happened on a midweek midwinter day. "I encouraged teachers to swap with another teacher -- preferably two levels above or below -- and spend the morning teaching that grade."

On the appointed day, teachers went to their new classes and performed the duties and taught the classes of their colleagues. "At the end of the day, we had a faculty meeting for the teachers who participated," said Messick. "Teachers broke into small groups and shared their experiences. Most revealing was the renewed appreciation among participants for the hard work and uniqueness of the demands of another grade level. The 'grass is always greener' adage was quickly dispelled by this experience.

"Some teachers even became excited about considering the possibility of trying another grade in a year of two. Others were more convinced than ever that they love the age they currently teach.

"It was an enthusiastic afternoon of wonderful sharing, support, and appreciation for work that colleagues do on a regular basis."

Due to popular demand, the Teacher Swap will become an annual event, said Messick. Next year he might encourage teachers to swap in the opposite direction from which they moved this year. He also expressed interest in the possibility that at some time his staff might try a similar experiment with the middle or high school teachers who are fed students from Providence Day School.

PRINCIPALS TEAM UP FOR EMPHASIS

In Lancaster, Ohio, two principals -- Paul Young and Jeromey Sheets -- recently teamed up to use their grant monies to bring team-trainer Margaret Searle aboard. Searle led teachers toward developing a user-friendly document that would enable teachers to frequently assess students based on state indicators, said Young. "Teachers developed curriculum maps with differentiated assessments that enable all students, including those with disabilities, to demonstrate their learning and mastery of the standards."

Teachers can use the documents to determine which students need additional help and what teaching strategies might be used to meet the individual needs of each child, added Young.

Teachers became so excited about this curriculum analysis and mapping that they voluntarily extended their work time on the project before and after school and into their spring vacations. Regular classroom teachers and special education teachers worked closely together. They shared the results of their efforts at a district-wide in-service meeting. Currently, they are seeking approval of their assessments and curriculum maps for use in all schools.

By working together to create this document, teachers have ownership of the work and will continue to revise it, said Young. "Only by working together will we be able to live up to the task of leaving no child behind," he added.

GREAT SPEAKERS = GREAT MEETINGS

"Our district scheduled a staff development session for the day before Christmas break," recalled principal Ann Robison of Hannan Elementary Magnet School in Columbus, Georgia. "Many members of our staff were a bit upset that they had to attend a whole-day workshop that day."

But it worked beautifully because the speaker, Dr. Marcia Tate, and the topic -- Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites -- were so engaging.

"At the end of the day, everybody was so thankful that we brought Dr. Tate to our school," said Robison. It also helped that the day began with a breakfast for the entire staff, and the PTA treated the entire staff to lunch at a wonderful Italian restaurant.

But the best was yet to come! After the holiday break, teachers began using the strategies that Dr. Tate introduced. "We did not have any office referrals for discipline for almost a month! And we have cut the use of worksheets in our school."

Principal Teri Stokes says some of the best sessions she has led also included great speakers. Most memorable was a session led by David Sousa, author of books that include How the Brain Learns; How the Gifted Brain Learns; and How the Special Needs Brain Learns.

MORE PRACTICAL POINTERS FROM PRINCIPALS

Ken Rogers presents teachers with an agenda for each staff meeting at least two or three days before the meeting. "At the bottom of the agenda is a section I call "Stuff You Can Just Read," said Rogers. "That way, we don't spend time during the meeting reading announcements."

"At the beginning of each staff meeting, we sing 'Happy Birthday' to all the teachers who have a birthday that month," said Larry Davis.

Book studies are a particularly valuable form of professional development. "When we can't afford books, we read a compilation of articles on a subject," said Teri Stokes. Finding articles on the Web is usually pretty easy, she added. ADHD and childhood asthma are two of the topics her teachers have recently discussed.

Just like teachers work to design lessons for different learning styles, Stokes tries to plan staff meetings that appeal to a range of teachers' learning styles. "Any meeting gets boring and frustrating for those of us who are ADHD if there is not time built in for movement or time to reflect on and respond to what is being presented," she said. "Well thought-out handouts for visual learners are appreciated too."

"I have made it a priority to have some type of food or snack at each of our meetings," said Tim Messick. "Many meetings are held at the end of the day when everybody is tired. I have found that bottled water and something to eat can help bring up the energy level and spirits."

A different setting -- such as a restaurant -- can add a different perspective to a meeting. The first meeting of the past school year for the faculty of Central Fairmount School in Cincinnati, Ohio, was held off-site at a restaurant. "Teachers really appreciated not being in a hot school building," said assistant principal Bonita Henderson. On the last day of school, the faculty met at a different restaurant for a special celebration.

Updated 04/14/2017

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Principals Share 'Best Meetings of the Year' | Education World

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All it takes is one waste-of-time meeting to give all staff meetings a bad name. That's why we asked our "Principal Files" team to share a meeting that went exceptionally well. You're sure to find an idea or two here to pump up the value of meetings in your school.

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George Couros writes a challenging post entitled The Principal of Change.

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People are terrified of change. Not just of change, but the process of change and what it entails you. You cannot change your practice without work, time commitment, and sometimes shifting priorities. In leadership positions, this is the same with helping people move forward and having them invest their time in a new project or initiative. You will want to guard them from all of the work that they will have to do when time is precious. So when you go through the process, ask yourself this question:

Is this best for kids?

If you can answer unequivocally that the answer is "yes", then the change process is necessary. It might not be easy, it might take time, it might be messy, but it needs to happen.

If you are unsure if the answer is "yes" or "no", use that same question to guide your search.

If it helps our students, it is worth doing.

That simple.

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If you are scared of change, ask yourself this question.

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People are terrified of change. Not just of change, but the process of change and what it entails you. You cannot change your practice without work, time commitment, and sometimes shifting priori...

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George Couros writes a challenging post entitled The Principal of Change.

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Short blog post

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cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Clearly Ambiguous

I have been thinking a lot lately about the skills of an effective teacher and an effective leader, and the parallels between the two. The more I think of it, the more I really believe that we need to look at teachers as leaders in the classroom, not just guides or facilitators. Every great leader serves those that are around them, and great teachers do this as well. They build upon the strengths of their students, building confidence, while also providing them supports in areas they need.

For as long as I have been in education, the term "classroom management" is something that has been in every evaluation form I have seen as well as a major topic of discussion. In every element of leadership, there is some element of management but to paraphrase Stephen Covey, "you manage things, but we lead people." I don't know any person that likes to feel that they are "managed", but I do know lots of people who want to be inspired and engaged in the work that they do. Leadership brings that out, not management.

Maybe the term " classroom leadership" needs to be more dominant in our conversations about teaching and learning. The reality is that if people are inspired, they won't have to be managed at all, they will usually just do great things.

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cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Clearly Ambiguous I have been thinking a lot lately about the skills of an effective teacher and an effective leader, and the parallels between the two. The more I think of it, the more I really believe that we need to look at teachers as leaders in the classroom, not just guides or facilitators.

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What Makes Great Teachers.  Robert Heinlein 

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What Makes Great Teachers.  Robert Heinlein 

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The wrap-up video is from ABC News – What Makes Great Teachers.  It is about a 3 minute video that reminds us that 'Teachers have 3 loves: love of learning, love of learners, and the love of bringing the first 2 loves together (Scott Hayden)'.

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ABCNews - What Makes Great Teachers - 02-26-2010.ASF

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A short film by Harvard Ed Students.

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What Makes Good Teaching? A Short Film by Harvard Ed Students

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Produced by three HGSE students, this short documentary, "Minds On Teaching," looks to understand what makes teaching good.

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8 Lessons Great Teachers Accept  

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8 Lessons Great Teachers Accept  

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8 Simple Tips For Great Teaching
by Jane Healey, Ph.D.

I just returned from a conference where the organizers screened World Peace and Other 4th Grade Achievements, a documentary about John Hunter, the teacher from Charlottesville, Virginia whose elegant design of a classroom activity elicits the deep thinking and creative problem solving educators strive for.

Hunter responded to questions with a crafted vision of teaching and touching anecdotes from his long years in the classroom. Over and over, he repeated a central theme: human interaction is at the heart of effective education. There's no app or standardized test for good teaching. (Or replacement for the kinds of things great teachers do differently.)

As he spoke, Hunter punctuated his comments with phrases that add up to an instructional guide for "serving" students in the educational endeavor. Hunter built his philosophy on the legacy his mother shared with him, and he generously offers it to the next generation and teachers of all ages.

Here's a sample of John Hunter's lessons:

Allow space. Let students walk to edge but not over.

I hope for schools where the last item is the whole mission statement.
8 Simple Tips For Great Teaching

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8 Simple Tips For Great Teaching by Jane Healey, Ph.D. I just returned from a conference where the organizers screened World Peace and Other 4th Grade Achievements, a documentary about John Hunter, the teacher from Charlottesville, Virginia whose elegant design of a classroom activity elicits the deep thinking and creative problem solving educators strive for.

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by Terry Heick

Recently, I've been thinking of the universal truths in teaching. Students should be first. Don't always start planning with a standard. Questions matter more than answers. Trust is a currency of a human classroom.

So I thought I'd gather twelve of them to start with. The idea of "good teaching" is an idea we get at a variety of different ways, So then, here are some rules we might consider when making sense of this idea of what makes a teacher great. Thanks to Sylvia Duckworth for the great illustration, who went all out and added all 15.
1. Start small.
This is how great things are built. Curriculum. Relationships. Portfolios. Take your time-this is a marathon, not a sprint.
2. Embrace that there is no one way.
Learning models, for example, are the new teaching strategy.

Traditionally, teachers focus on "strategies" to "teach." Reciprocal teaching. Lit circles. Accountable talk. Of course, these have value.

But the modern approach should have as much to do with what students access, when, how, and why as it does with "what students do in the lesson." Self-directed learning. Scenario-based learning. Project-based learning. Inquiry-based learning. Game-based learning. These are the strategies that matter first.
3. Trust the people around you.
Your students, first and foremost. But this goes for parents, and colleagues as well. It may not always work out the way you want, but if you're the only one in control, there will be a net loss of capacity for the ecology of learning you participate in and serve.
4. In learning, curiosity is everything.
If you can't make them curious, teach something else. I've theorized that there are stages to curiosity-and even things that make students curious. as well.

Taskmasters seek compliance. Good teachers seek engaged students. Great teachers-somehow, some way-find out what makes students click, and use it.
5. Experiment. Experiment. Experiment.
Teaching is a craft. Play with it. A little more of this, a little less of that. This new tool. Start here instead of there. Try this instead. Throw this out. Welcome this in.

Not only does this keep things fresh for students, but it keeps you sharp and relevant as an educator as this big world keeps on turning.
6. Don't always start planning with a standard.
Know that it's okay to think technology-first. Or curriculum first. Or standards. Or data. Or (ideally) student-first. There are dozens of ways to plan content. What matters is the power and sustainability of the learning as it manifests in the classroom.
7. Teaching is always changing.
Technology. Curriculum. Assessment. The value systems of students. Since these are always changing, your teaching be should as well.
8. Be concise.
When explaining, less is more.
9. Know your pedagogy.
Know the difference between confusing and complex. Between differentiation and personalized learning. Between project-based learning, and learning through projects. Between difficulty and rigor.

Between standards and curriculum. Between teaching and inquiry.
10. Help students ask great questions.
This can happen by modeling them, celebrating them, assigning points for them, curating and publishing them-whatever you can do to help students see what a great question implies. Here are 8 strategies to help students ask great questions, for starters.
11. Be interesting.
Be unpredictable. Challenge authority. Connect with students both through your teaching and in lieu of your teaching. Begin class with a bang-a crazy idea, interesting story, great song, funny joke. That said...
12. It's not about you.
So don't be the center of attention. Charismatic teachers are great-everybody loves them-but if your voice and personality dominate the classroom on a daily basis, things are out of balance.
Bonus
Here are 3 more to consider.
13. Love your content.
Stay up-to-date on changes. Be aware of the tricks, shortcuts, and interesting quirks of the content you teach. While teaching isn't about content, mastery here can make everything else easier.
14. Be your students' biggest cheerleader.
The be-tough-for-their-own-good bit may work for some, but celebrating kids works for everybody.
15. Know that learning should disrupt. (Read more here.)
Knowledge gained should result in personal change rather than mere academic progress. It should result in personal change for each student-and thus social change for all of us as a society.

If we build great schools and fill them with great technology and great teachers, but still send students home with no hope for the future-home to communities full of poverty, racism, intolerance, greed, waste, and apathy toward local ecologies, with no sense of place, historical legacy, or local and digital citizenship, then we know we have an institutionally-centered system.

When beautiful things happen-things we never could've imagined-both inside and outside the classroom, we'll know we're headed in the right direction.
12 Rules Of Great Teaching; image attribution flickr user flickeringbrad

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12 Rules Of Great Teaching by Terry Heick Recently, I've been thinking of the universal truths in teaching. Students should be first. Don't always start planning with a standard. Questions matter more than answers. Trust is a currency of a human classroom. So I thought I'd gather twelve of them to start with.

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The 4 Needs Of A Great Teacher
"You always have permission to use whatever tools you need to teach my daughter. Feel free to let her play."

Responding to a standard email request for permission to use a digital tool in my classroom, a parent of one of my students recently gave me carte blanche to help her child learn. I almost got up from my desk and danced a jig. Not only did I feel truly appreciated for the work I have done this year to empower my students as self-directed, curious learners, but I also felt a much needed affirmation of trust in my ability to make professional choices in the classroom, even as we might play around, attempt the unknown, fail, and start over. Thank you, thank you, I thought, for the parents who understand what real learning is and who trust me to teach the best way I can.

Yet these are dark days for teacher appreciation for many in our profession. I felt a definite low point at the beginning of April, when I encountered within 48 hours, two popular media sources at opposite ends of the political spectrum ( Fox News and The Huffington Post) that openly ridiculed teachers for mistakes they had made.

Bashed by the media, harassed by parents who think school should mean nothing but smooth sailing for their kids, fearing for their jobs in a troubled economy, hobbled by implementation of well-intentioned standards, confused by administrators who either micro-manage or lack the long view, teachers are feeling pretty demoralized these days, and at a time when they must negotiate some of the greatest challenges ever to face their profession and the children they teach. No wonder we need Teacher Appreciation Week.

Yet we need more than a week's worth of good will for what lies ahead. If teachers are to transition to the kind of blended learning that has been found to work best for today's kids, we need trust, time, and trained mentors to work out what what we need to do. We need parents to be our partners as we face the challenges in a changing educational landscape. We need room to fail (and to model failure as part if the learning process). We need help, not harangues.

1. Trust

The road ahead is pretty daunting for teachers. No longer can we predict what our students will need to succeed in college and in their lives, requiring us to teach in a blended learning format when many of us have no real personal experience of what that means. We know we must adapt and change to meet the needs of students whose brains are wired differently from ours, but we also know that it will take time to practice and considerable thought to perfect our evolving craft.

We need parents to work with us as partners, something advocated by recognized educator Ron Clark in "What Teachers Really Want to Tell Parents." They can do this by sharing what they know about their children's learning and by articulating what they need to learn from us in order to support their children's learning at home. We need those parents who support new ways of learning, as was reported recently at Education Dive ("Parents Want More Use of Mobile Devices in Classrooms," May 2, 2013), to speak up more loudly and demand from administrators and school leaders that we allow kids to freely use the devices they have at their fingertips for learning in new, powerful ways.

We need administrators who can help us understand the challenges we face, but who can let us wrestle with the nitty-gritty of implementation. Like our students, we need to dive into a problem in order to truly understand it, rather than just follow a prescribed route without working out what we are dealing with. We need guidance and inspiration from our leaders, but then we need you to get out of the way and let us figure out what change to a more blended teaching model means for us, for our students in our discipline in our classrooms.

2. Time

The most common complaint I hear from teachers when they are asked to try new strategies in the classroom is "I don't have time." I can definitely feel their pain as I face the last month of school and wonder when I will get everything done. If administrators and parents could create time for us, they would demonstrate their appreciation beyond measure.

If we are to work through the thorny issues of meeting the needs of 21st-century learners, we need others to not to waste our time. We need not to be bothered by unnecessary emails and tasks that could be handled more efficiently and expertly (and possibly more inexpensively) by others.

Consider what you would ask other professionals, such as doctors or lawyers, to do with their time, and then think about what is asked of teachers. If we really want teachers to think deeply about curricula and skills, create videos for flipping their classroom, and provide feedback to writing online, we need to respect the time they need to do those things well.

Teachers already work full, hard weeks - more than fifty hours per week on average (and based on my own experience, I'm guessing that includes summers "off"). If we want teachers to investigate and master new tools for the classroom, we need to give them time to play. The greatest tool in an administrator's grasp is the schedule. How can our school leaders rethink the school day, flip professional development, and reinvent meetings to allow time for teachers to learn and explore and ultimately implement new ways of learning?

3. Connections

A recent conversation with a colleague helped me understand more deeply and personally the value of mentoring. I queried what she would ask for if she could have anything to help support her in her transition to a blended classroom. Her answer: "one-on-one instruction."

Schools notoriously underestimate the kind and quality of training their teachers need. Too often they toss out the pop idea of the moment, often in the meetings a few days before school starts, and expect teachers to just pick up the ball and run with it.

But the transformation of schools will not happen if the teachers at its core do not have the help and coaching they need. Certainly, hiring a cadre of technology coaches would be an investment worth making. But finding ways to nurture bonds with trailblazing teachers who can share their experiences can certainly fill the gap. Providing ways to showcase innovative teaching, without shaming the teachers who are still meaningfully struggling, might be one avenue worth pursuing.

Helping teachers find and discover their own personal learning networks is the best way I know to help educators become self-directed, digital learners like their students. In this day and age, we all must gain the skills of directing and curating our own learning, and teachers are no exception. They just need a little coaching (and they will tell you time as well) to get started.

4. Courage

I'm lucky enough to have a supportive administration that lets me explore new ways of connecting with kids in the classroom.

I work with supportive parents who understand and support my work with their kids in changing times. I have an amazing personal learning network that helps me become a better practitioner of my craft. But not every teacher has those blessings. In the end, we need to truly appreciate teachers by championing their courage to innovate in order to inspire innovation in their students.
4 Needs Of A Great Teacher by Susan Lucille Davis was first published on gettingsmart.com

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The 4 Needs Of A Great Teacher "You always have permission to use whatever tools you need to teach my daughter. Feel free to let her play." Responding to a standard email request for permission to use a digital tool in my classroom, a parent of one of my students recently gave me carte blanche to help her child learn.

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A great resource for any teacher coach or principal is this youtube video.  Writing a 5 Lesson Plan/Writing a Highly Effective Lesson Plan based on the TEAM Evaluation Model.

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This 30 minute tutorial will walk you the process I used to write a Highly Effective Lesson Plan (a 5) according to the TN TEAM Evaluation Model.

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Rita Pierson: 
Every Kid Needs a Champion

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Rita Pierson: 
Every Kid Needs a Champion

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Rita Pierson, a teacher for 40 years, once heard a colleague say, "They don't pay me to like the kids." Her response: "Kids don't learn from people they don't like.'" A rousing call to educators to believe in their students and actually connect with them on a real, human, personal level.

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Every kid needs a champion | Rita Pierson | TED

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Teacher motivation in a minute.

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Motivating Teachers:  A Wired Side chat with Todd Whitaker 

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Motivating Teachers:  A Wired Side chat with Todd Whitaker 

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So what can you do to motivate great teaching? Whitaker shares his ideas in this week's Wire Side Chat. Included: Techniques -- including weekly memos, positive referrals, and parent contact -- that principals can use to keep teachers motivated

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Education World: Wire Side Chat: Teacher Motivation

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Watch: Teach Teachers How To Create Magic  with speaker Christopher Emdin.

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Christopher Emdin: Teach teachers how to create magic | TED Talk

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What do rap shows, barbershop banter and Sunday services have in common? As Christopher Emdin says, they all hold the secret magic to enthrall and teach at the same time — and it’s a skill we often don’t teach to educators. A longtime teacher himself, now a science advocate and cofounder of Science…

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The Principal as an Instructional Leader

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The Principal as an Instructional Leader

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Download and read The Principal as Instructional Leader  by Fred C. Lunenburg, Sam Houston State University

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This is Education Week and you can look at 3 items per month without paying for a subscription.  Elena Agular is the blog author and she is blogs about the art of coaching teachers.  Inside the Mind of this Coach by Elena Aguilar May 17, 2015 at 6:07 PM has a transcript and a video of her coaching experiences.

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The Art of Coaching Teachers - Education Week Teacher

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Elena Aguilar, an experienced K-12 educator, trains individuals and teams to build resilient, just communities. She is the author of The Art of Coaching , (2013) The Art of Coaching Teams , (2016) and Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators (2018). She is also the founder of Bright Morning Consulting (brightmorningteam.com) and is active on social media.

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The video asks you to think about 3 questions as you watch:

1. How does Ms. Hurst draw from her own teaching experience when coaching others?

2. Why is it important to keep feedback objective?

3. What does Ms. Culver learn from her coaching session?

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Collaborates with stakeholders to communicate a clear, compelling vision for professional learning and growth.

Implements and monitors a rigorous evaluation system using an approved Tennessee evaluation model.

Uses educator evaluation data to inform, assess, and adjust professional learning goals and plans.

Engages faculty and self in data-informed, differentiated professional learning opportunities for educators, aligned with the Tennessee Standards for Professional Learning.

Collaborates with others to induct, support, retain and/or promote effective educators based on evidence of student and educator outcomes.

Identifies and supports potential teacher-leaders and provides growth opportunities in alignment with the Tennessee Teacher Leadership Standards.

Improves self-practice based on multiple sources of feedback, including performance evaluation results and self-reflection.