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One Size Does Not Fit All: Flexibility in Tool Creation
Readers confidently burst into talk as I asked them to recall the story arc of Mr. Indifferent—a short film we enjoyed watching earlier in the year. We did a quick...
How to Intensify an Intervention
My heart sank a little bit as I scrolled through the progress monitoring data. Graph after graph swept across my screen, and for the most part, I saw a lot...
Gaining Confidence One Move at a Time
After I'd had a long afternoon of facilitating a professional development experience, a teacher approached me, saying, “There was something different about you today.” Oh no, I thought. Different how?...
Connecting with the Goals of the School Community
Remember, if people like it here, they'll come back. You treat every customer like a new friend. —Ms. Fortini to Eilis in the novel Brooklyn, by Colm Tóibín Background I...
Helping Kids Lead Every Day: How to Deepen Small-Group Discussions
Now that students knew how to get their materials, decide what to read, and how to read, it was time to lift the level of their thinking in their student-led...
Pay Attention to What You Pay Attention To: Leveraging the Power of a Door
When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. —Wayne Dyer When I decided to eat more protein, there was suddenly more information about...
What I Learned About Having a Difficult Conversation
I had wondered about and lost sleep over it for long enough. I was ready to have the difficult conversation. I grabbed my coffee, looked at the clock (still 45...
Vertical Conversations to Create Coherence
In my shift from the world of elementary school to middle school, I’ve noticed that we talk about mathematics instruction in different ways. Initially, I believed that we shared an...
The Difference Between Change and Transition
I stopped at our local pharmacy's new location to pick up a prescription. The owners had moved into a brand-new medical clinic, which includes a wellness space, physical therapy, and...
Building Thinking Classrooms in Literacy
One of the latest innovations in teaching mathematics is Peter Liljedahl’s Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics. It has been a game changer for me because my students engaged in math,...
Got Criteria? How to Help Students Engage with Success Criteria
Driving home from my young daughter’s first-ever basketball game, we filled the air with appreciation and praise for her performance. "Wow, you did great!" my son said to her excitedly....
Goals Create Direction
You feel stressed because you don’t have a goal. This simple truth resonates deeply in our schools today. Many of our colleagues are stressed—overwhelmed with classroom behaviors, daily demands, and...
The Coach’s Notebook: How to Capture and Organize Your Notes to Support Your Practice
Part of my work as a systems coach is documenting my conversations with leaders and teachers around their goals for building more equitable outcomes for students. We use a Google...
Booklist: Books that Cultivate Kindness
Sometimes when I talk to children about why they should be kind and treat each other with respect, they tune out. However, they rarely tune out when listening to a...
Giving Kids Time and Space to Show Their Brilliance
We were at a local playground in the Buckeye State last summer, and someone had left a piece of chalk lying on the blacktop. My newly turned three-year-old son took...
Navigating Bias and Assumptions in Literacy Coaching
Anxiety always lives in our assumptions. —Steve Cuss One of my first lessons as a principal was this: Never assume. I learned this lesson my first year as an assistant...
Harnessing the Power of Words
After fourth grade, your vocabulary develops almost exclusively from what you read. To put this into perspective, if you were to read for 30 minutes a day, you would be...
Writing to Learn
“Literacy is not just the responsibility of ELA teachers; it is every teacher’s responsibility.” This is my administrators’ belief statement, and we spent the last several years implementing this belief...
Whole-School Animal Research
“Who was the winner? What’s our animal for next year?” asks a group of fourth graders at the end of the school year. The rising fifth graders have voted on...
Feedback Writers Will Use
Banal It was just one word scrawled at the top of my friend's literary essay. I don't remember if it was written in red or not, but it probably was. ...
Shared Writing with Older Readers and Writers
Shared writing was a successful tool when I taught kindergarten and first grade. I was able to model how reading and writing were intertwined; writers have thoughts and share them...
