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One Powerful Way to Improve Your Strategic Plan
What would I eliminate if I had a magic wand? Overconfidence. —Daniel Kahneman, psychologist, Nobel Laureate, and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow Strategic plans are as common in schools...
Three Meaningful Ways to Incorporate Drawing into English Class
When students enter my high school English classroom and see the bins of colored pencils and markers out, many of them are excited, but there are always a few who...
Lead with Art, and Literacy Will Naturally Follow
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. —Pablo Picasso There is one book that always makes it onto my personal...
How to Let Go of Outdated Literacy Practices
One of the great misconceptions we often carry throughout our lives is that our perceptions of ourselves and the world are basically accurate and true, that they reflect some stable,...
Reasons to Launch Writer’s Notebooks with Primary Writers
We had been writing all year. Making book after book. It started to feel mundane. I wondered if my students were getting the message that writers write only books. I...
Supports for Our Youngest Writers
“You have to know 48 letters to begin to write,” the primary educator proclaimed to the large group gathered to take a closer look at emergent and early writers. As...
And Other Duties As Assigned…
One of my favorite lines in my own and many other instructional coaches’ job description is “and other duties as assigned.” It is the gateway and loophole that both expands...
Five Business Books Every Leader Should Read
My reading life consists of an eclectic mix of books, and I have found that business books often provide valuable guidance for my school leadership. These lessons have been applicable to...
Minilessons About Sound and Image
Digital content has opened the floodgates and immersed our students (and us) in images and sounds more than ever before. TikTok, Instagram, video games, memes, and YouTube, to name a...
Combining Personal Narratives and Comics
Two units that I’ve taught in my classroom for years are always favorites: personal narratives and comics. Personal narratives I’ve loved for many reasons. One, whether I'm teaching fifth grade...
Using Art to Bridge Storytelling
Aminah Robinson was an Ohio-born artist (1940-2015) whose paintings, drawings, and poetry honor African American culture by exploring history and ancestral legend. Some of the themes explored in her work...
Teaching Students How to Email
Email. It can be the bane of our existence, right? Not too long ago I saw a meme on social media. It showed two email icons. At the top it...
Rethinking Late-Work Policies
As the first quarter of the year, which had been completely virtual, came to an end, I received the following email from one of my students, an 11th grader named...
A Checklist of Ideas to Support New Teachers
Every year brings grade-level shifts, new agendas, and new and improved ways of doing things in a school. Even though these initiatives and shifts take time and adjustments, we at...
Encouraging Instructional Confidence
Teachers are teachers because they know everything . . . right? Teachers have all the answers. But what happens if we do not? What can you do as an instructional...
Avoiding Burnout
This article is not about using this summer to get reinspired, or about falling further in love with your work, or about the best books to buy for your students....
Google Classroom Boot Camp
One of my pet peeves about Google Classroom is that as a teacher, my view of Classroom isn’t the same as my students'. So until I had some enterprising and...
Four Tools for Hosting Online Book Clubs
Before the pandemic, there were some common technology integrations in literacy classrooms. Learning management systems, like Google Classroom and Seesaw, were becoming ubiquitous for teachers to post assignments and collect...
Finding Reliable Digital Reading Resources
One of the things I love about education is that it is always evolving. When tablets first became the rage years ago, I looked for ways to incorporate them into...
Choice, Voice, and Rejoice: Looking Back and Looking Forward
In speaking with my colleagues and “teacher friends” these past few weeks, I keep hearing the same thing again and again. After the year we’ve been through, many teachers are...
Ninja Feedback: Empowering Teachers to Reflect
The greatest feedback I've gotten has been feedback I didn't know I was getting. The most effective coaches and mentors in my experience were those who knew how to ask...
